Boosted (Again)!

 

This is an old picture, one which I didn't originally ever expect to be using so often! But I guess I should be grateful for the opportunity to do so, since Covid-19 first darkened our world a little over three years ago.

Twenty-two million deaths later, last week the World Health Organization declared the end of the Covid-19 global health emergency. In the United States, where Dr. Anthony Fauci once warned of a seemingly worst-case scenario of one million American deaths (a number we have already surpassed), the national public health emergency will officially end this week.

The "emergency" may be over, but meanwhile at least those of us above a certain age have been warned to get yet another covid booster shot, which I faithfully did yesterday. That was my sixth such covid vaccination. My first was at the end of January 2021, when the vaccine was a new, much heralded miracle of science, which promised hope for a quick exit from the state of panic in which we had been living for the greater part of a year. My fifth covid shot was last September - seven and a half months ago, by which time it was widely expected that such boosters, instead of promising a quick exit from pandemic panic, might become an annual occurrence, more or less like flu shots. (In fact, like many others, I got both my fifth covid vaccination and my annual flu shot together.) That was September. Now it's May, and we seem to be moving toward an expectation of at least semi-annual covid boosters!

Like getting one's annual flu shot, getting a covid booster is easy, involving the most minimal inconvenience. Yet, as we know, not everyone has been vaccinated and even fewer have had all the recommended boosters. What is gratefully embraced by some as a genuine life-saver is dismissed by others as an inconvenience or an infringement on their liberty. That too is one more tragic consequence of the politicization of everything in our cultures-at-war, politically polarized society. As the British might say, "there is nothing to be done."

Except to get one's booster shot! For all our current craziness, it is still possible to act rationally and proactively at least on a personal level.