The “Weirdest Moment of the Pandemic” is Here. Again.
What a strange moment we find ourselves in.
Omicron is coming, omicron is coming! It’s all I read nowadays. I believe it, but the numbers haven’t budged yet. Everyone is swearing up and down that cases are about to quadruple, but when I look at even New York’s test positivity rate, it hardly looks like an emerging crisis. Maybe it’s too soon — I can’t tell.
Part of me, though, wonders whether this country’s T cells will even notice. Maybe we’re already so soaked in COVID, omicron won’t matter. That wouldn’t surprise me either.
What’s weirder still is the disconnect between the noise about omicron and what’s happening out there. Supposedly, we’re all worried about getting boosted all of a sudden, because: omicron is coming, omicron is coming! And yet, people are still doing all the things. They’re going to restaurants. They’re going to concerts. They’re going to sporting events.
This was always weird, but it’s especially weird now.
I know, too, that if omicron doesn’t wind up being an awful contagion, certain people will once again claim that the media and the government blew it all out of proportion. Actually, scratch that, even if it does wind up being an awful contagion, it will be awful in that institutional way that everyone has shown they’ll just ignore. It’ll fill up hospitals, which will be something people complain about as if it’s just some remote, independent thing. As they try to get treatment for a heart attack or a broken bone, they’ll wonder why it’s such a hassle and/or just impossible, because the hospital is overwhelmed with omicron cases. People who insist that omicron is even less of a big deal than any previous incarnation of COVID will simply complain about this, too, as if it’s the exhausted healthcare workers’ fault, while the exhausted healthcare workers are trying to stay healthy even as they make gut wrenching decisions about who gets care and how to manage within profit constraints even as illness explodes around them. If every other surge that has pushed hospitals to their breaking point didn’t engender any sympathy or concern, why would this one?
It does elicit sympathy from me, and I’ve been steadfast in doing my part. I deserve a break. Unfortunately, none is in sight. I rely on the same healthcare system. There is no exclusive club for COVID virtuosos to escape to. And as the norm of behavior gets less and less adequate to the task of preventing spread, the number of people I can trust to protect me and each other from COVID dwindles by the day.
The cost of being conscientious started high. Now it’s almost unbearable.
