ThinkTech Commentary: Disappointment

Please consider this ThinkTech commentary.

A year ago, they told us we were coming out of covid, so it was time to plan a reopening. Vaccines or not, the reopening has been limited at best, and now the variants are spreading like wildfire, with more variants to come, as a consequence of more infections. Not only in the United States, but everywhere in the world. Just look at the numbers of those sick and dying .

What’s worse is that there are literally millions of Americans who have a deranged hesitancy about taking the vaccine. There’s no good reason for that, none, and no rational person can understand. But these anti vax people still refuse to be vaccinated. By not taking the vaccine, they put their lives and the lives of their family and friends in jeopardy. By not taking the vaccine they put their own community and country into another surge, another covid crisis. Just look at the numbers.

The correlation, the causation, is clear. People in states, usually red states, that don’t take the vaccine are dying and infecting others at an extraordinary rate. The hospitals are filling up, people are sick and dying still not believing there is a covid virus and not willing to save themselves. This phenomenon, this irrationality, is actually hard to believe. When will they ever learn? Perhaps at the moment when they are dying. It’s absurd. Out of Kafka.

As for the rest of us, we are living in a state of amazement, and increasingly a state of disappointment. We had hoped to get back to a semblance of normalcy, to go back to restaurants, shops, entertainment, work, career, school, travel and long delayed tourism, for ourselves and our families. But in a world where this crisis is coming back with such a vengeance, that’s not so easy, and in fact optimism is increasingly dangerous.

Where we stayed indoors so much over the past 18 months, now we have to continue to stay indoors again, perhaps even longer. Where we could see a light at the end of the tunnel, now the tunnel Is longer and darker and we can’t see, or trust, that light any more. We begin to imagine a long term struggle and decline, a seventh circle of community loss and personal pain.

When will this be over? We really don’t know. So we lose confidence in our government, our leaders, our health care system, our neighbors and friends and the country in general. A loss of confidence by millions of people has a way of undermining our daily lives individually and collectively, and perpetuating the crisis and economic downturn that we suffered last year.

Now, instead, we have to look forward to more of that downturn, and very likely an emerging inflation at the same time. The country, and the economy, is grossly out of sorts and likely to get worse. No one knows where this goes, and festers, when you have millions of people all being disappointed at the same time. Depression? Anger? Further fragmentation and divisiveness and all the unpleasantness that must surely follow.

Disappointment is disappointing enough on an individual level, but national or global disappointment is far worse and has unpredictable consequences. Clearly we are at a national if not an International tipping point.

The bottom line is that it’s time to think of others, to think of community, of humanity, and the future. It’s time to think clearly, recognize fact from fiction, distinguish truth from disinformation, disregard those who would lie to us, and think about helping people again. It’s time to take the vaccine.

The consequences of not doing so are likely to be dire, and tragic for us and for everyone on the planet.

Thank you for listening to this ThinkTech commentary.

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