Year Three: Covid Is Not Over
Updating the rant.
Content/trigger warning: discussions of self-harm, disordered eating, suicide.
Scott Pelley: Mr. President, the first Detroit Auto Show in three years…is the pandemic over?
Joe Biden: The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID, we’re still doing a lot of work on it, but uhh the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one is wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape…and so I think it’s changing and I think this is a perfect example of it.
Oof, well, where to start with unpacking this one? First of all, hi everyone, long time no type. Second, this is going to be a run-on train of thought attempt at writing like you wouldn’t believe, so get ready for this acapella piece of writing eh? Third, I hope you all have been navigating the quagmire of our impending doom with the same vigor (and anxiety that I have). Since pontificating on Jordan Peele’s Nope, the world has plunged further into chaos. This is truly the roaring (20)20s because everyone able-bodied and wealthy is partying to excess while climate change and economic instability are in the rearview mirror. Alas, the world is always being upended in some form or fashion, but whether many of you have been in the direct path of recent events is escalating with unerring frequency and for that I am sorry.
Once upon a time, many of us were able to enjoy a world with breathable air and safe drinking water, but history will always show you otherwise because there’s always been a segment of society (usually Black and/or Native or poor) that’s never had any of the luxuries that we so take for granted based on our zip code. E. Coli, lead, and a plethora of other toxics have been the breaking news lately but if you know your environmental history many places in the United States have never had potable or safe drinking water, always battled runoff contaminants or dilapidated infrastructure has been the reality for many places for decades. Just know, the crises that reach a boiling point with news coverage have been simmering or had a burnt hole through the bottom of the pot for a long long time before the news vans pull up (and eventually leave to chase the next big story). Mississippi, Baltimore, and that housing project in New York are still going through it even though all the mics and lights pivoted across the world to 24/7 Queen coverage.
Speaking of a gaudy and cognitive dissonant mess, yikes to all of the people that would rather soften a colonizer’s legacy just to maintain decorum while the country writ large is about to experience its worst economic downturn in years coupled with an overinflated failing power grid that will leave many residents freezing and huddled for warmth like the character’s from any number of British novels about ‘antiquated’ poverty. Finger wagging and hem-hawing was easier to muster against people trying to provide some truth-telling in this dire hour than actually engaging with the immorality that is white supremacy that has harmed the entire world. I was not surprised whatsoever that many Black people — especially women — found themselves attacked and doxxed for truth-telling (and adding history lessons when they didn’t have to) about a monarchial dynasty that has looted resources, priceless artifacts, and actual lives via wars and holocausts. The only silver lining was that the cross-sections of the global colonized diasporas of the Internet were brought together for a while, in shared trauma let’s be honest, to exorcise some grief and give each other digital hugs in their times of celebration and sorrow.
Let’s see…mass shootings are still going on (no Buffalo and Uvalde I haven’t forgotten any of the horror you’re still going through), police are still assaulting and killing folks (a quick shout-out to Breonna Taylor’s family who may actually see some justice with her case), monkeypox and polio should still be receiving the red alert (even though you have to hunt for good consistent journalism about it), and the pandemic is still going on (regardless of the off-script comments Biden made during that 60 minutes interview). Speaking of, let’s circle back to that, shall we? Where to begin? Let’s state some facts. Biden, his wife, the vice-president, and multiple members of his administration have been infected by COVID very recently and some of them multiple times which is not good because getting COVID-19 even once places the body at risk for any number of potentially devastating health outcomes. We know now and actually had some scientific speculating and writing in the beginning, that this virus is like a ticking time-bomb inside of the body regardless of sickness or severity that you may present with upon infection. The immune system's T-cells take a massive hit with every single infection and open the body up to innumerable pathogens. Thus, many persons who have been infected with any of the COVID variants may not have appeared to have directly died as a result of the virus but have been subject to any number of its fatal after effects, i.e., strokes, blood clots, heart failure, etc.
