Isolation Report, Week #59

This week saw a few things to give us hope.

Firstly and most crucially, the man who murdered George Floyd was found guilty.  The news told us that it was the first time in all of Minnesota’s history that a white police officer was convicted of killing a black man, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it weren’t the first instance of that in our whole country ... or at least one of the first.^*  Coupled with a recent story of a black female officer who had been fired for stopping a white officer from killing a black suspect and finally won her lawsuit restoring her back pay and pension,^** could this indicate things are actually changing for the better?  It’s hard to say.  Certainly we can’t say things are all better now.  Certainly we have much farther to go.  But a journey of a thousand miles, as they say, starts with a single step.  Even if all we have for now is that step, surely that’s still a good sign ... right?

As far as the actual pandemic goes, the vaccines are here, and finally it’s getting easier to get them.  In our household, there’s one appointment made, and one actual initial dose received—just earlier today, in fact.  That’s progress toward an inevitable state of full vaccination for all the humans here in the house.  Still, I wonder ... even after we’re all vaccinated, will things then be back to “normal”?  Being vaccinated, they say, doesn’t preclude you from potentially infecting others, so you still need to wear the masks.  And the virus has several new mutations: will the vaccine protect against those?  Even if you believe so, will you have enough faith in that to put yourself in a crowded space full of potential disease vectors?  Because it’s not just COVID-19, you know ... more COVIDs will come, and completely other diseases ... swine flus, avian flus, ebolas, zikas.  Maybe it’ll just be safer to stay home.  We have Amazon, and food delivery, and a biweekly veggie box.  We have five or six streaming services and a lot of videogames.  We have a decent Internet connection and no office to go back to any time in the foreseeable future.  Maybe this is the new normal.

I hope not.  But, as my mom was fond of saying when I was a kid: wish in one hand, shit in the other—see which one gets full first.  So I’ll continue to hope, but I won’t hold my breath or anything.

__________

* An article from USA Today suggests it might be the sixth.  In our 250-year history.

** This actually happened last week, but this week’s events put me in mind of it.