“10 tips for co-existing with COVID ;” the opening line of the article reads: “Living with COVID can be easy if you take simple, regular precautions.”The CDC is still reporting an average of 4,000 deaths weekly.
The CDC estimates that 31 million working-age Americans have long COVID. A study, which I don’t understand fully, tells me that the coronavirus has a “wide tropism” and infects human cells via the ACE2 receptor. People with long COVID are likely to have “cognition problems, affective disorders, heart and pulmonary damage,” and that these symptoms “speak to each other.” A DutchIn the U.S., only if you pledge to die for capitalism, do you get a chance to live.
I look at my notes from January. Threaded through the words are red lines of anxiety about COVID, the continuing humiliation of having to reveal my medical facts to teenagers and depend on their generosity. In January of the new year, the CDC records a weekly average of 3,662 deaths. I wonder:One night I dream of a pandemic that only kills the rich and people with mismatched eyes.I lose a beloved person to the war in Ukraine. I stop comparing defense budgets to money allocated for health.
In June, I finally get COVID. As does my daughter. Not because I did not take care, but because others did not.