In the early days of the pandemic, if you told somebody you had COVID, you got respect. They’d make the sign of the cross and back away like you just admitted you had leprosy. “I am so sorry,” they would say, solemnly, convinced you were doomed. “Can I have your old baseball glove?” Back then, it was like they missed your already. But not anymore.
Since the pandemic began, I have been on the run from COVID, wearing a mask even during the stifling days of summer, compulsively washing my hands, avoiding crowds, getting every COVID vaccine and booster they invented. I was in the pandemic witness protection program, hiding from the COVID assassins. Then last week, they caught up to me.
It was actually kind of a relief. I had finally joined the COVID Club. But by now, I was nobody special—just one out of 892,628 Iowans who had caught it. I told a friend my big news. He had it last year. “Oh,” he said. “Bummer. Hey, I heard it’s going to be 60 degrees today!”
And to be honest, my COVID experience was not remarkable. I had the usual cold-like symptoms and fatigue. I even took a course of Paxlovid which diminished the length and severity of the whole thing. No drama. No apparent danger. I was just a statistic. And nobody gets very worked up about statistics. But they should.
The Iowa Capital Dispatch recently reported that only about 10 percent of Iowans have “sufficient COVID vaccination.” They noted, “The number of Iowans who have up-to-date COVID-19 vaccinations has plummeted in recent months,” citing the Department of Health and Human Services. When the pandemic was raging, 60 percent of Iowans were vaccinated. But the effectiveness of the vaccine diminishes over time—along with our willingness to remain in panic-mode.
Iowans have let our guard down. In the middle of December, there were 345 COVID hospitalizations in Iowa, the most since August 2022. Despite the latest booster being widely available, only 11.6 percent of Iowans have bothered to get it. Since the pandemic began, COVID has killed 10,538 Iowans and some 6.86 million people worldwide. And it’s not done with us yet.
But it’s hard to look at the big picture when we have more immediate crises of our own. Like our greyhound’s sore toe. Not given to wearing shoes, Argos steps on things with his bare feet, including, it turns out, thorns. One day, his toe was normal and the next day it swelled up big and red as a cherry tomato. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat. He refused to even go outside, opting to pee at the bottom of the stairs which he found quite convenient, wondering, no doubt, why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. I was thinking of setting up a little curtain to give him some privacy.
We whisked Argos off to the doggy hospital where a kindly vet fixed up his toe, showered him with treats and neck rubs and handed us a bill the size of a Florida timeshare. Having finished the last of my Paxlovid, I am back to normal again. However, I am feeling a little gipped that it didn’t come with a neck rub.