I’ve often wondered why the Spanish Flu pandemic wasn’t better represented in the arts. I mean, there are almost no books or movies about it. It’s barely taught in school. For such a major event, it always seemed forgotten.
Now I know why. People today are SO anxious to jump the gun and declare this pandemic over before it is. No way are they going to want to watch a movie or read a book about it in the next twenty years. They just want it to be in the rear view mirror. We will probably see the roaring twenties all over again.
I hope the universal coronavirus vaccine that the military is working on eventually comes to fruition. That is a huge animal reservoir of Covid in deer (80% infected in some places); luckily they don’t seem to be affected by it. But that means 1) it can be spread to other wildlife that ARE more susceptible to it, like big cats and 2) the virus has lots of opportunity to mutate in the deer population and then come back to us as a very different variant.
I do hope for a quieter spring and summer, so long as the natural immunity the unvaccinated got from Omicron lasts. There are early reports to suggest that natural immunity after a mild Omicron case in the unvaccinated may not be that great, though. Hoping that when my planned trip to Hawaii in October comes that we will at least be in a lull.
