The Cough Drop Aisle is Decimated

I have a non-Covid cold

Hello, Subscribers,

So I’m sick with a cold. I’ve twice tested negative for Covid. My throat is so sore that it’s better not to speak (so you’ll get the generic robot voiceover if you want to listen to this instead). I have a slight fever. I’m coughing up gunk. I keep asking myself if this is an ordinary cold or a bad cold. But I think I’ve lost the ability to gauge the severity of a cold. I haven’t been sick with a cold (or flu) since sometime in November or December of 2019. Yes, it’s been approximately three years since I’ve been ill.

So, yeah, it feel weird to be sick. If I’d caught a cold last year, I would’ve been scared. If I’d caught a cold in 2020, I would’ve been terrified. But I’m not scared now. Well, maybe a little scared. I just want to feel better soon.

And it has me thinking about the End of the Pandemic (though Covid ain’t going nowhere). I think we can see now that our health leaders certainly made mistakes in policy and practice throughout the pandemic. I would argue those mistakes were mostly caused by being far too cautious rather than by some darker ambitions. Did our strigent lockdowns, masking, and vaccination requirements unfairly vilify some people? Yes. But did the requirements save lives? Yes.

All of the great thinkers have continually taught us the same basic lesson: Two things can be true at the same time. And that’s a lesson that all of us routinely ignore.

More than anything, it’s absolutely true that an entire generation of students, especially poor kids, have been irreparably harmed by the shutdowns. We’re going to be dealing with the pandemic’s negative educational effects for generations.

This pandemic has mangled the country.

More than anything, I think our collective reaction, across the political spectrum, to this pandemic proves that we’re gonna be really and truly fucked when a more deadly pathogen arrives. And it will. There’s eventually gonna be something that kills us at a 5 to 10% (or higher) rate. And we’ll collectively lose our minds.

Or maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Maybe my pessimism is a side effect of my first cold in three years.

This is what I know for sure: My brother-in-law told me the cough drop aisle in the supermarket is decimated. That means a whole bunch of people in my neighborhood have the same cold that I do.

I wonder how many of them are also experiencing a low-key existential crisis.