Today is promising to be a secular blog writing day. It is in contradiction with one of my Ramadan intentions which was to rid my mind of politics and the world around me , concentrating on the faith, but allowing for short bursts of humor. But it is not to be so.
First let us define secular – the suitable definition: denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis. The synonyms that fit this definition are: nonreligious, , nonchurch, temporal, worldly, earthly, unsanctified, unconsecrated, unhallowed,. The antonyms are holy, religious, sacred.
This this blog shall sail into the earthly, temporal and unhallowed world. First let us begin with some secular humor from, none other than, Andy Borowitz. “WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Minutes after Kentanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the United States Supreme Court, Senator Ted Cruz warned that the confirmation of a qualified nominee set “a dangerous precedent.” “Make no mistake, Judge Jackson has been confirmed for the flimsiest of reasons—that she is qualified,” Cruz said. “Now that one qualified nominee has been confirmed, we can expect more of the same.”
Love it! She was confirmed for the flimsiest of reasons, she is qualified and that is a dangerous precedent. Andy continues in fine form. “Mark my words, Joe Biden and his cabal of Democratic cronies are ready to pack the Court with other qualified nominees,” he added. “The slippery slope started today. “Recalling confirmation hearings of yesteryear, Cruz waxed nostalgic for an era “before the tyranny of the qualified seized control.” “There was a time in America when a Supreme Court nominee could be confirmed because he liked beer and cried about calendars,” he said. “Those days, sadly, appear to be over.”
Indeed, a slippery slope, looking back with nostalgia on the good old days when confirmation was based on liking beer and weeping over calendars.
This departure into the land of the secular was also occasioned by an article appearing in the New Yorker written by an eminent physician and scholar, written by Dhruv Khullar. What Do We Do About Covid Now. The subtitle is America’s battle with the pandemic has been more damaging than we like to think. And it is still ongoing.
You must read the entire article written by an expert scientist, the link shall be provided. Dr. Khullar begins by outlining the problem,”Our country is on the cusp of a grim milestone: soon, a million people in the United States will have died of covid-19. Yet for many Americans this reality seems vague, abstract—a group problem for which we must take individual responsibility. We struggle to see the crisis we’re in.”
He then goes on to explain the cause of the problem. “Part of the problem is fatigue. Another is that the coronavirus has exacted its toll unevenly. Covid is relatively unthreatening to younger people, but has killed one in seventy-five older Americans; residents of long-term-care facilities make up less than three per cent of the population, but have accounted for about one in five covid deaths. The death rate for Blacks and Hispanics has been twice that for whites. And, owing to divergent immunization rates, people in the reddest counties have been dying at more than three times the rate of those in the bluest. For some of us, the pandemic may feel over, but more Americans died of covid in 2021 than in 2020. So far in 2022, the virus has taken another hundred and fifty thousand lives.”
The meaning of such numbers is hard to grasp, therefore, he assists. US life expectancy has fallen by nearly two years, sharpest decline since WWII. He explains lost time – an eighty year old lost eight years of life, on average. A forty year old lost nearly four decades. “This means that a million deaths will have expunged tens of millions of years of life—a mass erasure of new, strange and wonderful possibilities.”
There is a false belief that the government has exaggerated the number of deaths, Dr. Khullar factually asserts, the official count is an underestimate. More than a hundred thousand more people died in this country, uncounted covid fatalities. There are the result of missed care for conditions such as heart attacks and strokes, drug overdoses, skipped cancer screenings and child vaccinations add to the collateral damage. “ The truth is that America’s battle with covid-19 has been more damaging than we like to think. And it is still ongoing”
Cases are rising again in the USA. Several causes for this: Reopening, B.A.2, a sub variant of Onicron now dominion in the US. And around the word, thought to be thirty to fifty percent more contagious. It does not appear to be lethal and vaccines but it is a problem because of break through infections, a serious threat to the elderly, and the unvaccinated. Listen to this statistic: “ Last month, B.A.2 nearly tripled coronavirus cases in the U.K.; at one point, one in thirty older Britons was thought to be infected, covid hospitalizations and deaths rose. .
