First, let me make it clear. I have not been out of the house for three days. I live in a city. There are people, heaving and thriving humanity, vehicles in motion, concerts, exhibitions, exhibitionists. It’s all happening. It’s why I moved to San Francisco. It’s not why I am inside. 

You know why I am inside if you are reading this today, January, 2022. I am inside because I don’t wish to become infected with the dreaded viral plague. Vis-à-vis, the Omygod variant of COVID-19. There, we have said it, stated the obvious. And let me add that I am oblivious to the obvious. I wish to obviate the obvious. So there.

In the mid-1960s, the great British director Joan Littlewood put together a production in a theater situated in one of the more rundown areas of East London, Stratford. Oh, What a Lovely War was composed of actual transcripts, e.g., speeches, news articles. And not a single original word was contrived by Littlewood or her cast. And without going into the satirical take on World War I…beyond satire into despair and outrage, of course…the title says it all.

And I must say that I can now point the cultural, historical finger right at myself. I am just as guilty of hoping for a consumer-friendly pandemic. I mean, this deadly virus has been awfully inconvenient. When one considers that more than 800,000 people in this country have been converted into the past tense, probably as many have been disabled or severely affected indefinitely…well, inconvenience may not be the most damning comment. But still, it’s there. Oh What a Lovely Pandemic is not to my knowledge in the works, unless it is playing out in the streets and I am an unwitting performer.

And so I kvetch. It is relatively cold this day in San Francisco, 52°F (11 Celsius) being the high. This is just cool enough for your low-activity wheelchair user to not want to sit outside. Although sitting outside is the only way to enjoy the San Francisco café experience. Too much virus anywhere else. And, by the way, if you would like a bit of COVID-19 gossip, here’s something from the medical insiders of this fair city. 

I have a roving physical therapist, a freelancer who is extremely good, comes to my house, and provides excellent advice and assistance with the maximum convenience. You get the idea. Also, she is extremely astute. She has enough good sense to tune in to the University of California, San Francisco (a.k.a., UC Medical School) Grand Rounds once a week. Somehow she does this via the Internet. Apparently not that difficult. Anyway, the medical badinage includes clinicians/researchers’ chitchat about whither the pandemic. And their reasoning goes like this.

So far, COVID-19’s Omicron variant has erupted in various population centers. The UK is among them, and thanks to Bruce Rosen for sending me a very interesting overview from a London epidemiologist. Which is that the latest variant doesn’t produce the worst symptomology, and the genetic likelihood is that subsequent variants will get less and less severe until endemic. So that’s a good starting point for the UC Medical Center perspective which is more or less this:

Omicron has waxed, and now appears to be waning, among populations that are largely vaccinated. Like any communicable disease, it spreads first in more crowded urban areas. Which, in much of the United States, tend to accept vaccines. But when it reaches the hinterlands, the rural red-state populous, its effects are harder to gauge. Also, early indicators are that the newer variant evades detection by the immune system in a particular way…that is not yet defined. Which may account for a growing body of evidence that the Omicron variant also leaves more in its wake, the so-called Long Covid.

All of which reminds me: be careful. Which doesn’t mean that I won’t be going out tomorrow for something. But it may not be something indoors. In fact, it probably won’t. The other rule: don’t breathe.

You heard it here first.