Thousands of people are still dying from COVID in hospitals, nursing homes, or in their own homes even though the majority of cameras have pivoted away or been prevented from documenting the state of the ongoing pandemic. Millions have died and been undercounted, and millions more now have long-COVID. Oh yeah, did you see or hear about the #millionsmissing protest that took place in front of the white house on Monday? A coalition of various persons who have long COVID, disability rights activists, persons who have myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) due to COVID, and many more marched, picketed, and staged a lie-in on the sidewalks. Meanwhile, capitalism is still chugging along, business as usual. Did it ever really stop? That brief moment of time when the world slowed its pace was beautiful to witness. The earth was actually recovering and nature was trying to course correct, but alas ‘twas not to be. You’d think that would have been an ah-ha moment that maybe we should rethink this whole industrialized world thing but there was money to be made and people and things to exploit. The Detroit Auto show and other (super-spreader) events like it are just exorbitant eyesores, in my opinion, before the end. Extracting resources for all of these ‘green’ and eco-friendly vehicles is going to cost immeasurable incalculable amounts of damage in mining, drilling, and so on to the earth and if you hadn’t heard about it the seafloor. It truly feels like billionaires have think tanks just for how many ways they can creatively doom the planet.
Biden mentioned that we still have a problem with COVID…uh heck yeah and no unlike he eyebrow-raisingly said it’s (NOT) being worked on. There is no COVID funding, the clock expired, but you can turn the hourglass over if you truly wanted to (president, congress, senate). Billions of dollars have been allocated for a plethora of things, especially war and the police, but not the spiraling public health or economic crises that are proliferating at a breakneck clip. The free masks, free vaccines/boosters, and at-home tests expired and there has been no announcement about allocating funds towards it or any sort of plan beyond ‘you do you’ stratagems that are leaving everyone vulnerable and at risk for COVID, monkeypox, polio, and whatever’s next on the endemic pandemic roulette wheel. If we noticed no one is wearing masks?! You or anyone else hardly wear them because you, big business, anti-vaxxers, meek public health officials, and the CDC (I’ll roast them in a minute) pressured everyone to get back to work and get back to normal. *Keep up the strikes y’all!* In the death march towards ‘normalcy,’ far too many kowtowed to the dictates of bad policy, inaccurate/no data, and their own privileged positions to fret about something as simple as a piece of fabric that weighs less than an ounce that protects yourself and the vulnerable from (re)infection. We’re all in this together refrains have long ended so it's all at the individual level now to bob, weave, and duck COVID and whatever comes next because the CDC washed their hands of this long ago, pulled down the shade, and turned the music up.
Think back, I know it’s been three trying and long years, but did we ever have a steady captain of the ship navigating this turbulent sea of toxicity? Inconsistent messaging, wishy-washy press conferences, big businesses yanking the wheel back and forth telling the CDC and the federal government what to do has left us crashed upon the rocks, marooned, while the elites and the feds grabbed the lifeboats and sailed away. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape…what? What? WHAT?!? With what resource, what refuge, what money, with what mental health help? Millions of people have died. Thousands if not millions of children lost parents or multi-generational family members. Parents have had to watch their children slowly or quickly die horrible deaths. Millions more are being disabled with long-COVID even as I type this. Pretty good shape?!! Where!?! I know he’s talking about rich folks because…whew, what an inane cruel dismissive thing to say. Was it any wonder that the regular layperson’s situation improved a smidge with a little financial assistance from the federal government? Income inequality and poverty were actually starting to budge, who’d a thunk? And so you think IT (the national and global pandemic) is changing and THIS (garish auto show) is a perfect example of it. You know what, yes I will agree, you’re absolutely right president Biden, you have a point. THIS is an example of all of it. Everything that has gone cataclysmically wrong up to this point was encapsulated in the slow plush carpeted walk past vehicles that many will never be able to own or drive in their lifetimes, with an interviewer that phrased a question that was a moment to clarify and legitimize reality, whom thereafter didn’t stop you anywhere in those 23 seconds or after to push back on anything that you just said — in an interview that will be immortalized for all time.
