Live With It
It’s the beginning of a New Year, the third year of the third decade of the twenty-first century of the Common Era. So first of all, Happy New Year. While 2022 seems as fraught with peril as 2021, there are also signs of hope. In 2021 we missed the opportunity to “stop” the Covid 19 pandemic. Now in 2022 we are learning how to live with it (at least, those of us who can survive it).
There’s the old comedy line: “We’ll, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news”. So here it is: the good news is the Omicron variant seems to be a less severe form of Covid, more akin to the flu in terms of symptoms. The bad news: it’s more contagious than the Delta Variant we were dealing with. If the “original” Covid was a three, Delta is a seven, and Omicron is a ten in terms of “infectivity”.
So more people will get sick, and because of that, more people will have severe cases. But since the Omicron isn’t as “bad” as the earlier versions, and there are now medications to combat Covid, and our physicians have learned how to treat it; hopefully deaths won’t increase. It’s just where we are.
The Jetsons
By the way, vaccination still helps. It reduces (but no longer virtually eliminates) the chance of getting Covid, but it absolutely, definitely, for sure, improves the “prognosis” if you get the disease. So a vaccinated person can still get the Omicron variant, but being vaccinated means they are less likely to end up in the hospital, or worse. The “facts” aren’t in about “natural immunity” folks, those unvaccinated who already had Covid. All we know, is they are getting getting infected with the Omicron variant too.
So who’d of “thunk” back on New Year’s Day 2020 as we entered the third decade of the 21st Century, we would now be fluent with words like “variant”, “infectivity”, “molecular PCR tests” and “antigen tests”. Not to mention our new expertise with paper, cloth, surgical, N-95 and KN-95 masks. Oh, and be “comfortable” with sticking a swab an inch or so up our noses and “swirling it” as our literal “ticket” to go out in public. That’s not what 2022 was supposed to be like – George Jetson never had to hold “his boy” Elroy down and stick a swab up his nose.
Terms Make the Argument
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to stop letting others define what certain terms mean. I already made a big deal about the term “pro-life” in my essay to end 2021. How did we let the terms of the abortion debate become “pro-life” and “pro-choice”. “Pro-life” has an obvious alternative, “pro-death”. And since no one in that debate is really “pro-death”, accepting the “pro-life” labeling is just stupid. Those who are for allowing abortions are put in the exact position that abortion opponents want them to be. Stop letting them define the terms.
Maintain White Advantage
Another term is “Critical Race Theory”. I watched Meet the Press last week, and the entire show was supposed to be about it. But instead, the discussion was about diversity training, acceptance of racial differences, and teaching truth in public school history classes. So let’s call that debate what it is: “Maintaining White Advantage”. Now that’s the debate we all should be happy to have.
But instead, it’s now labeled “Critical Race Theory”, using three words that all have bad connotations: critical like just before dead, race like racist, and theory like science (and we all know how popular science is right now). I was disappointed that instead of making the point that “Critical Race Theory” is a legal concept taught at the advanced graduate level, Chuck Todd and the NBC folks acceded to using it as the label for the entire diversity discussion. That might have been a convenient shorthand for them, but it casts the argument one direction before it even begins.
Whose Lives Matter
Sometimes groups shoot themselves in the foot with their own labeling. “Defund the Police” is a prime example of that. Up until that phrase, most police organizations would have agreed with “re-purposing” some of their tasks. Police, like schools, have been the catchalls for society’s problems. For example: police became mental health “specialists”, especially after President Reagan cut the funding for mental health in the 1980’s, closing the old asylums and putting a lot of the mentally ill on the streets. Guess who got to take care of them?
So if the argument had been about “repurposing” or “reimagining” all the public service issues involved in today’s policing, if would have found sympathetic ears. Instead, “defunding” becomes a vision of anarchy: no police, go get an AR-15 for protection, those “city-people” are coming to the suburbs to take “everything”.
On the other hand “Black Lives Matter” was right on point. When the obvious alternative was “All Lives Matter”, it brought the discussion exactly where it needed to be. If “All Lives Matter”, why are black people so disproportionately the victims of police violence? Why aren’t “Black Lives” valued as much as “All Lives”?
Redefining
And then there’s the “redefining” of terms. I spent a workout watching Fox News, to, as my mother would say, to see how the “other half” lives. To my surprise, there was a segment on the “Russia Investigation”, a term I hadn’t heard for a while. It turned out not to be the “Russia Investigation”, but the waning Durham investigation into the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the Trump campaign. It ain’t about “Russia”, it’s about finding scapegoats for investigating the Trump Campaign’s dealings with Russia.
So I do hereby resolve to select how I use my terms, and not allow the “frame of reference” to determine the outcome before the discussion even begins.
And on that, I hope that 2022 turns out to be a pleasant surprise. We’ve all had enough turmoil for one generation.
Happy New Year!!