I remember back in March 2020, exactly two years ago today, being all worried that this new pandemic lockdown thing might last more than a few weeks. Ha. And then of course on last year’s lockdown anniversary we were all looking forward to the vaccine. Since then so much has changed while much has stayed the same.
I’m still living a kind of “part time” life, not going out a lot, not travelling, etc. Much of that has to do with barely working these days, so there’s no money for these things, but some of it is also me still being extra careful. I look ahead with dismay that China is locking down cities with the same numbers of new daily Covid cases countrywide as we are experiencing just in Andalucía (approx 3000), meanwhile Spain’s government is talking about removing all preventative measures after Semana Santa. Something is not right. Why is the response to the latest omicron variant being taken seriously in China and Hong Kong and not even being mentioned in the news here any more? I fear a very nasty “surprise” lies ahead.
Meanwhile I’m so tired of people being “tired of Covid” as if that is enough to make it disappear. It wears me down, it makes me all kinds of sad and want to just give up. The astounding selfishness I’ve seen from people who are only being inconvenienced in their otherwise comfortable lives is so demoralising. I shudder to think what they would do if they ever suffered an actual hardship. There is at least one more year of this fucker, as a serious threat to our lives and to those around us. Deny it all you want. Cherry pick news articles that back up what you want to be true. But please be aware that you are not only risking your own lives. The rest of us live here too. ✌️
casa azahar 
Well said.
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You and me, babe, I’m so exhausted.
I hang out on Twitter, as you can doubtless tell, far too much and folow doctors and other epidemiology wonks, so it makes me scream when I e-mail with a client who really wants to come back and explain how I’m bracing for the next goddam wave from BA and she says “what’s BA?” We’ve known about Hong Kong for a couple of weeks, but it was only mentioned on the news program I listen to later the night of our e-mail conversation. The media want us to move on too. Bad news is too much of a bummer and drives off subscribers, I guess?
Pfizer is looking for approval of another booster round for over-65s and the medically vulnerable. I’ll take it. They can make me into a voodoo doll if it’ll help, but I don’t get the other people out there, like my inlaws, planning four travel holidays this year.
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While I have willingly taken three COVID-vaccine injections (as well as the annual influenza shots for decades), I nevertheless feel the term ‘science’ generally gets used a bit too readily/frequently, especially for political/corporate purposes.
Also, I’m cautious of blindly buying into (what I call) speculative science, in general. Owing to increasingly common privatize-sector research aiming for corporate profits, even science, and perhaps by extension scientific ‘fact’, has become commercialized. Research results, however flawed, can and are known to be publicly amplified if they favor the corporate product, and accurate research results can be suppressed or ignored if they are unfavorable to business interests, even when involving human health. …
Health Canada was established to act in Canadian consumers’ best interests, yet it’s susceptible to corporate lobbyist manipulation. For one thing, it allowed novelty-flavored vaping products to be fully marketed — even on corner stores’ candy counters — without conclusive independent scientific proof that the product, as claimed by the tobacco industry, would not seriously harm consumers but rather help nicotine addicts wean themselves off of the more carcinogenic cigarette means of nicotine deliverance.
A few years before that, Health Canada had sat on its own research results that indicated seatbelts would save lives and reduce injury; it wanted even more proof of safety through seatbelts before ordering big bus manufacturers to install them in every bus.
That all smells of
To me, that all reeks of lobbyist manipulation — something that should not prevail in a government body established primarily, if not solely, to protect consumers’ safety and health rather than big businesses’ monetary concerns.
___
P.S. And Pfizer’s claim that the mass consumption of their not-cheap product is needed immediately induces even less confidence in the big business.
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I feel the Chinese authorities have, overall, handled the pandemic in their nation quite pointedly. Watching the little amount of news feed allowed to leave the nation in Autumn 2019, I was somewhat amused by TV images of some citizens being literally dragged — a few even invertedly by their legs! — back into their residences to help contain viral transmission.
As the months passed and Covid-19 became a global pandemic, I couldn’t help but notice how China’s strict handling of its own outbreak, while allowing little rights and freedoms to its people (and maybe even internal/external big business), likely enabled a relatively short duration of its initial crisis.
Perhaps with greater democratic freedom can come weaker national security, and vice versa. While I wouldn’t exchange my (Western) freedom for such national security, it is still foolish to pretend a national-security sacrifice isn’t being made in exchange.
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