Fractured Reality
The last few years have been weird, right? The whole global pandemic thing, the shut-down of international travel, the death toll in the millions, the not-yet fully manifested horror of Long Covid. Lockdown in March 2020 was scary but, like the coronavirus itself, novel. Watching other countries completely fail to mount an effective public health response was a slow-motion horror movie, especially as the virus marched West and countries like the U.K and U.S just blithely assumed that their innate superiority would work its magic on a virulent and deadly disease.
We were told back then that a vaccine was 18-months to 2 years away, which would place that estimate at about now. Instead, within 11 months there was an effective vaccine that reduced the chance of catching COVID, spreading COVID, and suffering the most deadly effects of COVID. A modern medical miracle, and one that arrived at the right time for nations who absolutely one-hundred-per-cent failed to protect their people. If it hadn’t, imagine another 12-months of the 1,000 a day death tolls they had in Britain in January and February of 2020. The world without a vaccine is one with far more pandemic trauma, far more disintegrated nations, far more grieving, and far, far more death.
COVID-19 is a real virus. It has wracked nations, killed off millions, placed health systems under barely survivable strain, and may yet cast a long…
