You’re Over Covid? Congratulations. Covid Doesn’t Give a Shit.

I wish I didn’t have to write this article in 2022

Medical staff treat COVID-19 patient Frank Clark in his room on an isolated medical unit floor at Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, January 5, 2022. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

In 2021, I wrote, “You might be done with coronavirus, but coronavirus isn’t done with you.”

I wish I didn’t have to write this article in 2022, because I assumed we would have learned by now. Nope. We live in a self-destructive America with one of the lowest vaccination rates of the G7 countries thanks to disinformation, the weaponization of masks and vaccines by the right-wing, and the utter selfishness of the privileged and obscene.

We’re still in the midst of the latest omicron wave, which is fueling about 720,000 new cases and nearly 2,000 deaths a day. Hospital resources are overwhelmed and health care workers are burned out. Parents like myself are drained and exhausted. Oh, and on top of that, there’s inflation, climate change, and the rise of white supremacist violence.

However, Bari Weiss, Bill Maher, and other privileged individuals who whine endlessly about cancel culture from the loftiest of platforms are apparently “done” with Covid. The latest example was last Friday’s episode of Real Time on HBO, on which Weiss complained to Maher: “We were told, you get the vaccine. You get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven’t gotten back to normal, and it’s…