Alas, the virus can’t read
Year 2021 was supposed to be Chapter 1 of a hopeful story
In the final days of 2020, the COVID-19 virus revealed the same disrespect for the calendar as it had previously shown for national boundaries, political affiliations and state lines. Willwe ever learn?
Even as the media desperately tried to convince us that the most mutedNew Year’s Eve in history was the end of a bad narrative and the start of a new, more hopeful human story, the plague refused to cooperate. All of the ritual burnings and purgings of what appeared to be theworst year in history (“Death to 2020!” declaredNetflix in a pathetic attempt at catharsis), all of the performative “good riddances” actuallywere for naught.
Your Facebook friends didn’t achieve anything, beyond some cold personal comfort and padding someone else’s coffers with their own vulnerabilities.
Year 2020 hadn’t actually done anything— the slayers had picked the wrong target. Wewere drinking celebratory champagne in the basement as lives around us continued to burn with the seditious flames growing higher every day.
British scientists have discovered a new, seemingly more contagious strain of the virus, resulting in a quadrupling of hospitalizations in a singleweek and massively spiking theU.K. death rate. The island nationwas plunged
into a new lockdown in the first days of 2021. By Wednesday— in an example of a tweet you never thought youwould live to see— the BBCwas reporting that sex between partners who did not live togetherwas nowillegal, at least in most jurisdictions. ByWednesday night, itwas reported that more than 1,000 Britains had died in the prior 24 hours.
And by midweek, there alsowas growing evidence that the British hadn’t so much found a new domestic strain as merely had been the first to detect something that likely had already permeated other nations, including this one. If the January news out of Los Angeleswas a new normal or the start of some fresh story, thiswas not a narrative within which anyone should care to live. In Southern California, PBS reported on Tuesday, that whichever the variant, the viruswas “virtually everywhere” and deathswere rising at a level comparable to whatwas transpiring across the Atlantic.
Year 2020 had at least brought us multiple vaccines— a stunning human achievement, given the speed of their development, and their apparent efficacy went far beyond our previous expectations.
Logicwould therefore suggest that humanity now would suspend normal
United Stateswas, in the power of one pathetic man. first days of 2021, attemptNo, it’s not been an espeing to lead whatCNNand cially happy new year, nor others referred to as an is this a new story so far. attempted coup. (Speaking In fact, we’re witnessing of text you never thought one of the most dismal eras youwould live to see on the of human behavior in renetwork of aworld-leading corded history and dark democracy). OnWednesdays for American democday, energy that could have racy, which looks frightenbeen spentworking on ingly vulnerable in the face vaccine distributionwas of its own technological expended on the protection innovation and, by conseof theUnited States Capitol quence, the increasingly from a dangerous mob. easy manipulation of its
At this time, Donald J. own citizenry. It is reasonTrump even presented able to blame Trump, but Mike Pence, his own, that will need to be accomfiercely loyal vice president, panied by soul-searching as with a stunningly cruel to howhe happened, and Catch-22: support his perwhy. The media, social and formative, doomed efforts otherwise, will have to take to overturn the election or responsibility for gouging head to the back of the on its own algorithms, plane with Sen. Mitt Rompreaching the Gospel that ney and the other co-confeeding the hungry is good spirators defending the fake for business, and that to news of democracy. Here offer those vittles, you must was an act of personal never try to calm the enemy.brutalityfullyworthyof
William Shakespeare’s Trump will be gone from Brutus. Trump made like power, as long as his line of Hal, casually betraying a oxygen is cut off. The virus white-haired, Indiana will be remembered as the version of Sir John Falstaff, tougher combatant. except that Pence, and In the final days of 2020, America, had far more to the deaths in Britain from lose. COVID-19 exceeded the
The news fromWashingnumber of civilian casuton demanded that deaths alties duringWorldWar II. in Los Angelesmoved There should be only down homepages. Editorione story right now: Neeals that could have been dles in arms, not guns in the demanding that all levels of Capitol. Andwe’re fast government stop blaming running out of time to write each other for the lousy it. vaccine rollout and actually History iswatching us cooperate, right now, were fail. filled instead with an agonizing, distracting sideshow in service only of the maintenance of the brutal, destructive, self-serving
Donald J. Trump even presented Mike Pence with a stunningly cruel Catch-22: support his performative, doomed efforts to overturn the election or head to the back of the plane with ... the other co-conspirators defending the fake news of democracy.
operations and concentrate on one thing: actually vaccinating human beings against a virus thatwould continue to kill large numbers of them with a demonstrated preference for the most vulnerable.
Sure, theworld needed still to tick over, but, surely, everything else, all human endeavor, should be subservient to this one shared goal. Logicwould suggest that any mission-based media, social or otherwise, would prioritize this and only this, realizing that all elsewas mere distraction.
Fatal distraction offering widespread death without regard to deserving.
After all, the remaining problem in the firstweeks of 2021was merely one of logistics and theworld’s richest nations had formidable arsenals, decades in the making: Hospitals. Universities. Arenas. Governments. Military capability and training. Federal cash reserves. Stadia.
But instead of making plans to vaccinate people en masse in those places, we had been playing games in them.
And instead of leading the people in this endeavor, not least his own supporters, the president of the