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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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We hear a lot these days about the economic impact of the pandemic. Has this been on your mind? If so, tell us what you're thinking.
I resent the economy. Our leaders prioritized the economy over people's lives, because apparently people are interchangeable cogs in the all-important machine of the economy. If people had been put first, we might not have lost more than half a million Americans. If people had been put first, we might have been able to suppress the virus last year when we had the chance and the economy would not now be in such poor shape. If people had been put first, there might not be so many dangerous variants threatening all the progress in treatment and vaccinations that we've made. As tragic as this year has been, this far surpasses everything: when it happens again in the future (because it will), we will do the exact same thing. Everything good will always be sacrificed for economic growth.
March 22, 2021