COVID Fatigue At the End of 2021

So here we all are as a planet, rushing out of 2021 headlong in 2022 with the slow realization that this latest COVID-19 variant called "Omicron" - why yes, it COULD be a Transformers villain - is rampaging across humanity as the most virulent and infectious variant yet.

And the collective response of at least the American population is "What the hell, now? On the holidays??? Let me at least fly home next to 180 maskless passengers on this plane so I can see my relatives before we all turn up positive for COVID."

Yup. That's where we're at.

It's been more than two years now - if you date the outbreak back to November 2019, at least back to March 2020 when even trump couldn't ignore it anymore - that the entire planet has been coping with this lethal virus and we honestly can't keep up with it, if we ever did.

The isolation / cabin fever of lockdowns early on - combined with the overwhelming over-reliance on social media (Hi, Twitter!) that numbed our common sense - generated what could be best described as "COVID Fatigue," this jaded ennui of losing a certain amount of empathy or concern for self-care and the care of others. 

As a set of vaccines showed up that could combat the spread of the pandemic, a lot of people took that to mean they could get the shots and become fully protected even though what the vaccines DID were to slow the transmissions and reduce the more lethal side-effects - like shredding your lungs and hearts - to prevent more death. It's still not really safe to go about unmasked even if you are vaxxed.

It did not help matters that a sizable chunk of our humanity is made up of contrarian nay-sayers, people like anti-vaccinators who think every scientific medical treatment is a lie or a scam - or in some cases, a Biblical prophecy to Mark us all for the Beast - and would prefer to treat themselves to "holistic" or wholly implausible "natural" cures that did more harm than good. The efforts by Fox Not-News and other Far Right outlets alongside a number of Republican governors like Florida's DeSantis fighting CDC guidelines and federal vaccination mandates - pushed by a Republican party leadership that wants the pandemic to continue under Biden's administration so they could blame HIM for the hundreds of thousands dead and dying - have only added to that contrarian reality where too many of our neighbors and family members are still unvaccinated and fully vulnerable to a lethal fast-spreading disease.

This latest flareup - the Omicron variant that's proven to transmit faster than previous COVID versions, and those were already quick - is just happening to occur during the part of the year in America that happens to involve our busiest family-oriented holidays: Thanksgiving through Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Saturnalia/ Kwanzaa/ New Years. Given how nearly everyone gave up those holidays for 2020 - as the vaccines had yet to clear safety protocols - it is looking like too much to ask for everyone to give those days up again for 2021.

So here we all go, driving off to visit with the folks or the kids/grandkids, traveling to exotic locales for the holidays and New Year's Eve, easily carrying viruses with us that won't show any symptoms until it's too late, and a lot of us refusing to mask up even as we mingle among the thousands of us who haven't gotten vaccinated to prevent further spread.

And count me among those people who selfishly went out in public just as the Omicron numbers are multiplying faster than they ever did with Delta.

My twin brother, like myself, attended University of Florida (Go Gators). Unlike myself, he could afford season tickets to home games, which qualified him to a good deal on bowl game tickets to Tampa's Gasparilla Bowl this year hosting UF playing against University of Central Florida (where his son, my nephew, attends right now). So there was a family reason - I received the invite, thank you Brother Phil - to pack into Raymond James stadium with 60,000 other sports fans of both schools Thursday night to see which in-state school program could beat the other's (DAMMIT GATORS YOU HAD ONE JOB! /cries).

I had gone to a comic con this past November, but it was to a small, city-level event with maybe a couple hundred people. It was also before the Omicron variant was out there and when the Delta variant seemed to have burned itself out. I still dreaded it, and took enough precautions to avoid physical contact and maintain social distancing, and I masked whenever I could.

I used to be a heavy movie goer, attending a new film release - or occasionally rehashing a film I liked - nearly every weekend right up until February 2020 - last movie I saw in the theaters was "Harley Quinn/Birds of Prey" how that's for a trivia answer - and one of the things I hoped to do after getting the vaccine shots was going back to the theaters. Except I haven't. Even as the blockbuster movies I want to see - Black Widow, Shang Chi, Eternals, Godzilla vs Kong, The Suicide Squad - on the big screen came and went, I could not work up the nerve to go to see a single one of them. The latest Spider-Man movie, MAYBE I might go see that while it's out now, but I still cannot bring myself to risk going to a crowded, cramped theater. 

The bowl game last night, I took the risk, and I am so regretting it. Last night was different. Multiplying-the-attendees-into-tens-of-thousands different. Granted, much of the game-watching is spent outdoors where the spread of COVID is less likely to happen, you're still in a situation where there's NO social distancing available and a high risk of being too close to an asymptomatic person long enough to get exposed. It was like being in twenty movie theaters at the same time, and I dreaded hearing anybody coughing to spike my paranoia any higher.

The good news, I've been vaccinated and boosted. I also took a mask with me and wore it as often as possible (only taking it off to eat a hot dog and drink bottled water).

Bad news is, I might have been the only one at that game who stayed masked for much of the night. Maybe one other guy was masked in our seating section, but nearly everyone else I walked past getting in and out of the stadium - other than vendors and staff (and NOT security!) - went without a mask. Even my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew only wore their masks heading into the game: Once it started and after it ended, they went unmasked.

Yes, I am that paranoid about mask-wearing anymore. Working in a public library will do that to you during a pandemic.

That's how bad it is right now with the Omicron variant bearing down on all of us. Too many of us uncaring, unworried with the responsibility of doing even the bare minimum of protecting ourselves and others against a virus because those minimums - wearing a mask over our faces - has become too much a burden.

We all need - myself included - to be more careful during this winter as COVID flares back up again. At least mandating wearing masks in public. Lockdowns would help but too many Red States will fight those again as economy-killing, and given the holidays situation we won't see any move on THAT until after January 2nd.

So here we are, waiting for COVID to get worse again.

Gods help us.

Stay healthy.