It's Not Over

We share our time between homes in rural New York and rural Massachusetts.  When we congregate, it is always with people who are vaccinated.  So for us, it would be very easy to slip into a post-pandemic lifestyle, to assume our place in a new world that is very much like the old one.

We also read the news, and it is often jarring, here in our healthy havens.

• There were "record numbers of infections in Australia and South Korea" this week.  Record numbers.
• Each day for the last three days, Thailand broke the record for COVID deaths.
• Indonesia has reported record numbers of cases on seven of the last eleven days.  On Thursday, a record number of Indonesians died.  A year ago, Business Wire noted that only 5% of Indonesian hospital beds are equipped to provide intensive care services.
• Vast numbers of Australians who were caught overseas when the pandemic struck are still not home, and may not get home for a long time:  Australia is tightening its lockdown, and fewer people - any people - will be allowed in the country going forward.  Believe it or not, only 8% of Australians are vaccinated.
• Each of the last four days, The Moscow Times reported a new daily record for Russians dying from COVID.
• The Euro 2020 soccer championships look like they will be super spreader events.  40% of Finland's cases are apparently traceable to soccer fans returning from games in Russia.
• And here in America, 273 people died of COVID yesterday.  Yesterday.  On that same day, 14,875 Americans learned that they had COVID.  Twenty percent of them had the delta variant.  In the UK, 39,438 Britons learned they had COVID, and nearly all of them - 92.3% - have the delta variant.
• Also in America:  You've heard of the variants, and especially the delta variant, and you've heard of anti-vaxxers.  Those two things tend more and more to be found together:  hotspots.  The Federal Government is sending mobile vaccination labs to those hotspots, because the pandemic isn't over.

The pandemic isn't over.  That land we thought we saw, or saw evidence of?  It was mangled by marauders and wiped clean by hurricanes and no longer exists.  Just branches and leaves in the water.  The birds seem confused.  We're caught in a storm, and the compass was swept overboard.

It's not over.  The new world is nowhere to be seen.