a mystical möbius — curating facts, ideas, text, and media to create a contemplative space.
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The Covid-19 apocalypse continues
Apocalyptic?
Most astounding has been the pandemic’s capacity to expose our vulnerabilities and injustices as humans and societies.
In some ways, it has been like painfully watching a slow moving train-wreck that seemingly can’t be stopped.
In other ways, it’s been like slowly heating up the water in a frog-pot to gradually raise it enough to boil the frogs without their jumping out.
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Omicron
“Omicron” is the latest Covid-19 variant. What it lacks in direct lethality, it makes up for in its ability to spread — I note that how omicron and “long-haul covid” relate is not yet known (conservatively, previous variants exhibit 10-20%).
Good news may be extracted from this latest development, in that many epidemiologists believe many/most unvaccinated people will contract the omicron (or subsequent) variant and thus build some level of immunity on a very broad basis across society. If gaining a critical mass of immunity is necessary to overcoming the pandemic, then widespread infection is the only way the anti-vaxxers are ever going to contribute to reaching the goal. Obviously, this approach has serious problems, i.e., Covid-19‘s ability to collapse systems (e.g., hospitals, schools). The sheer numbers of omicron infections means the pandemic will create more indirect lethality.
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The cumulative effect
Arguably, as Covid-19 loses direct lethality in omicron, it gains in power to create dreadful knock-on effects. Some of the concerns I enumerated in missives like Teachers in the center ring (7/19/2020) have only grown as problems. I wrote:
One of the realities exposed by the Covid-19 Apocalypse is that our legacy systems are unable to meet the growing complexity of our interdependent human society. Our systems need a major rethinking. In some localities over the next few months we will likely see the collapse of major systems like education and medical care delivery. Hopefully the local collapses will not domino and cascade through the entire system. The pandemic has revealed that piece-meal whack-a-mole approaches to our systemic issues are no longer a sensible alternative.
Reducing vulnerability
In most cases what all persons/communities want is for the Covid-19 pandemic to simply vanish. We explored the possibility that “it will miraculously go away” earlier in “Science and predictability” back when DJT was basing his messaging mostly on magical thinking.
However, what people are willing to actually do to address the virus varies widely.
“We are in a terrible situation now in which a super-majority of one of our major parties believes a complete fiction about the world and is prepared to act on that.”
How do we escape?
The simplest way is to get vaccinated!
That’s been the case since vaccines came online.
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It quickly gets confusing, though.
We’re told by public health leaders that being vaccinated and boosted does not prevent us from contracting Covid-19 or from spreading it if we do become infected. So, one’s chances of serious infection needing hospitalization are reduced, but how do vaccines effectively end the pandemic?
Well, if you are vaccinated and boosted, and you contract Covid-19, then the infection will be confined to your nose and throat areas. The infection is not able to spread through your body where mutation of the virus naturally occurs. That’s how vaccines bring this virus under control, by curtailing its mutation in those who are vaccinated and boosted.
Minimally, Covid-19 will leave most of our systems battered and bruised. Many hospitals and schools may now be nearly broken; and healthcare and education systems themselves are basically on the ropes in many places. Sadly, any practical sense of a ‘common good’ for our society has been damaged as well.
tl;dr
A new year! … Is it?
So, in terms of Covid-19, 2022’s mostly been more of the same (so far). Hopefully, the omicron variant will provide a crescendo that leads to the beginning of the end (i.e., that the virus becomes endemic), because it appears plain that anti-vaxxers aren’t going to be of any help by their own volition. So, yeah.
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Hopefully, omicron’s impact on the unvaccinated is not a death-blow to some of our hospital and school systems.
Sadly, in any event, great and lasting damage has already been done.
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Next week: Dueling realities. [this post ~850 words (~3 min. read)]
Some earlier a mystical möbius missives on Covid-19 (and related topics) include:
—I note that all of those posts are prior to Doug Asbury graciously agreeing to step-up as editor for the a mystical möbius page. Obviously, also prior to my (8/2021) change of approach and (9/2021) move away from any kind of stadial or adult stage theory.
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Your thoughts?
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a mystical möbius 
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