The 5 year mark of the pandemic is just around the corner now. And it’s interesting to reflect on how well things are going compared to early forecasts.

My memory is that 3-5 years was put out there as the likely longest horizon for the pandemic. Objectively, it’s seems pretty clear that it has not gone away at all and that any progress on actually reducing its prevalence is either speculative (eg new nasal vaccines) or ”unacceptable” civil or infrastructural measures (masks, remote work, air filters etc).

All of which is basically a failure.

Another way of cutting it though might be to view the Omicron variant as a second pandemic that is proving generally worse than the first in part because it’s catching us at our most indifferent.

I feel like there was a point there where a good vaccine roll out could have contained the delta or preceding variants. Which to me only highlights how all of the civil measures we were taking and could have taken were not just about maximising health at that time but also about preventing us from going down a darker path of no return which seems to be where we are now. If global measures were taken to limit the spread of the virus and so prevent its evolution, I’d wonder how good of a chance there’d be that a vaccine could then have quashed the virus.

So long as we suffer a capitalist way of life, literally everything comes 2nd to profit.

Even the planet itself.