The news of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 first identified in South Africa – the one designated “Omicron” – took the world by storm last week.
Without any details or much of any information – the world panicked. The stock market significantly dropped. Headlines were full of non-stop news on anything of note. Governments shut their borders to international travel from affected regions. After almost 20 months of pandemic the air is rife with anxiety, almost hysteria, about COVID and any new mutation of the virus. Might the situation get worse? Commentators talked for hours about what would happen next with Omicron and new virus restrictions in the near future – all with hardly any real scientific information about the mutation. All was speculation. Fear ran rampant.
What a bunch of pussies we are.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken many to their core. I suspect many will never return to crowded restaurants and live music (ie. other people). Exercise patterns too have changed, probably indefinitely. Overdose numbers are sky-high and show no signs of relenting. The mental health repercussions for young (and not-so-young) people will ripple across the future. The workaday world is debating endlessly whether or not it is safe to return to the office. It is all wearying and worrisome.
Today I read the following in the newspaper: “We observed that people weren’t exercising as much during the pandemic, weren’t getting regular care, were drinking more and sleeping less.” I did not see a doctor during that time, but I exercised hard, slept well, and drank next to no alcohol. Because I chose to do all those things.
All these people who supposedly put on weight and drank too much during quarantine. Would not vigorous daily exercise and extensive sustained reading have been a better way to deal with the stress of that time? People chose to drink alcohol or eat to excess instead? Hard drugs? Really?
Jeez.
I chose the exercise and the reading ftw.
I had the time. Why not?
Just last Saturday I ran into a friend who similarly used the long months of quarantine to get into fabulous physical shape, and I told him how much I admired him – in comparison to so many others who went in the opposite direction.
Yes, those very same anxiety-ridden people who are still on the very edge because of COVID-19.
I am done with COVID-19. Similarly, I’m done with those fixated on COVID-19. I pay next to no attention to the headlines about it. I ignore the COVID-panic people. Omicron can kiss my ass.
I am not living any differently than I did in 2019. I have returned to the lifestyle I pursued for decades before I’d heard of COVID – I’ve gotten on with my life. The tennis is going great; my friends and I get together. We don’t wear masks. Nobody I know wears a mask in private anymore, if they ever did. Work is almost like normal, blessedly; and I have upcoming overseas vacations planned, thank you. I am fully vaccinated and got the booster shot, too. I have never tested positive for the virus, but maybe I had it sometime in the past twenty months. Who knows?
In fact, I hope that I do get COVID sometime next spring. With all these vaccines in me, I most likely will have only a mild illness, if that, if and when I am exposed to the virus. Then my body will produce additional antibodies, and I should be good for another year or so. Then it will be 2023.
And we shall see what we shall see at that time.
2023 is some ways away still.
But I look at my fellow Americans who have allowed years of their lives to be consumed by worry over COVID-19, or who have retreated from life – from the challenges and opportunities of life – out of fear of infection, and I think what pussies. If you are immunocompromised, or fall into some other high-risk category, then I give you a semi-pass here.
But for all the rest: get on with your lives already. Get vaccinated and get on with it. Look at this guy Tim from Florida –
– he’s my kind of guy.
Time is the most precious possession you have. And you are wasting it in worry. Over time it has become a habit. You are stuck in a defensive crouch. A habitual posture of preparing yourself for the next blow.
But hear this loud and clear: You will never get these years again. You will not get the time back which you squandered. Almost always the worst you fear has not come to pass. You have the power to control most things in your life. You are not helpless. The wolf is not awaiting you right outside the door. So go outside and engage the world!
Maybe it is just that everyone has to judge their capacity for uncertainty and risk. And some people have a very low threshold for uncertainty and risk. Their anxiety always throbs near the surface – for COVID-19, or whatever.
That is fine. Cower at home and “doom scroll” the headlines on your smartphone, if you choose. That is your choice.
But stay out of my way.
The good news in all this? The vast majority of those infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus will recover. The bad news? That virus is damn near impossible to stop from spreading. This is what two year’s experience has shown. Adjust your lifestyle accordingly.
But still this Omicron-variant mini-panic worries me.
