COVID-19 still here

As much as we’d all like it to be true, the COVID-19 pandemic still rages on here and around the world.

I know it’s summertime and we’re all in “let’s have fun” mode, and that’s great, but I do want to remind you that as you and your family go here and there — especially as we’re all gearing up for the 4th of July festivities — that the thread of the coronavirus and all of its many variants are still a public health threat.

I was reminded of this fact not once, not twice but three times this past month. In early June, my wive tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time. Remember when we were told to expect six months to a year of immunity once you’d had it? Well, she got a little over four months, and this time was worse than the first as far as how she felt while recovering.

Then a couple of weeks ago, my boss let us know that he had tested positive and although I don’t know how sick he actually got, he did have to work from home and overseeing a half-dozen or so newspapers all over the Mid-South has to be a difficult task to perform remotely.

The biggest hit, though, came last week when my mother tested positive. She said she felt awful and slept like 18 hours a day for the first few days. She’s 68, so any serious illness at her age is a big deal. And of course, since she’s got it, I can’t really go over there and check on her.

She said today that she’s feeling better but still doesn’t have any energy. She’s usually all about getting out in the yard and working on her flowe beds and such so it’s got

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to be a drag for her. I’m actually very surprised my dad didn’t get it too, but I guess that’s where I got my natual immunity from, since literally my whole family has had it and I still haven’t gotten it. I got the vaccine and then the second dose, but I never got the booster, so either it worked or I really am somehow immune — which would be ironic since I seem to get every other kind of sinus, allergy, cold illness that’s out there. In case you haven’t hear, or like a lot of folks just tuned it out, the COVID-19 numbers here in Arkansas are actually the highest they’ve been since February when the omicron variant was working its way through the state. Now we’re dealing primarily with omicron subvariant BA.4 and BA.5, which they’re calling the “stealth” variant because of how well it evades testing, so the actual case numbers are actually probably much higher because of false positives and the big dropoff in testing because people would rather go around in willful ignorance than getting tested and risk having to cancel vacation plans or miss out on summer fun because they are in quarantine.

In any event, I’m not telling you to go into lockdown or anything, but as you go out and about this summer, remember that COVID-19 is still around and is still killing people, including six more in Arkansas this past week.