As the World Health Organization reminds us all that the pandemic is not actually over anywhere until ended everywhere, even the liberal voices in commercial media are prompting the CDC to declare that vaccination is enough to reopen society, as though society had ever really paused. The wealthy obviously never ceased traveling, with governments around the planet making exceptions for everything from continuous movie productions to golfing politicians. But in the USA of the last 15 months, it was rare pockets taking precautions seriously and only ever for brief periods of time, with virtually everybody nonetheless justifying their local convenience stores and fast food franchises, their Dungeons & Dragons meetups and prayer meetings and political rallies. Wearing masks, but only in select company. The pandemic took hold to such extent because even prior most people live without any consideration whatsoever of the people around them. Times turning tough only lionizes the false equivalency that self-centeredness presents any mode of survival, displaying no qualms about the obvious risks for spreading contagion so long as infantile creature comforts and flattering illusions be maintained, and always some other held to blame.
And until each and everyone planet-wide either catches and survives the virus with antibodies strong enough to counter any resurgence, or gets treated with reliable healthcare preemptively, all it would take to keep it going is for the one untreated person left yet to catch anything, finally contracting a new deviation of the strain to bring down the entire house of cards. Healthcare of all first world nations being inherently for-profit guarantees this to be ongoing. The genuine lack of care for one’s own neighbors, much less for the impoverished kicked from their neighborhoods year-round or the impoverished of foreign countries ignored altogether, guarantees this to be ongoing.
There remains elements of the population that believe covid19 and its growing list of mutated strains are a mythology. There remains elements of the population who believe that masks are somehow a dangerous violation of their personal freedoms. There remains elements of the population who insist that safe-distancing measures are malicious attempts at undermining their life and liberty. And there are those who believe that all of the vaccinations are poisons or worse. There are voices maintaining more than one of these beliefs simultaneously, that the virus is a hoax and that vaccines are without exception suspect while also irrationally insisting that Trump heroically deserves all credit for the vaccines as though nobody else was ever considering suggesting one during a global pandemic. And that’s just the people who were not posting images of their responsible safe-distancing protocols onto their prattling social media, when their explanations for being out in public to begin with were either nonexistent or purely ego-driven.
If one’s political party can do no wrong, where was its standing legislation for emergency procedure early last year, prompting immediate shutdowns nationwide with monthly checks immediately allocated for all citizens possessing less than one million or more in the bank already, with prerequisite safeguards for tested and retested treatments passed through preexisting distribution channels universally and entirely for free to all peoples? Every level of governance failed remarkably, across the aisle, from city to county to state to federal, with peoples falling victim to the virus outgunned by those who fell and continue to fall victim to peer pressure or selfish comfort levels or Facebook gossip.
Many seem to think that if something does not provide immediate gratification, then it surely must be either flawed or malicious in intent or both. And with liberal news condemning any lingering rigidness to the schizophrenic restrictions from the CDC, it is proving to no longer be a partisan spin. Card-carrying members of all parties want the quick fix, the easy solution, ideally while others do whatever heavy lifting required by personal sacrifice. When there is no magical on/off button to any of this. Any adult could and should be aware of that, were their egos not catered round the clock on a normal day. Washing your hands regularly is not a guarantee of resistance, but it lessens your chances of contracting it. Avoiding groups is no guarantee of resistance, but it lessens your chances of contracting it. Wearing masks cannot guarantee you will never contract viral symptoms, but it greatly diminishes the likelihood. And while vaccines clearly are doing more harm than not for a sizable number of people, my younger sister included, some of them can be effective for some people under some circumstances. Each and everyone doing all of these things in conjunction, and each and everyone continuing to do them regardless of peer pressure or selfish comfort levels or Facebook gossip, is how this thing might be overcome over ensuing years. Even with herd immunity the goal, millions of additional fatalities will have to happen, for enough people to have contracted the coronavirus and to have survived it with antibodies in tow. And studies from any nonpartisan lab plainly state a notable percentage of those surviving the virus not only continue to suffer diverse side-effects for months after and likely for the rest of their lives, but are by no means categorically immune to catching it all over again. Mutations of the strains evolving faster than booster shots can cover assures this will take more than mere years, especially while huge swathes of the poorest regions on the planet continue to have no access to medical assistance, no access to clean water for cleaning themselves whether they have homes or not. And almost as many more who do possess access to whatever forms of those resources who are simply incapable of exploring them, whether due to general ignorance or pride. Why waste one moment scrubbing your apartment when fortnite is supposedly a thing, conveniently there to lead your attentions far and away from the bewildering contents flying haphazardly from out Pandora’s richly offensive though entirely predictable little box?
Even were the pandemic to never have been unleashed, people should be both willing and able to wash themselves regularly, and mindfully avoiding groups for a great many logical reasons. None care to realize virtues died out before your own copy of whichever high and mighty religious tome got printed, but signaling their erstwhile importance by going without extravagances and indulgences so that others may also experience the basics of life and liberty for themselves, should not be such a big ordeal. Predominately to the contrary is seemingly everyone scared to be without audience, scared of the responsibilities to come from being in control of their own life, scared of the world around them and altogether unwilling to put the most rudimentary well-being of others before those fears. Hell is quite literally the absence of self-sacrifice, and by all the efforts of the world is it no temporary concern.
Nobody else might be accountable for the spread or perpetuation, not in a culture or society harboring more blame than opportunity in the best of times.