I’m frustrated by the pressure to pretend the pandemic is over. As if we are done. There is still much more to do.
People keep using the word “ready” when talking about getting together with other people.
Are you ready?
It is a natural question. I don’t begrudge anyone asking it.
This question, while natural, is also too deceptively simple. We are living through a complex, transformational moment but whittling it all down to a simple yes/no question.
The thing is, this question isn’t just a question.
Being “ready” seems like a placeholder for agreeing to be in a tribe. One that declares we have entered a post-pandemic time here in the United States. We can begin to return to normal. There is, of course, scientific merit to this idea.
What this means, however, for those who are “unready” is also clear: they must be outside of the tribe. Even if unready comes from a million different things.
- You or someone you love can’t be vaccinated.
- You live in a community with a low vaccination rate.
- And yet people keep saying “we’re all vaccinated.”
- Reduced masking by the vaccinated has led to reduced masking by everyone.
- We continue to expand our unvaccinated children’s exposure.
- Much of the world is totally unvaccinated.
- By mid-June, more people globally have died this year from COVID-19 than all of 2020.
- News this week that the former president was far sicker than we were told in October.
- The World Health Organization encourages us to continue masking and describes the Delta variant as poised to “pick off” those at risk.
How can you read those words “pick off” and not want us to own up to our responsibility?
We’re demanding each other play pretend.
Over the last year and a half, the conversation about the American knife’s edge relationship to the pandemic has been about how much we tolerate to preserve a sense of normal. Not actual normal. Preserving the actual normal is impossible. But the feeling of normal.
Being among people, going about our regular business, no longer caring about standing close to people or, frankly, if we’ve even washed our hands today. That’s the kind of sense of normal that has been missing from people’s lives. Now concerts are ramping up and Broadway has opened. We want to feel normal again.
And yet I can’t help but feel like this is a strange mirage. As long as the consequences are felt by other people, we’ll pretend everything is normal.
In the community in which I live, I already felt like an alarmist for wearing my mask into a gas station during the height of the pandemic. Others troll mask-wearers as being a baby with a pacifier for not wanting to kill somebody. Oh, and this week’s-long cough is probably allergies. But if it’s not, we aren’t going to know. We’re not testing anymore. We’re done with that.
We can continue to help stop the virus from killing people.
Many of the countries which survived the pandemic infinitely better than we have (because they took it far more seriously) have no vaccines. We’ve promised to give them a handful. Just as the Delta variant is ramping up the death toll.
Meanwhile, we treat it all like a game. One that we’re “winning”. Racing to get our economy roaring (always a competition with global opponents) and our people back to work. Necessarily in-person. Can’t require the vaccines, though. That’s a bridge too far.
I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. If we’re willing to play pretend to create normal for ourselves, we’d certainly be willing to pretend we can be safe without requiring vaccinations.
Clearly I’m tired of the question.
It doesn’t begin to address how I actually feel.
Of course I’m ready to return to normal. But I’m also ready to transform that normal, because “normal” was deeply, deeply flawed.
And sure, I was happy to eat at a restaurant last week. But it also wasn’t half as fun (or even as normal) as I remember.
As much as I’m tired of the question, I’m just as tired of being lobbied. I know just how many people are eager to put this stuff behind us. And I know we have to “do it sometime”.
But that is exactly the issue. The pandemic isn’t actually behind us. And nobody actually said this was supposed to be forever. Just as nobody is lobbying for a permanent “closed”.
If we were following the science, we would begin to “open up” after a majority of the population was vaccinated. But only a few states actually did that. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines for what to do when we would get there. But my state still isn’t there yet. My county is far from it. But we’ve been “open” forever now.
That’s the thing: waiting until after the tipping point: that is the measured position. Not the wing-nut position of someone skeptical of the science or ignoring the effects. Wanting us to follow the actual guidance of the CDC and World Health Organization is the compromise.
I don’t have an answer right now. But I’m tired of people pretending there even is one.
What I want is for us to be responsible. Not just for ourselves. Or for the economy. Or individual freedoms. Responsible to each other. To get vaccinated, mask, and distance inside. But I also want us to be patient. To celebrate small steps as steps and not like we finished the race.
I want us to recognize that entire continents are still effectively barred from vaccines because we are taking care of ourselves first. Which, given our own vaccine hesitancy, is like declaring victory before we’ve even finished the first quarter.
It isn’t fear or pessimism that leads me to reject the very question of “ready”. It’s compassion and a commitment to patience. Just today, I’m celebrating online with friends in other countries who were excited to get their vaccines this week. And praying for another, whose father died.
My heart aches for those who aren’t as privileged as I am. I’d rather not pretend that isn’t the case.