Day 18: Another Pandemic Winter

I’m supposed to sit shiva tonight via Zoom.

This past year, I have sat too many shivas and attended too many funerals on Zoom. Though the pandemic caused some of these deaths and not others, it definitely prevents us from gathering in-person to support one another through mourning. And that bites. 

Jesse was supposed to take a much needed trip with friends this weekend, but a Covid exposure suddenly ruined his plans. 

Today also marks the day our children become fully vaccinated. I feel grateful as this strongly decreases their likelihood of getting terribly sick if exposed and hopefully means fewer logistical pitfalls for us in terms of missing school and work due to exposure. 

But even on this personal positive note, I can’t help thinking about the end of the Coronavirus pandemic. As we surpass 800,000 Coronavirus deaths in the US and near 5.5 million in the world, I’m past hoping this pandemic will ever end. 

Maybe the past 22 months have jaded me, but with the virus continuing to mutate (Alpha, Delta, Omicron), and the obscenely disparate access to vaccines around the world, (I have had three shots, three more than half a billion people in India or 98% of the populations of Madagascar, Niger, Tanzania, South Sudan, Yemen and Chad), imagining an end to the pandemic becomes difficult.   

Will it continue mutating and come back to us repeatedly? Will we need continued booster shots every 6 months to a year like the flu? Will we continue indefinitely in masks with suggested (but in my experience not very well observed) social distancing indoors?

While hope of ending the COVID pandemic may have existed some months ago — when the pandemic began or with the introduction of the vaccine — no hope exists now, due to political problems, collective-action problems, leadership problems, and the capitalist and racist world we inhabit. 

Welcome to your new lives. 

We may all learn to accept the risks of in-person school and birthday parties. We may even stop observing such strict rules about testing, tracing (Ha! This sounds laughable already!), quarantining and isolating. We may mentally prepare ourselves for missing trips and social time with friends due to Covid concerns. 

How many plans have we already canceled in the past 22 months? How many more did we avoid making? 

One day, we may even get more comfortable sitting shiva via Zoom. 

But the loss of attending shivas and funerals in-person remains incalculable. 

Evolution wired humans as fundamentally social beings who seek connection and reciprocity at the deepest levels. And all the activities I mentioned here are social ones. 

So, the losses injure us over and over, grief for the time before remains strong, and the situation requires unending resilience.

I feel another pandemic wall (or end of resilience) may be upon us — or at least another pandemic winter. 

But then again, maybe they will all be pandemic winters — and climate change summers — from here on out.