Looking Forward at 2022

I figured that I'd write a post which, with yesterdays post, 'bookends' the transition from 2021 to 2022.  I'm not going to sugarcoat things, 2021 was almost as bad as 2020, and in some ways was even more baffling and enraging, because there was an interval in which things looked like they were improving, and that we might see an end to the two year crisis which has gripped the planet (of course, there's also the two hundred year crisis which doesn't seem to be improving).

2022 has started off in an inauspicious fashion.  I currently have five close friends dealing with (thankfully, mild) cases of COVID (I decided to drop the '-19', because it's now three calendar years on).  One of my two subordinates at work has been exposed, and is in quarantine, so I don't know when I'll be able to take a day off.  Hell, I'm not even looking forward to a day off... with the omicron variant riding roughshod over the NYC metro area, I have no desire to be anywhere besides my home and my workplace.

I'm not one for making New Year's resolutions, they tend to be vague and hard to stick to.  The last time I made a resolution was about fifteen years ago, when I did something extremely specific (do 100 pushups every weekday) and easy to stick to.  This year, with so much uncertainty, what resolution can one make?  I can resolve to survive the year, as Anathema Device suggested in a comment on yesterday's post, but even that's not a sure deal in these Plague Years.

I suppose I could make vague plans to better myself a bit, to shake off the lethargy of the last two years, to try to rekindle my empathy for those I have contempt for... those are more like aspirations than resolutions, though.  I could cut down on my 'doomsurfing', but all surfing is doomsurfing these days.  Also, 2022 is going to be an eventful year, and the rise of a nascent fascist cult that might sweep the GOP primaries has to be monitored.

I have some small kernel of optimism- while I'm not sure that omicron is really as non-lethal as some studies suggest, I hope that an early wave will result in enough people having antibodies so that the current wave subsides, and the pandemic COVID becomes endemic COVID.  In perhaps a streak of naivete, I'm hoping that the military's  new all-in-one COVID vaccine is acceptable to anti-vaxxers, who tend to lionize the military, even though they also think it's capable of villainy, and not just the mundane villainy we are all aware of (that they tend to make excuses for).  Hopefully, an orally administered inoculation could even mollify the needle-averse.

Despite that small kernel of optimism, I believe that the first half of the year is going to be terrible from a public health standpoint, and the second half of the year is going to be terrible from a political standpoint.  Still, I have to note that I've been susceptible to dooming, and that just about 70% of Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine, and that sane voters outnumber whackos by millions (though voter suppression and gerrymandering will be major problems this year).  

Maybe my resolution should be to ease back on being excessively online.  Hell, I have a pretty cat to feed, and a picturesque campus to wander.  There will be time for doom-and-gloom later.  Happy New Year, folks!