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IT'S A WHOLE NEW
WORLD OUT THERE
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Our five-year old granddaughter graduated from Pre-K a couple
of weeks ago. There was an adorable ceremony, where she and her 10 little
classmates sang songs and then threw their graduation caps into the air.
Nine of the 11 graduates came down with COVID the next day.
Welcome to kindergarten, kids.
Being delinquent grandparents, my wife and I were out of town and
fortunately missed the ceremony. We watched it on video, safe from the
disease-ridden little singers spewing their viral load onto the adoring but
unsuspecting crowd.
COVID is ubiquitous these days. Everyone is getting it. It's gotten
to the point where a doctor announced that if you haven't had it yet,
"it probably means you don't have any friends."
That's a little rude. It could also mean you have an impeccable
immune system, like my wife and I. We haven't contracted COVID yet, and
don't plan to. Someone has to hold out against the surge, and it might
as well be us.
So much has changed since the beginning of this pandemic. In 2020, I
didn't know anyone who had COVID. When I heard of a distant acquaintance who
got sick, it was like the scarlet letter. Whispers, concerns, and hope
they'd be okay. We were all so careful, and so scared.
Then the vaccines miraculously came along, and a sense of
invincibility. Masks flew off and life returned to something close to
normal. COVID had been defeated, at least for the vaccinated.
COVID didn't get the memo. While it's estimated that vaccinations
saved approximately 1.9 million American lives by at least lessening the
severity of the illness, it clearly didn't prevent contracting the new
variants that came along.
We got what we wished for, though, at least for now. In the
early days, all we asked for was a drug or a vaccine that would prevent us
from dying. We could live with the illness, as long as we weren't at risk
from croaking.
And here we are. I understand people are still dying from COVID, but
it is more equivalent to that of the flu, and few of us worry about dying
from the flu. When someone you know gets COVID these days, and we all know
many, many people who have got it, the concern is minimal.
It's now more of a nuisance and an inconvenience, along with the
fever and headaches and congestion. Some people are miserable for
days, some have minor symptoms. There's no rhyme or reason.
Our little 5 year old granddaughter came home and gave it to her 3
year old sister, and then her father got sick. But her mother never got it.
Our other son-in-law got it, but our daughter and her kids did not. Our
daughter-in-law got it bad, but our son kept testing negative. Makes no
sense.
The CDC says 60% of Americans have now had COVID, and other
influential models say it might be as high as 80%. I'm beginning to feel a
little lonely.
Then again, maybe I had it and was asymptomatic. About 1 in 20
asymptomatic patients going in for unrelated procedures at UCSF are testing
positive for COVID, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. I'm no math whiz,
but the article goes on to say that means if you're in a group of 50,
there's a 95% chance one person will be positive.
That's sobering. Go to the grocery store, and you're going to pass by
50 people. Go anywhere, and you're likely to have a chance of being
infected. That's the new world we live in.
What does all this mean? Well, most importantly, it means The Hoppe
Scale is kaput. For those new to this column, The Hoppe Scale is the
internationally (I have a friend in Canada) recognized instrument that
measures from 1.0 to 5.0 the level of anxiety a person has of contracting
COVID. In the early days of the pandemic, it saved countless lives by giving
people the knowledge to avoid the careless ones.
Now it's useless, for a very simple reason---we're all going to get
COVID, sooner or later. It's here to stay, and we can only hope the variants
get weaker and weaker, as they tend to do. We need to go on with our lives,
and hope we don't get sick at the wrong time. Or have mild or no symptoms.
In other words, when our 3 year old granddaughter graduates from
Pre-K next year, we're going to be there. The hell with the risk. I just
hope they don't sing.
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