Waiting For My Fauci Ouchie

 As a teacher, I'm reasonably high up the ladder for getting the vaccine as more and more become available. Of course, it certainly looks like there was zero plan for getting vaccines coordinated across the country, with red states seeming to get more doses than blue ones. (If this was a plan, it's also something that needs prosecuting.)

Anti-vaxxer nut job, Robert Kennedy, Jr., has suggested that maybe Henry Aaron was killed by complications from his vaccine. First of all, let me say to Mr. Kennedy, "Fuck off and die of Covid." Seriously. It struck me not only for being the sort of baseless conspiratorial thinking that is killing this country, but another example of how the experts were right again.

First, yes, there were mistakes, especially early on in dealing with the coronavirus. I don't know to what degree the advice in March against mask wearing was based on not understanding the virus or trying to preserve PPE availability for health care workers, but by April, that mistake was rectified. Trumpists, in particular, seized on the shifting opinion about masks as a way to discredit all scientific and medical advice. In fact, what it shows is how science moves with new facts, something the GOP and Trumpists have a demonstrated incapacity with.

I remember last spring, as cases waned, that Fauci and others were saying that we would see spikes in the fall. We did. They said the holidays would be terrible, they have been and continue to be. They are saying 500,000 deaths by the end of the winter. I wouldn't bet against it. 

New information prompts new conclusions. The new variants are concerning, but entirely predictable. Viruses lifespans are so short that mutations are much more likely. 

I'll admit: I'm worn out. I'm exhausted. Teaching sucks right now. My mind feels like cheese left out in the sun. This is all so brutally hard. I can understand why people want to throw caution to the wind and go back to normal. I think by June we will see more Americans die from Covid than died in the Civil War. Yet that 650,000+ number will be a tiny fraction of the population, compared to the Civil War. It will be devastating and also somewhat invisible to most of us. 

I desperately want to have a graduation in late May, for my son and all the other Seniors. But it will require discipline that I just don't think we are capable of right now.