“This strange mixture of normalcy and emergency”
I wrote this 21 months ago, at the start of the #Covid pandemic. I would slightly amend it now: It’s the bizarre mixture of (en)forced normalcy and (yet again escalating) emergency that is utterly disorienting and exhausting.
I wrote this 21 months ago, at the start of the #Covid pandemic. I would slightly amend it now: It’s the bizarre mixture of (en)forced normalcy and (yet again escalating) emergency that is utterly disorienting and exhausting.
https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1238106020855066626
Almost two years in and all the professional demands have long ago ramped back up to “normal.” But we’ve lived through a world-historic emergency, are still suffering through it - no time, though, society says: You have to function normally through the emergency!
I live in DC, where the incidence is rising rapidly and more new infections are detected than ever before. But the mayor ended the indoors mask mandate just a few weeks ago, so when I go to the grocery story, I’m breathing the same air as people who can’t be bothered to mask up.
Hospitals are quickly filling up, but we are constantly invited to sizable indoor holiday gatherings by friends for whom the pandemic is basically over, leaving us to juggle the demands of our social life and our desire to act responsibly and protect ourselves and others.
Omicron is going to spread like wildfire, changing the game completely (yet again!) - but the societal imperative even here in DC seems to be “No turning back!” above all else, and so the mayor isn’t ready to reinstate the indoors mask mandate. She’s waiting for… what?
And through it all, I feel completely exhausted. Empty. We’re clearly still living through an unprecedented pandemic, with all the added mental and emotional demands that entails in ways big and small, more or less obvious. But there was never any time to rest, reflect, recharge.
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