It’s been a good start to the day. It does seem that we’re almost done with spring (aside from the pummeling SouthEaster), and summer has moved in already. Thus, I’m sitting outside listening to the radio, catching up on a few emails, paying a few bills and writing a blog post. The garden is full of flowers, and the lawn needs a water. The beagle, having been bathed this morning – much to its displeasure – is on patrol, snorfing around and chasing butterflies.
It’s an idyllic picture. So let’s ruin everything with a handbrake turn.
Looking back at that link above, I’m reminded that this time last year, we were approaching 600 days of Covid lockdown. Believe it or not, there’s still quite a bit of Covid about, although no-one is testing anymore, because of the time and the effort and the money involved – and why spend all that stuff when no-one seems to care? – so we can’t be sure exactly how much.
And so much for this being “jUsT lIkE tHe CoMmOn CoLd”, with this huge overhang of cardiovascular deaths and Long Covid (which is also vastly underreported).
This is just the easily measured tip of the iceberg…
As I mentioned here, I think that thankfully, I’m finally over my issues [touches wood]. But I recently heard from a acquaintance who is anything but. Shortness of breath, palpitations, tachycardia, cognitive issues, that fatigue, and many other issues: just a general loss in quality of life. Ugh. Horrible. In her case, it’s so bad that she’s been admitted to a local pulmonology ward, which is half full of chronic Long Covid cases.
I guess that they’re only based there because it stemmed from a respiratory disease: these are very clearly multi-disciplinary cases.
I realise that it’s hip and cool to poke fun at Covid; to suggest that it wasn’t [note the incorrect use of the past tense] that bad, to weirdly tell people that it was all a “new world order” plan to keep us all under control, (incredible to see how governments were so ready and willing to work together on this one issue when they clearly can’t agree on fuck all else, before or since), to downplay it completely because you didn’t get sick (yet).
If you’re the person making those sort of points, you’re clearly ignorant, uninformed and actually rather callous.
We’re nowhere near done with Covid yet. And yet you can’t get a booster jab in Cape Town for love, nor money. Not that the booster on offer will help much – we need the new bivalent jab over here as soon as possible.
For those who insist that Covid will become just another seasonal viral infection, well, I actually agree with you. I just have two questions: When will that happen, and what cost will it bring – in both acute and chronic caseloads?
Until we have the answers to those questions, we really shouldn’t be dropping our guard – as individuals or as a society – because there’s a good chance that we’re going to end up regretting it at some point.