Dr, Khullar admits that he can not foretell the future, saying he does not know how the USA’s
BA2 will unfold. It is because vaccination rates in the USA are lower, many states have done away with pandemic restrictions and people are returning to their ‘normal’ lives. There is no consistency in the USA – the chaotic situation, he describes as the “Wild West Days” Funding, requested by President Biden, was gutted, the reduced amount not been received as yet.
Politicians and policymakers have tools but are not doing their job, stymied by “the murkiness of our moment; the county contains within it such a diversity of immunity, vulnerability, and attitude that no policy prescription seems to fit”
His conclusion is nothing short of brilliant. “Amid the uncertainty, individuals, organizations, and institutions must do their best. This means giving people the resources to confront covid not as an abstraction but through the decisions of daily life. During moments of high viral spread, this effort might entail providing rapid tests in the workplace, time off after exposure, outdoor spaces for events, high-grade masks for all who want them, and a culture that respects varying levels of risk tolerance and medical vulnerability. Decades of behavioral-science research have revealed that our decision-making depends crucially on our environment; even as politicians discard mitigation measures, communities at school, work, church, and elsewhere can make it easier for people to do the right thing.
For individuals, fighting the pandemic can feel a bit like combatting climate change. Why recycle when policymakers allow carbon emissions to rise inexorably? And, indeed, to defeat this and future pandemics, we’ll need investments in ventilation and air-filtration systems, paid sick leave, disability benefits, disease-surveillance programs, and more. But it’s also true that individuals retain some agency. We can get booster shots and persuade others to do so; we can make plans for accessing monoclonal antibodies or antiviral pills. When cases rise, as they will, we can consider how we might lower the chances that we’ll pass on the virus to someone for whom the consequences could be catastrophic. After two years of ebbs and flows, of surges, variants, vaccines, and boosters, our choices matter, perhaps now more than ever. “
I am not returning to the USA, so how does this effect me? Drastically and dramatically for many reasons. I am indeed safe at this moment surrounded by extraordinary vaccination rates, constant testing and indoor masks. But I am stuck here, unable to get a much needed booster shot as they are not provided unless one has an Emirati ID and I do not have one, nor want one.There might be a solution to that problem but I will need massive amounts of energy to jump through all of the hoops and do not have that energy because of Ramadan fasting. I made reservations (and paid for) a bed and breakfast in Jamaica but to get to that island, , some twenty-two hours away – all flights go through London. Need the energy to cancel those reservations and perhaps get my money back. Again, no energy. My plans for the future may entail a round the world cruise, but that may not be safe unless there is world wide eradication of the problem. On an emotional level, a wonderful fourteen year old California girl, one of my treasured fans, is now in Florida. Such massive irresponsibility of her caretakers as it exposes her to risk of infection. My treasured blog master in the UK may also be at risk as a guest tested positive.
This seems so grossly unfair – I have been SO responsible but the irresponsibility of others, some people not getting a vaccine, a government that denies me a booster shot and all of the factors reported by Dr. Khullar puts me at risk.
That famous civil rights song comes to mind. We Shall Overcome. “That song was “We Shall Overcome.” It soon became the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It offered courage, comfort, and hope as protesters confronted prejudice and hate in the battle for equal rights for African Americans.
Here are the lyrics.
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome, some day.
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day.
We’ll walk hand in hand,
We’ll walk hand in hand,
We’ll walk hand in hand, some day.
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day.
We shall live in peace,
We shall live in peace,
We shall live in peace, some day.
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day.
We are not afraid,
We are not afraid,
We are not afraid, TODAY
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day.
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around some day
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day
A wall hanging adorns my humble hotel room. It was sewn by my mother Jessie Elaine Dryburgh. The quilting pattern is Ship of Dreams. A Ship of Dreams is so needed today. It is pictured.
