Nows and Forevers

This is the fourth Christmas with Covid-19 around, and far from it being in the past, the SARS-CoV-2 virus seems to be making a resurgence. A new variant is leading to a wave of cases this December, and making headlines.

What do I say to that? Covid never left.

The virus definitely has taken a back seat in the headlines. I have written about Covid for a long time — my first article about it was Jan. 23, 2020 — and it feels like all of 2020 and most of 2021, that’s all I wrote about. The first year of the pandemic remains one of the most consequential of my life, and one I’ll never forget. (I don’t think anyone who is old enough to remember it will ever forget.)

Yet even if Covid isn’t as deadly as it was, Covid is still deadly and it’s still contagious. It’s still a big health threat and it’s something to be taken seriously. I was able to delay my first case of Covid for more than three years, just enough time to have the latest vaccine AND a quick prescription of Paxlovid. I’m thankful for both, and thankful my Covid bout was on the mild side. But I’m not naive or careless enough to think that my less-dire experience is indicative of everyone’s experience.

It’s not. Axios said 67,200 people have died of Covid in 2023. Perhaps that’s less than the 246,200 in 2022 and the 463,300 in 2021. But it’s still way too many.

We’re not counting Covid cases as we once did, so we don’t know what’s happening. There is tracking via wastewater still. That shows, according to the CDC, that Covid is “very high” in 22 states. That’s “very high” in two states that border my own, although my own state of Pennsylvania is only “high.” (Only?) New York, my former state and where I’ll be part of this holiday season, is also “high.”

One school system near me has gone to virtual because of a high number of cases. A big hospital system here in Pennsylvania is requiring masks again. I know more than a handful of people who either have Covid or RSV right this moment.

I’m hoping my recent Covid case, added to the vaccine I got a week earlier unaware I would get the virus, will help protect me. So I haven’t begun wearing masks again. I wore a mask in public all the time from February 2020 to the winter of 2023.

But I may. It’s getting tough out there again.