Colleges and universities are widely and wildly unsettled at the moment.
Much like those of us who are burdened with empathy.
There are some who don’t know better that are cheering the unrest. I hope they don’t know better. Otherwise I am forced to conclude that they are terrible people. People who relish in the difficulties of others.
Not so very far removed from the bullies that I railed against yesterday.
With a swipe of a pen and, I imagine, an unholy grin, much of the research landscape was decimated.
There are those who rush in and wish to dance upon the ashes.
I hope they don’t require any help from the research that has been destroyed by the mad one’s whims. Nor any of their families.
As we are barreling past the point of no return in getting the flu vaccine formulated and prepared for the start of the fall flu vaccine campaign, I hope that this upcoming flu season won’t bite them in the ass.
I will certainly be masking up if there is no 2025 flu vaccine.
But students and professors alike are in unsettled times.
I know I am.
And I don’t know how to react.
Part of me wants to wash my hands of the whole thing and hope for the best.
After all, healthcare workers JUST lived through a global pandemic and we are staring down the barrel at another. With less than half of the tools that we had in 2020 with covid 19, and even less than those tools for the 2013 Ebola outbreak that wished it was a pandemic, and even less than the SARS in 2002, and less still than the swine flu in 2008.
Still we educate others and seek education for ourselves.
I have no answers.
May whatever god you believe in have mercy on your soul.
Because those in power who are giddy and bloated with it certainly won’t.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 