A Year Later

Lately my Facebook Memories feed is full of all of the things that we did a year ago to "get us through a couple months of quarantine" –These things gave us hope that we could survive not only physically but mentally get us through a new temporary way of living.   And it worked– with the hopeful  idea in the backs of our heads that it was going to end soon.  Then spring turned to summer and when the sunny weather didn't 'magically' make it go away autumn arrived cases kept soaring, people kept dying reality set in and all of these fun distractions just devolved into daily reminders of how fucked up this whole thing actually is.   Stores being sold out of N95 masks turned into a new market of fun, designer pandemic masks.  This all was more of a reminder of how shitty people  truly are and how this was probably going to last a whole year.  Or longer.

 

I even jumped on the bandwagon and made some funny stickers.  My band made a social distance demo with a tongue-in-cheek title and album cover.  We were even worried the pandemic would be over before we could release it.   It came out in August. 

 It was just around a year ago I remember seeing the news stories of new Covid outbreaks in the Midwest and New England all traced back to Spring Breakers in Florida.   With every positive news story or low infection day, there was Trump telling a stadium full of unmasked people the virus wasn't real.   Eventually the howling at 8pm started to fade and the sun started to go down at 6pm.  No one sang opera from their balconies.  The Zoom parties with friends got less frequent.  Not only was Tiger King was a distant memory but Carole fuckin' Baskin was already voted off Dancing With The Stars.  We even stopped baking sourdough bread despite the stores finally restocking those coveted yeast packets. We just wanted it to end.  As I open the last Costco pack of my toilet paper stockpile I wonder if it will ever end.

Here we are a year later.  We survived the winter while going out to eat under a tarp in a freezing, semi-permanent outdoor restaurant seating structure.  The country is nearly ready to open the vaccine to all adults over the age of 18 but yet again thousands or horny dumb shit college students went back to Florida to breed a new strain of Covid-19 that they'll take home with them. To towns full of morons who refuse to get the vaccine.  So now I wonder, what kind of mutations is this virus going to morph into that will render the vaccines people are getting useless?  How much longer am I going to have to wear a fucking mask?

I think I probably said this a year ago, but this is how I think humanity dies. Not war, not an asteroid, not global warming...  just our own damn stupid selves being too bothered to stay home for a couple months and wear a mask.