Yes, We All Have Pandemic Blues. Now SUCK IT UP!

 We are starting the second year of the pandemic.  In my case it is the second year of quarantine. And I'm tired of it all. Tired of the masks. Tired of the chapped face and chapped hands. Tired of preparing to die every time I go to the grocery store. Tired of endless Zoom meetings.  Tired of Norah O'Donnell sounding panicked every night at the start of the evening news.

Yes, I'm tired of it all. I was hopeful with the arrival of the vaccines but now in addition to the boogeyman of COVID-19 we have the boogeymen of the 3 variants which could kill us.  We have hot spots in the upper Midwestern states.  We have vaccine hesitancy.  We have vaccine refusal.  I still can't go to church the way I used to or sing in the choir.  Dr. Fauci is telling us that he doesn't think indoor dining is a good idea and the pundits are telling him to shove it. 

 Every time I think things are going to get better, something else happens to make the world a little bit worse. 

"Why," we shake our fists and rage at the heavens. "Why is this happening to us?"

I'll tell you why. 

Because we are learning as we go through this.  Every day we learn more about what we don't know.  We learn more and we realize we know less. This is what is called "Cutting Edge Science" meaning we don't get it right 100 percent of the time.

 Our enemy was unknown to us just 18 months ago.  It morphs, it camouflages, pretends to be something else.  And Cutting Edge Science is messy.  Yes, there are contradictions. Cutting Edge Science studies,  learns and then shares what has been learned. What we thought we knew in January turns out not to be true in March.  For example, how many of us are still disinfecting our Cheetos bags with Lysol the way we were in 2020? 

Here's the harsh reality: some things are better and some things are not.  We can see certain people at certain times and in certain circumstances but we still have to be careful around people outside our pod.

"Have you been vaccinated?" has replaced "So, what do you do for a living?" in casual conversation at 6 feet apart.  This makes dating difficult, I realize. However it is an efficient winnowing tool for deciding whether to set up a coffee date.

Some things are unchanged.  For example, awards shows are still as boring as ever. 

So what are we to do here?  We all know.  Scarily, it comes down to continuing to do what we are bitching about. 

1.  Wear a mask when out in public.

2.  Wash your hands when you come back home and before you eat. 

3. Tell the people in your pod you love them. 

And, 

4. Keep the faith.  

Don't blow it in the ninth inning.