Occam's Razor

Saturday I got the second jab, that second dose of vaccine (Moderna) that has something like a ninety percent chance of keeping me from acquiring covid-19. Another drive to a CVS for the shot, this time in faraway Springfield, Massachusetts. But at least this time things felt more relaxed. The nurse that jabbed me even noted that the crush was over. They weren’t upset when a lady showed up an hour early for her appointment. A lot of their slots weren’t filled so jabbing her early was no problem.

Also no problem, at least for me, was any reaction to the second dose. My wife was not so fortunate and had about twenty four hours of side effects: principally headaches, muscle cramps and a mild fever from someone who never gets them. My arm hardly hurt a tad after the injection but otherwise I had no side effects. The following day I took out my bike and fully masked took it for a twelve mile ride, the first time in a year.

A year earlier the pandemic wave was just starting and for a while where I live (Massachusetts) was a hot spot. People at the time hadn’t gotten into the masking habit. I felt unsafe biking the trail as it was crowded with both bikers and pedestrians, so I stopped.

This time fully masked I realized it wasn’t that much different. But things had changed. For one thing, people like me were getting vaccinated. Despite my bitching, my state is the number two in the percent of people vaccinated. Most of New England makes the list of top vaccinated states, likely because we understand and respect science around here. I’m likely already immune from the disease, but I’ll stay likely masked outdoors until May 15 anyhow, at least when I’m near people. It’s unlikely I’ll get it, but the science is not in yet on whether I could pass it on to others. The science though is pretty clear that you can stay unmasked outdoors in most places, and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) now agree.

The park across the street discreetly took down their outdoor masking requirement sign. Most of us walking around the park are still masked anyhow, because we’re used to it. I expect our city to follow through on all outdoor spaces public shortly, following CDC guidance. I’ll still carry a mask though. It’s possible I’ll be walking and need to dash into a store, and I would wear one then, even though it probably wouldn’t matter.

Like most Americans I want to feel like I’m back to the way things always used to be. These are truly extraordinary times. My mother was born in 1920, shortly after the end of the Spanish flu pandemic. She never had to live life behind a mask, except when she was a nurse assisting in surgery. Covid-19 though feels to me like we’ve crossed the Rubicon. I’m not convinced we’ll ever fully go back to before.

I’m not even convinced the pandemic won’t return in force. The pandemic has proven that we’ve become a remarkably brainless and self-centered country, with many of us perfectly willing to put “me” before “we”. During World War Two, we recycled scrap metal and lived with ration books. I can’t imagine our country doing this kind of national self-sacrifice anymore. Liberty now is interpreted as meaning that you can do pretty much anything you want and shouldn’t have to care about how your behavior could impact on others, and maybe even kill them. Freedom is all about “me me me” doing whatever I want when I want damn the consequences.

The result of all this self-centeredness, along with a bad global vaccine rollout and twenty to 30 percent of Americans who just refuse to take the shot, are increasingly more dangerous covid-19 variants. A shot is a pretty good bet that you won’t acquire one of these variants. But it’s not paranoid to think that one of these will get around the shots and we won’t get boosters in time to ward a variant off. In short, what’s now happening in India could very easily come back here again because we can’t get enough people vaccinated quickly enough, in part because so many of us will refused to get the vaccine. In a way, it’s still very much here, it’s just hitting younger people this time, mostly because they aren’t vaccinated. And the variants are much easier to acquire.

So give me a vacation quick, please. I need to get some wanderlust out of my system, just in case I can’t later. I need it because I am sick of sitting at home and while I could endure another year or two of this if I had to, I surely don’t want to. So a road trip or something is in order after May 15. Just an overnight or two perhaps, to get back into the groove again and test the water. Vermont is less than an hour away, and the Adirondacks are not too far away either. Maybe we’ll be eating mostly takeout. Maybe it won’t feel quite the same and disappoint. But I feel the need to try just in case … just in case we’re back in covid-19 hell again soon.