More and more we are accommodating the new normal. It's truly amazing how adaptable human beings are and how relative our perceptions of happiness and value are. The fact is things are dribbling back excruciatingly slowly. I can now go to the gym legally, as opposed to going illegally as I was for a while. There are still a handful of things I can't do. The library is still closed, which I find to be a much greater loss than I realized as that was where I did most of my writing. And of course attending live sporting events is out, although sports has become so politicized I have trouble even watching an NFL game.
I also grow weary of any coverage of the virus. Long ago it became swamped by signaling. There is precious little actual knowledge. All suppositions, even the most reasonable, have data contradicting them. Eggheads call this heterogeneity. But it basically means we have got it figured out yet. Not that that will stop anyone accusing the other tribe of evil and stupidity.
The good news is that vaccinations are progressing, although not at the pace they should be. We are very good at having regulations keeping everyone safe. We are very bad at determining when these regulations need to be eased in a crisis.
I gather about 100,000 small businesses have shuttered permanently. Given where we are now, with mask requirements and limiting large groups seems to have stemmed the tide of deaths and hospitalizations, the question has to be raised as to whether the forced shutdowns of businesses were really necessary. Remember our initial reaction was that masks were ineffective and we had to shelter-in-place. Maybe we didn't. Maybe if we went straight to masks and reduced group sizes we would have been no worse off and lost many fewer businesses and not suffered such an economic hit.
But again, we just don't know. It is possible that there will be some point in the future where the data have been poured over and deep analysis has taken place and we do gain some measure of confidence about how the virus functioned and what worked and what didn't. Let's hope some level heads are able to incorporate that information into our future responses, because we know the bulk of people won't believe it if it contradicts their current beliefs.
I begin to wonder how it all ends. Can anyone actually picture a politician saying: "The crisis is over. Take off your masks. Go to your bars and clubs and football games. Shake hands and stand shoulder to shoulder again."?
Lastly, under the heading of I'm-sticking-to-my-story, when this first started seven months ago and comparisons were being made to the 1918 flu epidemic, I pointed out that once the epidemic subsided we were not left in some sort of post-apocalyptic hell. In fact, we stepped into the roaring twenties, one of the most lucrative and creative eras in U.S. history. Well, we now have word that there may actually be nuclear fusion on the horizon (I know you've heard that before), and we have learned much about molecular biology and viruses in particular, and breakthrough in battery tech, and more importantly we have had some of our planted assumptions deeply questioned -- the value of college in general and on-site education in particular, and any conventional mediums of art have been upended in so many ways. Now if we could only recover our senses of humor and perspective, things could get really lit up in here (...said the old man).
