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Does this time of the year feel different than it normally does, or different than it should? If so, give some examples of what feels different.

Tests are rationed in drugstores. Today in Boston: 4 per customer at Walgreens, 6 per customer at CVS. My brother-in-law wanted as many as possible, so yesterday my sister and I ended up in a bunch of different stores, and she bought 18 packages -- 36 tests -- in total. At $25/package, that's a pretty penny. I didn't say anything (though I did buy her an initial set of four to match her first 4 in the first store), but it felt pretty awful to me to be buying so many when there's such a serious shortage. Today the shipments seem to have just come in, but for days people all over Boston apparently were scrambling and home tests were completely unavailable. Meanwhile, people waited in long lines for equally hard-to-obtain PCR tests. My bro-in-law's justification is crap. Said something about someone last spring who'd said "it's everyone for themselves" upon scrambling to jump the queue to get vaccinated -- but of course he's doing exactly the same thing by getting all these tests.

December 27, 2021

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