I submit that we have returned to near normal after the past three years of COVID. That does not mean that it is gone. It is still out there, lurking in the shadows of everyday life as another virus that can interfere with us. I am hopeful that we have learned something as a society in the aftermath of COVID, but I am afraid not.
I was on travel the other week for work. Airplanes and airports are very busy. I am afraid that this is a simple fact that we have more people than our country can support, as much as it is of a return to near normal. Anyway, when I got to my work travel location, I was informed that a coworker had tested positive for COVID and was home. Of course, I, sitting in an office across the country, heard this and had to wonder if I too was going to test positive, get sick, or contribute to a new outbreak. As you see, as I was being told this, I wasn’t really feeling 100%. But I was on travel, and I always feel bad for a couple days after being locked up for hours in an airplane. It goes without saying but I always get ill after air travel. They claim that they have micropore filters and that they clean after every flight and that all is well. Doesn’t matter, I still get sick.
However, in my case, it turned out to not be COVID. The pollen count was up from the pine trees. Some loratadine and Flonase and I was back to my old self. And to be safe, a few COVID tests confirmed that I was not a walking typhoid Mary.
Conversely, my son missed most of February due to a sinus infection. It lingered for about four weeks after first not getting any antibiotics, to getting the wrong antibiotics, to just missing so much school and homework that he was suffering. Yet he didn’t have COVID either, although we had to test him multiple times for strep, RSV, COVID and the flu.
But it is still around. It will be with us forever they say. Biden still has all of the emergency aspects in place that were around with COVID. Pretty sure that he would try to spend billions more in COVID emergency aid if he could. The truth is now the subject of hearings, as to its origins. Perhaps they will have hearings as to how drugs were brought to market so fast, as the real complications of the vaccines emerge.
In my annual physical with my primary doctor, he had asked if I had all my COVID boosters. I said no. I had the original two shots, the 3rd shoot (the booster after the fact) but that I did not have the new COVID vaccine cocktail. I asked why since I managed to get COVID anyway. His response was that it probably wasn’t as severe, as I have a couple of health matters that would put me at higher risk, it would be advantageous. I argued natural immunity. In the end, we agreed to disagree. I keep looking for the data just to see how well things are since we have had inoculated millions, including myself. What health effects will we see down the road?
I’m guessing that the concept of masks will be with us forever. Every time I go to the hospital, I am required to wear a mask. The COVID aftermath created new litter that I see along the road, in the parking lots, all over. The mask! Whether it is cloth, KN95, something else, it now represents additional trash produced by our society and discarded without abandoned.
As we had mask, antibiotic, food and other shortages for basic good as they are no longer manufactured in this country, I would hope that we invest in returning the basic manufacturing needs for everyday life in this country. I’m not saying that we should make toasters, but there are things that we still experience shortages because of the supply chain.We go for the cheap but fail to understand the costs when we are without. They can be significant. Antibiotics is a key one. How many people would stay ill, or get worse, or die if we didn’t have access to antibiotics? I understand that we don’t make many of these drugs today here. We have drug shortages for many drugs important to our daily lives. The only drug that appears to be in unlimited supply and has Chinese origins is Fentanyl. We can thank Joe Biden for that!
As for now, both my son and I want to lose that extra weight that I attribute to COVID. The inability to go out and about, the daily sitting, has contributed to our individual BMI’s. As daughter got out every day to feed the horses, she didn’t suffer as much as we did.
However, the consequences of the COVID aftermath are all around us. Closed restaurants and other businesses that we enjoyed and shopped at; long lines in those places that remained open as there are fewer people to support the business. Lines are longer, waits are more. Shortages still exist as some of the isles in the grocery store remain baren. Small business is critical to towns and society. Sadly, our society continues to rot away. A frayed moral fabric continues to show our decline. Less civility has been replaced with more senility.
The tear of our social fabric is long and deep and will be with us longer than the mutations of COVID. I really do not care where it came from, although I believe more in the lab-leak theory. One of the lingering issues from the COVID years is that many conspiracy theories have turned out to be closer to the truth than the fake media wants you to believe! I do care as to whether it was natural or created by man and accidentally released. More to the point, what are we going to do to keep that from happening in the future.
The world is comprised of evil despots who want to destroy us. It would be nice if we could live together.
The whole inflation situation that we find ourselves in today, I am afraid, will be with us for a long while. I believe that the two separate issues of inflation and the COVID support are tied together. Free money allowed people the opportunity not to work. Yet, now that there is no more free money, where are all of the workers? They all did not retire. They all did not die or develop a health condition that keeps them from working. Did the free money allow people to unleash their rugged individualism? Allow them to develop self-sustaining farms? Unleash millions in investments so that work was no longer required? In all cases, the free ride that America has taken, since before COVID and continues to this day, is a bill that will soon be coming due. I am afraid that it will get worse before it gets better.
Sadly, our children suffered. They suffered way too much. Issues associated with their mental health are increasing. They lost critical educational years of school but will probably not be noticed given how bad the American educational system has become. Sadly, yet another indicator of our declining society. Yet another aspect of the simple truth that we are not leaving our country and our world, in a better place than what we inherited. I wonder, and I worry how bad things will become for my children.
TheMcKeeSpot. 