The Things We Lost

 

Despite having followed all the CDC guidelines, and hardly ever interacting with any other human beings, I had the distinct experience of the Virus.  I  lost f March. April was a time of recovery so slow I wasn't completely convinced that it was recovery.  May was the first month when I began to feel happy that I had survived instead of wondering whether it would have been more pleasant to have died.  And even now, five months later, I am just recovering something like my pre-plague stamina,  I am still suffering from a pretty serious bout of Deep Vein Thrombosis, a condition I had avoided for nearly two years, and which I now wonder will be my new normal.

I know therefore from personal experience that the virus is not a hoax.

But.   I am writing this essay outside of a coffee shop that I once would visit nearly every morning,.  Now it is still closed for inside seating.  At the beginning of the plague year, I continued to come every morning because i wanted to support the business.  It's owned by a young  family with two children, and the place has what I suppose most succcincttly can  be called a good vibe.  The owners don'tt know when that will change.  They can't find staff for more service.  

The coffee shop is at least still open.  Many shops in my little are gone.  No more bagels with the picnic tables by the round-about with the view of the port and the mountains.  The bagel shop was one of the first to go.

I am not a bit follower of conspiracy theories, and yet . . . . It was Barach Obama's buddy Rahm Emanuel who said that no good crisis should be wasted.  And there were calls from such folk as Klaus Schwab who hoped the pandemic might be an opportunity for a reset. And it is yet to be seen whether the United States and other governments who have offered to be the 'saviors' during the crisis will be able to pay for their help.   Another round of 'free money' is going out to families with children.  I can't help but wonder what country those children will live in as adults.

Now, full disclosure of my latest status a a pariah:  I have not been vaccinated.  I don't know whether having had the virus has given me as much immunity as would result from the jab.  And I can't find any consistent data for the likely effect of the vaccine on my DVT.  I feel that there was so much disinformation from 'experts' during the early days of the plague year that I no longer am willing to believe anything they say.  

The virus probably cost Trump the election.  People made fun of him for saying things that he admitted were just guesses, or something he had heard.  It certainly didn't seem to me that such statements were very good actions for a head of state.  But the same people who made fun of Trump clung to the statements of the 'experts' who were also just guessing, but without the honesty to say so.  

I have often, during the plague year, thought of the Bastille song, The Things We Lost in the Fire.  I have no idea what the results would have been if the  'officials' had told people not to panic, bu to go on as much as possible with business as usual.  But somehow I doubt that the results would have been worse than they are now.  I suspect the economy will recover sooner than will trust in experts.