One More Time
--
Trying to stay Covid free
I got my second Covid booster yesterday. I spent today in bed. It would be nice if the vaccine didn’t hit me so hard, but oh, well.
It’s better than the alternative.
So far, to my knowledge, I haven’t been exposed to the Covid virus. I’ve been careful. I’ve been lucky. My husband’s health puts him in a high risk category. We are both over sixty-five.
It is probably a matter of time until one of us gets it. I am counting on vaccines to minimize the intensity of the disease. I am hoping that the medical treatments available when we do get exposed protect us from long Covid and other serious effects. In an uncertain world, I don’t know what more to do.
I’ve a bag of uncertainties these days. So many things appear to be on the brink of collapse: the environment, energy, the economy, governments, health care. So many of the big things we like to take for granted. In truth, it’s hard not to assume things will proceed as they always have. It’s the way we are wired.
Mother Nature engineered us to be greedy. It’s a useful survival strategy. Unfortunately, these days, what that boils down to is that those who are most successful at being greedy are consolidating more resources than they will ever need at the expense of everyone else.
Once upon a time, I’ll pretend that we had a moral code that tempered the behavior of the worst offenders. Perhaps, at least, it encouraged some to control their worst instincts. These days, I feel as if the world is in an end-of-times free-for-all. There isn’t enough altruism to offset the greed.
I’d like to think there is still a sliver of a chance that we can fix our world. I think individuals, based on their own actions could get us half way there. Are there enough folks willing to do that? Maybe. Probably.
But even if seventy-five per cent of the population is willing (and able) to make the hard choices. That’s not enough to offset the twenty-five percent that aren’t.
For that, we need leadership.
We have uncontrollable gun violence in this country because our leaders are more interested in staying in power than doing what the majority of the American people want.
Our healthcare and education systems are inadequate because they are being run as for-profit business rather than basic services.
The world is drowning in plastic and other waste because we don’t value natural resources as much as we should.
We use fossil fuels at increasing costs to our health and environment because there isn’t enough leadership to put other systems in place.
The list goes on.
One way or another, our planet will reset and fix itself. It can do that at the expense of the human race or not. I doubt that our planet is as invested in us as we are.
