So far this year isn’t any different than last year. It’s rainy, muggy, warm, more Easter than New Years. There is a stream running through the low part of our backyard. A shallow valley that runs parallel to our house. The stream empties into a lagoon that’s forming and filling in our neighbors yard, which has the unfortunate reality of being the lowest spot on the block. You could almost canoe across his backyard.
Grey clouds hung low and dismal, rain varied from an awful, soaking downpour to an irritating, pissy little drizzle. It never stopped, and I was becoming increasingly certain it would never stop, the rain was here to stay. I couldn’t help but think of Genesis, “and God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth.” He told Noah to build an ark.
During all this I haven’t seen one headline warning about the effects of climate change. It’s been brushed aside, or maybe washed away, under the pressure of the risk of inflation, the price of gasoline, the potential promise of the extravagance of holiday spending. A constant stream or stories about the best way to re-gift or return unwanted presents.
I parked out in the distant emptiness, tucked my glasses into my jacket pocket to keep them as spotless as possible, and slogged my way to the entrance. An electric door opened with an anguished, hollow sigh, and the I walked across the soggy, stained, dark blue mat, the dark blue turned almost black down the center where people walked. Water bubbled up, with an audible slopping sound, around my feet with each step.
In the end I went to two different stores. Besides the employees and me hardly anybody was wearing a face mask at either. I live, and shop, in Ohio, where we just set record for coronavirus hospitalizations on consecutive days. Lines were formed to checkout, like a caterpillar, thick clots of people, squeezing together, inching forward almost as a single entity. Safety in numbers? I have some doubts.
Science isn’t perfect, scientists are human, racked with the frailties of our species, but we have reached the nexus. An ancient illness (perhaps 10,000 years old) common to bats and birds has mutated into a virus that could infect humans, and we’ve perfected the method of its dispersal, and we were warned it might happen. Our institutions performed superbly, mitigation strategies were implemented, vaccines developed, and society listened, sort of, briefly. Now, we have coronavirus fatigue. It’s almost amazing the things we haven’t learned.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
