With the Delta variant rising, many are putting their masks on again for indoor obligations such as grocery shopping or doctor appointments, and yet again shifted their socializing to the realm of the outdoors.
While for those of us who are vaccinated, contracting Delta would not prove life threatening, nonetheless it seems it’s common for vaccinated persons who have contracted Delta to have gotten pretty unpleasantly sick. And again, no one knows the long term ramifications.
Better to be cautious and careful. The pandemic is still raging.
What’s emerging is the difference between people who have gotten vaccinated and those who have not.
For those who have not gotten vaccinated, the transmissibility of Delta is quite high and dangerous.
As the pandemic drags on bringing this new variant, and as this pandemic continues to develop, with no absolutely conclusive positions to be had, new theories, questions and observations seem to mushroom, faster than the transmission of the new variants.
No one knows anything for sure. Even scientists and immunologists are somewhat stumped. So probably wisest course is to remain open but maintain the preventative guidelines.
Hmmm. How strange. I never heard of variants of polio or chicken pox. Were there any variants of the Spanish Flu? Maybe COVID is not a normal virus, I don’t know. But I do know that in March, 2020, anyone who dared suggest that it originated in a lab was deemed a primitive a conspiracy theorist, a racist. Now, there seems to have been enough data that suggests that this is a legitimate question.
The COVID virus and its proliferation is unparalleled. Perhaps it’s a new genre of a virus that has quickly developing variants or perhaps it was artificially tampered with and structured to mutate quickly. No one knows for sure. No one also knows how long the efficacy of the vaccines will last. Israel is already on to its third vaccine shot, a booster to sustain immunity.
In the arc of the COVID story, at its terrifying beginning there was so much unknown, so much unpredictable, so much skepticism and humility. We were at nature’s mercy. But then, at least for those of us blessed to live in the Western, COVID hit a plateau — at least in our experience and perception. The whole point of getting vaccinated was to get back to “normal.”
Slowly but surely life began to emerge anew. People began re-entering their offices. Movie theatres cautiously re-opened to small groups of viewers. Social Shabbat meals resumed indoors. And endless more examples.
Yet, now, are we thrown back to Square One? Google just announced that its target date for employees return to the office has been deferred yet again, due to the Delta variant.
Are lockdowns scientifically effective? Do masks work? Will taking these precautions control or mitigate COVID results, or delay a return to normal living? These are complex questions. This virus and its attendant mutations have highlighted just how vulnerable we are, how uncertain so much of our world is. It’s as if we are all living as one huge, universal petri dish.
Back in 1918 or 1920, there was no vaccine, so there was no relatively quick way of getting back to normal followed by a quick reversal. Rather, the second wave of Spanish Flu was virulent and more damaging than the first wave. Was that a mutation? Was it because of troops in WW I moving across Europe? Was it because there was no vaccine? One thing is clear about the Spanish Flu and our current COVID pandemic. They sow instability. With the rise of Delta, it’s clear that we are not bouncing back as quickly as we thought we would by the grace of a quick jab in the arm.
As we live through this extended pandemic with its many ramifications, we can feel in our bones how huge and rippling something this big can be. We can sense how sea changes, for good or ill, can take shape in unstable times. Fault lines are laid bare. Polities are polarized.
None of us knows whether Delta is the last mutation we shall need to deal with, whether COVID will fold soon enough and become a thing of the past, or whether there is more to come. None of us knows what the next few years will bring. But it seems that, at a minimum, it will take years to process COVID, to understand its full impact.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
