Confusion Reigns as More and More Become Sick
By Josh Resnek
The United States is reporting more than 800,000 new cases a day of COVID and Omicron. That’s right, 800,000 as day.
That’s about 6 million a week or 24 million in a month.
Every one of us know someone who is sick or diagnosed as having the virus.
Not as many are dying or becoming violently ill, but hospitals from Everett to Los Angeles have been filling up with the sick.
What’s worse, so many on hospital staffs have become ill and cannot go to work that carrying on is made near to impossible.
In other words, the national health care system is right now weathering its worst time during this lingering pandemic.
Locally, the Cambridge Health Alliance Hospital in Everett is straining at the seams as it tries to balance a huge influx of patients seeking emergency health care at a time when many of its health care employees are out sick.
Much larger hospitals have stopped with elective surgery to take some of the pressure away from health care givers who are maxed out.
Even local marijuana shops have reverted to filling only those orders sent in by email because there aren’t enough employees to man the locations for walk ins.
Food pantries, trucking companies that supply them, factories that package the products, farms where the products are raised and harvested are all in need of employees to keep the supply chain going.
Stop and Shop, Market Basket and McKinnon’s are having trouble stocking all their shelves with consumer goods and perishables such as meat, eggs, milk and butter.
The long rows of empty shelving are indicators that the sickness caused by the virus is disruptive to the economy – and this could prove to be as disastrous as the worst effects of the virus.
In addition, inflation is running rampant. It is increasing at a rate higher than ever before in recorded modern history.
Bread, gasoline, heating fuel, vegetables, canned goods, and paper products have risen dramatically in price since what we thought was the end of the pandemic appeared some months back when everything reopened.
Now, with the virus running rampant, the economy is marking up better sales figures but the economic recovery recipe is ruined by the inflation and the supply shortages and disruptions caused by the sick being unable to work.
In addition, public schools have been drastically impacted by the increased infections.
Many teachers are out sick. There are not enough substitutes to fill the gaps.
Sick students must stay at home, making it impossible for their parents, usually mothers at home, to go to work.
Day care centers have been forced to close.
Theaters, restaurants, musical events and large gatherings of all kinds have been put off or cancelled.
Side by side with all this is the continuing debate about vaccines and their efficacy, with untold numbers who have been vaccinated coming down sick with the virus – and even those who’ve had the virus two or three times, getting sick again.
There is no question about the value of the vaccines. The question is exactly how valuable are the vaccines? How can they mean so much when so many are getting so sick, or so many are refusing to be vaccinated, with so many having a wide variety of thoughts about how we ought to act as a society.
The pandemic is revealing itself to be all about confusion.
No one appears to know the way. Many millions refuse to believe in science and history. Those who believe in science and history are looked upon by those who don’t as the enemy.