Health Care/Joan Retsinas

The Telenovela that is COVID: Waiting for the Last Episode

In the last 18 months, we have gorged on the multi-episode, multi-series  telenovelas served up by Netflix et al., like heaping servings of paella. In cliffhanger endings, protagonists sometimes literally hang from cliffs.

So too, we have watched, in real-time, the COVID telenovela, with each episode ending on a dire note, followed by a resolution, a new crisis.

Here is the recap.

Episode One: Impending Doom, Maybe.

“It” has hit China. Can we close our borders quickly enough, solidly enough? Is “It” coming from Europe? Will “It” hit our shores? Where? When?

Episode Two: COVID is Here. Scrambling in its Wake.

The first scene: confusion, as the number of cases soars, the hospital beds fill, cadavers crowd the morgues. We hear pleas for more ventilators. We hear pleas for masks, though we don’t know whether the masks will protect others, or us. Should the masks be porous? Can scarves suffice? There is a scramble to order masks on-line. Sanitation looms as crucial: we are emptying shelves of disinfectants, swabbing park benches.

Episode Three: Lockdown.

Hotels, museums, theaters, stores, barbershops, schools — all close. The Internet erupts with jokes, songs, Youtube responses, mostly humorous, as we cope with shortages of toilet paper, frenzied cleaning spurts, and the isolation that foments zoom concerts, zoom family reunions, zoom weddings, zoom funerals. Suddenly, we are eating “take out” from restaurants, ordering groceries from Instacart, making umpteen versions of banana bread. Our hair grows longer; our waistlines, wider. At the end of the episode, the ones-in-the-know sanction outdoor dining, well-spaced, and masked, except of course for eating and drinking. Wearing coats, we cluster outdoors, yelling to make ourselves heard over our masks. Parents ponder the oxymoron: virtual school.

Episode Four: Cures and Hoaxes.

Yesterday’s Commander-in-Chief touts hydroxychloroquine, which sends the stock soaring, scientists testing, and patients into a frenzy. Sequela: it doesn’t work. Another tout: Clorox, which overwhelms poison center lines with frantic callers, which spurs antiseptics to add “do not ingest” to their web sites. Sequela: it will harm you. The “hoax” rumor takes off as business revenues plummet: If COVID is a hoax, we can open up, gathering in political rallies, in restaurants, in stores, in sports arenas. Sequela: maybe we can’t. The deaths mount. Drs. Fauci and Birx (she of the scarves) deliver the numbers.

At the same time, we ramp up testing, which can take days, and some of the tests don’t work; but no matter — testing will only  lead to more positives.

Episode Five: The Vaccine.

A vaccine exists! In this episode, airing early in the summer, people clog phone and internet lines to register for a vaccine. Demand outflanks supply. States are in charge of distribution, which leads to a patchwork of “systems,” depending more or less on workplace (“front line” workers come first), on age, on health status. Some people “jump the line.” Pharmacies emerge as key distribution points.

By the end of the episode, today’s Commander-in-Chief has delivered: a lot of Americans are vaccinated, if only with the first dose. The country starts to open up; vaccinated people discard their masks; Americans board planes to visit the people they haven’t seen in 15 months. We meet for romances, for weddings, for funerals, for school, for haircuts. We approach herd immunity.

Episode Six: The Delta Variant Creeps In.

A short episode of trickling data, with more warnings, but this “it” feels distant. The cliffhanger — we are not rushing toward herd immunity, as the unvaccinated hesitate. And the vaccinated let them hesitate. After all, they put only themselves at risk.

Episode Seven: Delta Surges.

More cases, more deaths. To keep us riveted, there is “Breakthrough COVID,” where the vaccinated contract COVID from the unvaccinated. This is not the same as Long COVID, where symptoms linger. So many side stories. By the episode’s end, pediatric hospital beds are filing, for we have no pediatric vaccines. Hotels, airlines, restaurants, theaters now ask to see “vaccine passports.”

Episode Eight: Enter the Courts.

Either the Greek God Eis or Monty Python produced this episode. The race is on: Delta versus the Resolutely Unvaccinated. Inexplicably, a swath of the public rejects the vaccine. Their protests morph into myriad lawsuits against the vaccine “mandates” (now legal for businesses), and mask mandates in schools. Some rejectors plead personal liberty or religious exemptions (even though no established religion has nixed these vaccines). Some nursing home and hospital staff refuse the vaccine, though they were the most at risk in Episode Two. We hear about another cure: ivermectin (useful for deworming pets and livestock). The country is cautiously, tentatively opening up, with epidemiologists issuing their advisories. The new one: booster shots.

Episode Nine (we hope the last one): Up to Us

We write this episode. Will the “variant hunters” identify the next plague, maybe C.1.2.? Will it surge? Or, before then, will we acknowledge that vaccines protect against this virus, just as vaccines protect against polio, whooping cough, diphtheria?

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2021

Populist.com