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Omicron Variant: Here We Go Again!
No one — I mean no one — is going to put me through the fear and misery of the last two years with COVID-19. Fortunately, I live in Florida, and we’ve watched Gov. DeSantis behave like a mature and wise adult regarding the virus. But once again, panic reigns as another variant shows up on the scene. And one state and most definitely the federal government can’t wait to pass more draconian measures supposedly to protect us.
When the announcement first came from South Africa about the new variant, called Omicron, the scientists emphasized that data was limited:
Health officials in South Africa said the reaction by other countries was premature, given how little was understood yet about the new strain. [Professor Salim Abdool] Karim noted that it was only detected thanks to South Africa’s excellent scientific surveillance of COVID-19 cases, which specifically hunts for new variants. Few other nations have such a robust genomic sequencing program to find the strains.
My husband and I must be the only two seniors who embrace sanity over panic. We live in a 55+ community, where many people have pre-existing conditions or simply don’t take care of themselves. To deal with their anxiety regarding the COVID-19, they feel they have to do something. They’ve decided to shop. When we went to do our weekly shopping, you would have thought that a five-force hurricane was offshore bearing down on us. Shelves were cleared of bottled water, milk, and toilet paper. I’m not sure why they’ve gotten toilet paper, but I guess for those of us who are spoiled Westerners, toilet paper is a necessity.
My parents’ generation has some badly needed perspective. My father commented recently, after I told him I was recovering from whooping cough*, that he and his generation went through every disease my generation was inoculated against: mumps, measles, chicken pox, and German measles. Oh, and they had to dodge polio, against which we were inoculated. And there were bad flu seasons.
The prophecies were true: a “whiskey apocalypse” threatens to ravage the lives of brown beverage producers and enthusiasts alike. Hootch experts explain that the public is downing bottles of premium whiskey faster than the barrel-aged libations can be produced.