Listen, while writing all of this, y’all…I’ll be honest with you I’ve been quietly yelling in my room or taking a break and pacing because the end feels nigh. I’ve shared sometimes that gardening has really gotten me through it these past couple of years because being online is a lot, being an empathetic reader is mentally exhausting, crowds give me anxiety out of this world, too many social interactions if I have them leave me drained days afterward, I avoid unmasked folks like the plague (ironic), stay masked everywhere no exceptions, and generally just enjoy my peace and quiet. Horror media is my respite because in that space we all know who the monster is, where the danger is lurking, and if we’ll survive or not. The formula seems simple but there’s an infinite number of possibilities about how all the puzzle pieces are going to interlock. The inescapable feeling of dread I’ve been navigating has been assuaged by an old favorite of mine…video games. That’s right! You didn’t think this entire screed was just about the abominable state of just our world did you? Well, guess what, the plastic things with all the buttons, game discs, and wild shapes that you stick them into with cords attached to the TVs have been making excellent predictions of this precise moment we’re in.
I had an idea about this topic → Prescient Landscapes in Gaming: From Spaces Above to Fathoms Below, for a while now and it's just been sitting gathering dust in my notes so…
I couldn’t concoct a fancy alliterative prolix form of periphrasis to satisfy this pleonasm so…
Bioshock (2007–2013) is a capitalist doomed hierarchal society narrative that takes place under the sea and later in the clouds. We Happy Few (2018) takes place in England, but with its citizens that eat metaphorical rose-colored glasses that keeps them from remembering national atrocities, the allegory of painting over bad vibes and horrible crimes could be applicable anywhere. Soma (2015), sees the world above blighted by an asteroid, with the sole remaining humans and their robotic consciousnesses left alive under the sea. Stray (2022) which I think may have taken some inspiration from Soma is the most recent addition to my doom and gloom list, which perhaps had the best marketing pre-release ever because everyone was led to believe this was just a cute orange kitty cat walking simulator navigating the streets and tunnels of an abandoned city story, but the narrative takes a drastic turn later about why the streets are so desolate and why the robot servants (and a bacteria) are the only ones left. Divergent visions of the future have become so ubiquitous within pop culture that we rarely blink when they appear because horror and science fiction have primed us for the possibility of anything and everything calamitous. The underpinnings of these games with their capitalistic metaphors, admonishments regarding war, shouts to protect the environment, the dangers of racism, fascism, and xenophobia are all baked into the genre. We don’t have to imagine eldritch horrors because we’re looking at and wading through its writhing mass right now. No spoilers for any of the games listed above but they all have devastating (or happy?) endings that will keep you awake for days or they’ll make you feel comforted that the creators tapped into that good old existential fear stuff that grips us that we graduate out of as children into adults.
That brief detour into video games and horror is an example of something that I do as a respite to keep from pulling my hair out or sinking further into the morass of this moment besides doing something self-harmingly permanent and yeah I’m not there yet and pray I never get there, but I also know I’m not treating myself well with erratic sleep or skipped meals, and yet I’m not treating myself with grace either because how can you be cognizant of the world as it is right now and not have some mental or physical manifestations of depression or grief? So in short, the past few years have not been normal. COVID is not over. Climate change is going to throw unforeseen devastation at us, and the unfathomable worst is yet to come. As I’ve toiled away in the soil with the humming of bees around me, fluttering of butterflies and hummingbirds, and the opening of new blooms I’ve made peace with whatever legacy I leave behind but while I’m here I’m going to try and be the best human I can for the planet we have left. This piece was more for me than anything because writing is my outlet and a chance to unload the knapsack a bit. So yeah, eke out some moments of joy if or when you can. Eat that cake, watch that movie, play that video game, check in on your friends and family, and rant a little (or a lot) your body will thank you.
All the horror content in October (my birth month) will sustain me.
Too much diatribe, it’s time for a nap. zzzzzz.
COVID writing timeline:
Recommended reading:
