Gratitude and frustration -- lots of frustration -- in the time of COVID
When the Thurston County Public Health and Social Services COVID-19 testing site at the fairgrounds opened, so many cars lined up they filled the parking lot and blocked Carpenter Road in both directions.
There was — and still is — pent up demand for COVID testing.
Our first reaction is gratitude for the dedication of health workers and volunteers who continue to brave rain, exhaustion and cranky people at the fairgrounds, and at mobile walk-up sites around the county.
Our second reaction is intense frustration that, as we enter year three of this (insert expletive here) pandemic, our country still hasn’t gotten testing right. Now the Biden administration is requiring insurance companies to pay for eight tests per person per month — but of course that only makes sense if that many tests are actually both available and accurate. By the time we get them, the omicron wave may be receding, and the tests will have a long life in the back of our medicine cabinets. But that depends on how many other variants this virus has up its sleeve.
Another frustration is the uncertainty caused by confusing, hard-to-follow advice. How many days should people quarantine if they are sick or have been exposed? Pick a number. What kind of masks should we wear? The kind most of us don’t have.
Uncertainty is a force multiplier for all our frustration, our weariness, and our fears — fear of getting sick, fear of infecting others, fear of school closures, and fear for all the people on the front lines: the people who work in hospitals, our grocery checkers, restaurant workers and retail salespeople. There is also fear for the future of our businesses and our economy, and fear about the way the pandemic is deepening the polarization of our politics.
And just as we’re wallowing in all that, we read this dreadful quote in the New York Times: “It’s hard to process what’s actually happening right now, which is, most people are going to get COVID,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said. We only hope she’s wrong. Other scientists predict only half of us, or maybe a third, will getting omicron. That’s better, but still awful.
If there were a pile of sand handy, we’d be tempted to stick our heads in it.
Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci isn’t much cheerier: “This is an extraordinary virus, the likes of which we have not seen even close to in well over 100 years. It is a very wily virus,” one that has “fooled everybody all the time, from the time it first came in, to Delta, to now Omicron,” he said.
“We’re doing the best we possibly can,” he added.
But not everyone is doing the best they can. If all eligible Americans were vaccinated and boosted, we’d be having a different conversation. Our hospitals would not be overwhelmed. Fewer people would be dying. We would not be stuck in COVID groundhog day.
But here we are, and here we will be, at least until the omicron wave crests and subsides.
Back when this unfolding tragedy was new, people in big cities came out on their balconies or porches and banged pots and pans to thank health care providers every evening. Now we just want to come out on our porches and scream.
There are lessons we should have learned by now. Appreciation for health care providers is one of them. Respect for rigorous science, well-funded public health and fact-checked news are others.
One more essential lesson we’ve learned is that it’s good for our mental health to just vent once in a while. So if you hear people screaming on their porches in the evening, don’t be alarmed. They’re just trying to preserve their sanity.