Remember COVID? Also known as the novel coronavirus? COVID-19? SARS-COV-2?
Yes, it may seem like a vague apparition from the mists of time, a bygone phenomenon that floated off into the breeze. But guess what? This annoying little bug is very much still around. We here at Discourse Blog know this firsthand, because Caitlin, the person who would normally be writing today, has COVID. (Before you set off your HIPAA alerts, Caitlin told us we could tell you this.)
That’s right: Caitlin can’t blog today because she is holed up in her house feeling lousy and sick! And when you’re feeling lousy and sick, it’s hard to blog. So instead, we are using Caitlin’s lamentable condition as a reminder to you and yours: COVID is still a thing! You can still get it, even if you are a young and healthy person like Caitlin who loves camping and doesn’t eat meat and does all that good outdoorsy exercise stuff. You can get it, other people can get it, we can all get COVID, even though it is 2024 and we are kind of never supposed to mention COVID.
So rather than enjoying Caitlin’s latest masterpiece, we hope you will enjoy sending her nice wishes in the comments. Get better Caitlin! And thanks for this teachable moment. Remember everyone: COVID, definitely still real, and in existence, right now.
Appreciate this post so much but I do wish it also included a push for people to mask. Many people realize Covid is still a thing, but don’t take the most basic protective measures because once they got vaccinated they stopped caring about other people’s lives (we can’t even get medical staff to mask up in hospitals rn). I hope Caitlin recovers soon and isolates until testing negative for 48 hours. Everyone please mask up, avoid indoor crowds if you can, and stay safe out there 💓.
Please bounce back quickly, Caitlin. Good Irish name.
The world is in denial over this dangerous respiratory disease that crossed over from animals to humans. We're seeing solid evidence that people who get infected more than once can develop serious, incurable conditions later in life. I myself have stopped going to indoor concerts for life. I mask on all forms of transportation. I will only work remote jobs. And I probably go to four indoor events each year that I can't avoid. I am very privileged. My one and only infection was in November 2022 (caught at an indoor concert, where I was loosely masked). My partner got a second infection in May 2023. We have to keep this 'goals allowed' number low, because the higher the number, the greater the risk. And thanks to the immaturity of humans, this pandemic is still a pandemic. I used to think that the number of new cases would drop low enough to become endemic. But it hasn't. So it is quite possible that sometime in the 2030s we get a new pandemic while this one still simmers.
And we still have the worst years of GOP minority rule to look forward to.