COVID Nine-What?

The second anniversary of the World Health Organization's declaration of the spread of COVID-19 (henceforth to be known as COVID, because COVID-19 sounds like a droid in a Star Wars movie) as a pandemic was this past Friday.  No one cared.  The news channels are about all Ukraine, all the time.

It's true that more people in the West are vaccinated against COVID and that the receding Omicron surge has left the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike with natural immunity.  The global full-vaccination rate is 57 percent now and even African countries are beginning to pick up in vaccinations more steadily, with a full-vaccination rate of 14 percent for the entire African continent; two months ago, it was less than 10 percent.  But the focus on Ukraine and little if anything else means that most of us will never learn that COVID infections are rising again in Britain and Germany, China keeps closing down a city each week because of rising cases, and a hybrid of Delta and Omicron called "Deltacron" has been spotted in France!  

And while all that is going on, Congress can't agree on a bill that would fund vaccines and tests,  

Which is why people still talk of the end of the pandemic in future tense.  And, likely, they always will. 😨