The world is waiting in terror for the next round of hell at the Russia/Ukraine border. Some seem to have forgotten that COVID-19 has not ended. In the United States, there have been over 28,000 COVID-related deaths in the last two weeks and more that 1.2 million new infections within the same time frame. This is a significant improvement in the fight against this virus. It only emphasizes the horror of the number of victims. If this pandemic were a shooting war, these numbers would be unsustainable.
It was November 2021, which is still early in the pandemic. AtlanticUri Friedman was the writer a penetrating articleAbout the concept national strength in the context of the crisis. He explained that national strength has been measured over many generations using a variety of categories. These include military power, economic health and, more recently, cybersecurity. All of these are ways we have historically assessed our national standing. Friedman offered an additional metric that is appropriate for the times: National resiliency.
“And the new era ushered in by COVID-19 has done so as well,” writes Friedman, “revealing the salience of ‘resilient power’: a country’s capacity to absorb systemic shocks, adapt to these disruptions, and quickly bounce back from them. Stephen Flynn, a scholar, said that resilience is a country’s ability to absorb systemic shocks, adapt to these disruptions and quickly bounce back from them. once told me, the aim of resilience is to design systems not just so they can endure shocks, but also so they can ‘fail gracefully and recover nicely’…. And right now, it’s a measure of power where the United States is clearly falling short.”
That was written 16 months ago, and every day of that ghastly run of months has seen this country, in one way or another, fail Friedman’s resiliency test. A segment of the population has abandoned all pretense of care for neighbors and family, and embraced a confounding new anti-mask/anti-vaccine movement that vexes logic to dust. Among the rest, a boiling sense resentment runs rampant, and it is dangerously so. Even the most powerful COVID warriors can still fly on the vapor in their gas tank after two long, patient decades.
Plus, there’s the klaxon scream capitalism, which orders everyone to walk over the bones that nearly a million people have left and get back on their feet. You see, the economy is far more important than those who make and sustain it. The value and authority of the places they are employed cannot be outweighed by workers. If the wealthiest among us are not making money every minute of the day, the fundamental pillagers’ philosophy that undergirds our national mythology goes unfulfilled. You will never believe it.
If I sound as if I am laying judgment, I’m not. Well, mostly. I’m deep in the soup along with the worst of them/us, and I can easily see this “revolution” against science and common sense has its roots in fear, uncertainty and a sense of deep betrayal. It makes sense to seek out guidance and support from the toughest guy in the room.
All the compassion and understanding in the world can’t hide the fact that we as a nation have failed the resiliency test in a shocking manner. COVID has not broken America. It has kicked America in all its broken places and watched as so many things fell.
Three of the major cruise line companies — Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian — will be downgrading their on-board mask mandates to “recommended but not required.” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is about to lift all mask mandatesEngland. Here at home, masks have become a dwindling sight as people try to transition — tentatively yet inexorably — back into what they remember to be a “normal life.”
This isn’t entirely without reason, either. Two years is too long to expect anyone to live in a box for two years. Despite the fact that the country has not been able to fully immunize its citizens, vaccines have done an admirable job of reducing the country’s mortality rate, even with variants like Omicron and Delta. New data strongly suggests that you may not need to get another shot for several months, if at all, years, if you have the booster and two shots. People are generally safer today than they were last summer.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it? What happened last fall and summer: Delta, Omicron, then a hot ticket right back to where we started. That’s when the exhaustion and inchoate rage really began to manifest itself, the moment when our national resilience — our ability to take a punch — went a big wobbly one … and we are still wobbling, like a boxer with a bump on his head and ball bearings in his ankles, asleep in our shoes.
For millions of immunocompromised people — those fighting cancer or dealing with MS, for example — this national shrug is as infuriating as it is potentially lethal. “People with weakened immune systems or other high-risk conditions argue that now is the time, as the omicron surge subsides, to double down on policies that protect vulnerable Americans like them,” reportsVictoria Knight KHN. “‘The pandemic isn’t over,’ said Matthew Cortland, a senior fellow working on disability and health care for Data for Progress, who is chronically ill and immunocompromised. ‘There is no reason to believe that another variant won’t emerge.’”
… and, as if on cue, another new subvariant is on the rise, this one a child of Omicron called — until they, perhaps, give it its own Greek letter — BA.2. NPR explains:
As the omicron surge continues to decline in the U.S., infectious disease experts are keeping a close eye on an even more contagious version of the variant that could once again foil the nation’s hopes of getting back to normal. The virus, known as BA.2, is a strain of the highly contagious omicron variant that appears to spread even more easily — about 30% more easily.
BA.2 has been discovered from coast to coast, and is responsible for 3.9% of all new infections in the country. according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It appears to be growing at an alarming rate. “If it doubles again to 8%, that means we’re into the exponential growth phase and we may be staring at another wave of COVID-19 coming in the U.S.,” says Samuel ScarpinoThe Rockefeller Foundation’s manager of pathogen surveillance, “And that’s of course the one we’re really worried about. We’re all on the edge of our seats,” he says.
BA.2 could be a threat, and it might sink back into the COVID watersLike other mutations of its type. The point is this: You can unmask on your cruise or party like Boris, you can simply hope for the best like all those Democratic governors who couldn’t wait to lift COVID protections during an election year, you can pretend immunocompromised people are not your problem as you la-la-la-la-la your way past this particular graveyard.
The graveyard wins in the end. COVID is now ineffective. Even if BA.2 is not successful, it serves as a warning that variants can strike at any moment and in any direction. If it gets serious, then we all will have to test our endurance again. We might be able to get it right the fourth time around.
