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.

I heard about a Zoom call the other day that both surprised and amused me. But after thinking about it, I’m not sure I see the humor after all.

Someone I know was on conference call where one of the participants identified itself as the AI personal assistant of someone who had been invited to the meeting. Let’s call the AI Betty, even though that wasn’t the name. Betty said in the chat that she was attending in place of a human being, and would be taking notes.

Soon after, there were introductions. The moderator asked, aloud, whether Betty wanted to introduce herself. There was silence on the line.

“I think Betty is AI,” someone else said. Turns out, Zoom offers a virtual assistant free with a paid account.

I suppose I should be amazed at how AI can now attend meetings in someone’s place, and contribute, allowing the human to do other things. But I thought more about the cheekiness of the human who sent a virtual assistant instead. Is that really cool?

If I sent a virtual assistant to a meeting instead of me, I think my boss would be upset. And I wouldn’t want to go to a meeting or an interview, only to find that I came with my human presence but my counterparts were all machines. Makes you wonder whether the meeting was really necessary after all.

I’ve seen more than one prediction that says virtual assistants are going to be everywhere soon. Bill Gates say it’s within the next five years.

“They will utterly change how we live,” Gates told Fortune.

But I’m wondering if it will be a change for the good completely. Guess we’ll soon find out.

Most Connecticut natives are conflicted. We live in between two oversized brands, New York and Boston. We’re a small state, incredibly rich in some areas, especially in the 25% or so that could be considered a New York suburb. Yet Connecticut also holds some of the poorest cities in the country. And there’s a lot in between.

To be from Connecticut is to feel those contradictions.

From the outside, Connecticut is often seen as a “drive through” state on your way to New York or Boston or Cape Cod. Or, as this article says, a place of prep schools and Yale. We often define ourselves in terms of either Boston or New York. I know I do.

I was born and raised a commuter train ride away from Grand Central Station. I saw Long Island from my school bus window every clear day, and watched New York TV, listened to New York radio, read New York City newspapers. Yet my grandparents both lived outside Boston, so we were there many weekends and every holiday. My grandmother ordained me a Red Sox fan, which I remain. But I’m closer to New York in thoughts and feelings than I am to Boston, not just growing up but also having worked in Manhattan and living in the Hudson Valley and in Queens for a significant portion of my life. Two of my children are New York natives, as was another loved one.

Connecticut is where I went to school, played baseball, went to church, had my first relationships, where I first learned to ply my trade of journalism. It’s where my eyes opened to disparities, racial and economic, thanks to my parents’ social conscience.

I have lived all across the United States and haven’t lived in Connecticut since 1996, though I’ve lived in Connecticut and New York well more than half my life. My father left the state several years ago. I no longer get to Connecticut regularly. Yet Connecticut never leaves me. Two places stir my heart when I’m there. One is in the Hudson Valley, which looms large in my lie and where part of me will always be. And the other is Connecticut, which birthed me and made me who I am, better and worse.

What’s Connecticut’s brand? For me, home.

Jean Knight, who sang this Billboard No. 2 hit in 1971, died this week at 80. I recommend a listen to what makes this song so great: Jean Knight.

She lost out in Grammys that year to Aretha Franklin and Bill Withers, a heavenly trio if I ever heard one. Withers’ entry was “Ain’t No Sunshine.”