Tick, tick. The covid roller coaster jerks on

We are nearly to the next very exciting surge here in the US.

The covid roller coaster is climbing the next hill.

The covid roller coaster is ticking our way up to the next surge.

Tick.

Tick.

The roller coaster car seems to lose momentum as we near the crest to the next free fall and the coaster car is overcoming gravity more slowly. But it will overcome the pull of gravity and send us careening over the top. Some of us acting all cool like it is no big deal, some of us hanging on for dear life, some of us working to protect others who can’t or won’t protect themselves.

Is that not the pandemic in a nutshell?

Will this surge and this variant be the one that tip over the usefulness of the vaccines?

Is this where the virus has learned enough to overcome the vaccines?

And take us all the way back to pandemic square one?

Well, to be fair we learned a tremendous amount about this particular virus; how it is passed, how infectious each subsequent wave is.

Okay, not back to pandemic square one.

But it the virus learns how to circumvent the vaccines… Definitely back to square 3, before the vaccines.

Look, people cry out, look at the declining number of cases. The declining number of dead.

Yeah.

That ceased to be of consequence when states decided to pull back on reporting every day. Some still report every day, some weekly, a few monthly. All this does is decrease the usefulness of the data. And, don’t you know, there is more shiny things to think about and to react to.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.