What if something really cataclysmic were to happen? What resilience and courage would we bring to that crisis? The fragility of our civilization has taken me by surprise.
I remember watching the movie Contagion which featured a virus which had something like a 20% death rate. That would be something.
Yikes!
COVID-19 has a survival rate somewhere around 99%, with fatalities heavily concentrated among the elderly and those with “comorbidities.” The vast majority recover. And still COVID-19 has thrown the world for a loop. Almost two years after it began we are still in the throes of it. Nearly everything in our lives has been touched. Look at this bit of counter-cultural optimism of post-vaccine life:
Why embrace gloom and focus on the tiny chance you have of getting sick with COVID-19 and dying? Why not get on with it?
But the reality is PLENTY of people are stuck in a perpetual posture of fear. It is almost as if they have put their lives on hold. The effects of COVID-panic start with the individual but emanate outwards to the rest of society. The stock market goes up or down on any new information on COVID outbreak infection rates. Supply chains for industrial and consumer products are in disarray.
Jeez.
We are a mess. It is a collective semi-breakdown.
How frail we are.
How sad it is.
How worrisome.
But I’m done.
Ymmv.
“Control what you can control, and leave the rest alone.”
“The good news in all this? The vast majority of those infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus will recover. The bad news? That virus is damn near impossible to stop from spreading. This is what two year’s experience has shown. Adjust your lifestyle accordingly.“
2 Comments
Jay Canini
I have a few thoughts about COVID in December 2021:
* Indeed I agree that people who fall in a high risk category or those who live with them should take more precautions: not only immunocompromised but also children under 5 years old (because they cannot vaccinate, even if COVID is a lower risk for them inherently, as parents understandably would want their children to stay safe from unlikely illnesses), elderly (65+), and people with significant underlying lung disease, should take precautions. I would like to see figures on how many people live with these high risk groups, and I suspect (but have no evidence that) even if you exclude under 5s and their guardians/siblings, people living with the other groups make up a surprising number of people.
* Sarah Zhang, who wrote “America Has Lost the Plot on COVID” in The Atlantic, pointed out that many of the communities most vulnerable to COVID, people who choose to not vaccinate, are essentially living like the virus does not exist while the people who protect themselves with vaccines the most are often hypervigilant and such communities are, leading to what she calls “the most illogical pattern possible”. Indeed it sounds backwards for hyper-cautious people to be still really fearful, but I suspect it’s because they are aware of the former and are afraid of mutations that they may foster in the former group. The former meanwhile were told that the vaccines aren’t necessary and worse than COVID, etc. that masks are not necessary, and have taken zero precautions the whole time. I feel that if the whole country was on the same page with COVID vaccines, it would in turn calm down the people who are still hyper-vigilant about COVID and allow them to drop mask and distancing anxiety.
* Much of the deaths in the summer/fall 2021 COVID wave were not the 65+ elderly, but in fact the middle aged, because many conservative-leaning middle aged chose not to vaccinate while the elderly did. COVID therefore put many middle aged in the ICUs, on ventilators, and under the ground. Atrium Health (a public hospital system in NC and GA) in October 2021 noted that for its adult COVID patients on life support, 47% were ages 50-64, 38% were ages 18-49, and only 15% were 65+. And of its COVID patients on life support, 96% were unvaccinated.
* One finds that a 1% death rate can include a surprising amount of people due to the infectiousness of Delta: calculate 1% of one’s city and imagine if that many people died. That is why hospitals in Michigan are filling up. Additionally a significant number of survivors may have permanent damage from COVID, and so survival rates are not the only factor in assessing the severity of the disease.
* The signs so far seem to show Omicron doesn’t seem to be deadlier. So long as COVID mutates to where it is less and less deadly (even if it is more transmissible) it truly would spell the end of being excessively worried about COVID. Sadly I feel this is on the virus’s schedule and not on my desire for COVID to be over, but I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I personally feel way more comfortable now than I did when during the height of Delta because I can take boosters now and keep up immunity to COVID indefinitely, as can my loved ones.
rjgeib
Thank you for the response, Jay. But I’m too over COVID to do anything more than skim it.