This summer feels like reliving the past all over again.
COVID-19 is back in full force as a for instance, feeding already turbulent feelings (at least in my household) of dread about dark days to come.
Anxieties both old and fresh hang over everything during these final, scorching days of August. Probably this is the one month of the year I usually dread as the months before seem to have gone by so fast and a fresh round of news takes up my time and energies. Refreshed from vacation in July, collectively everything speeds up and I am left wondering what happened to much of the year gone by.
August usually also brings with it – at least in Kevinland – a sense of urgency to start trying to complete unfinished business, as if the great list of any given thing to tackle can ever truly be diminished. You strike through an item with a sense of accomplishment and find three new tasks facing you at the bottom. Depending on the temperature outdoors, the amount of items completed can be short or long, but always I am left with the feeling of never doing enough. I am lucky this doesn’t come with a bout of seasonal depression. That instead in recent days come in the tropical variety.
I think of the entire month as the summer doldrums – worse really than something like the dog days of summer of old. Those came to an end. This is like the loss of wind in our collective sails and being twisted in unnerving currents.
Sailors who have been sucked into the real doldrums and survived the experience have recorded harrowing tales of survival. I can empathize more now with their accounts of doing what they must to live than I have in previous times in my life. I don’t relish even thinking about the mentality one must put themselves into in such situations. The doldrums caused by the latest spike in the pandemic adds to this, since we given paddles to help ourselves get to shore in the form of vaccines, yet many have seem to jettisoned the one tool they need to survive right overboard.
What is one to say of the current situation? Second verse, same as the first?
Last year in the ugly days of a COVID spike here in Polk County and around the nation, people were concerned about whether there would be a football season, if schools would close again and how they would love if the government wasn’t doling out extra cash. A year later we are again in the midst of another surge in the pandemic, yet also sticking to the idea of life continuing as normal as if nothing is happening. I’m just as guilty in many ways, but I at least got my shots in May. I might not be perfectly safe, but I am at least feeling like I can be out in the community on a limited basis.
The vaccine was supposed to help stamp out the flames of COVID, but only if everyone cooperated. That’s not happened here, considering only 30% of the county population had received at least one dose as of my last check on Monday (8/23/21 for future reference.)
Hundreds of thousands of new cases of the virus are reported every day worldwide – among unvaccinated people here prevalently be side of the virulent Delta strain – yet this is not enough to make folks want to go do the right thing and get their shots.
I’m not exactly one for doom and gloom predictions, but I can look at the situation clearly as numbers rise again and say “this is going to get bad again before it gets better.”
I said as much to Jess last night as I paced around the house and thought about this problem. What frustrates me is that past data on Polk.Today supports one truth: not enough people are paying attention to what is happening with the COVID situation and should be.
Based too on what I see day to day in community actions overall, no one seems.able to exhibit any kind of common sense about the welfare of themselves and others. It’s still a “it won’t happen to me” fantasy prevailing, and I don’t like the odds with that particular role of the dice for anyone these days.
Those who have flown commercial know well the pre-flight “steps to survive a plane crash” safety briefing. During it, the flight attendant usually demonstrates how to put on the oxygen masks that fall from the ceiling during decompression events at high altitude, to ensure it fits snugly on your face.
“When you have your mask on, turn and look to help others who may be having difficulty on getting their masks on.” Or something like that. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a Delta flight.
My point being this: we are daily called upon for simple things to act together as civilized folk. Drivers are polite at stop signs to one another rather than all go at once and try to demolition derby their way through the intersection. We collectively take care of people who can’t do for themselves. We don’t mind chipping in on Sundays in the collection plate.
Where we seem to be failing each other now is in those willing to get vaccinated, and those who aren’t.
So what am I to think of my neighbors and friends who won’t get a shot because they read a thing on Facebook, or for their political reasons, or because the lack the common sense of normal people?
I’ll tell you one thing: I certainly don’t want to sit next to them on an airplane.
Please use caution when going out, wear a mask, and get vaccinated already. The more we work together as a people, the sooner we can maybe get back to normal.
Leave a Reply