Today is Wednesday, July 13, 2022. Today before I escape to the United Kingdom tomorrow evening, I thought I would provide a cautionary tale on our continuing battle with coronavirus in an article that appeared in The Sacramento Bee by Marcos Breton entitled “Like many Americans, I was tired of worrying about COVID. Then my family and I caught it.” This is the story of one family who took all of the necessary precautions against contracting COVID, but still contracted it anyway at the end of a family vacation last month. Their precautions included getting properly vaccinated and even double-boosting.

Mr. Breton states that everyone in his family wore masks on multiple airplanes for the long journey from California to Hawaii and back. He noticed, though, that many passengers “eschewed masks on crowded planes and in the long airport lines.” It was as though many believed that the pandemic was behind them and that no precautions were necessary anymore. However, new subvariants of the virus are now driving waves of new cases seen here in the United States and elsewhere. On the first night back, Breton’s family succumbed to the coronavirus, beginning with one child contracting it. The next day, his other child tested positive; the day after that, he did. Two days later, his wife tested positive.

Breton goes on to write about “the sickest I had felt in two decades.” On the first day he tested positive, he slept all afternoon, feeling groggy and bone-tired. The writer relates an almost-funny story if it hadn’t involved his brain fog arising from contracting COVID-19 concerning his forgetting to put a coffee mug in his coffee machine to catch the coffee, as he was in such a daze. Thus the coffee spilled all over the kitchen counter and he was unaware of his major blunder until he had a big mess to clean up and hardly had the energy to do it.

One of Breton’s daughters had an alarming fever of 103 degrees for three days that distressed the writer and his wife to no end.

After isolating himself for five days and wearing a mask in public for five days as well, Breton writes his energy levels were nowhere near normal and his sleep patterns were disrupted, having very vivid and intense dreams. This is after he followed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines that called for taking these measures after testing positive.

“The pandemic is hopelessly politicized,” Breton states, “to the point where many liberals and conservatives are acting as if it’s over for their own partisan reasons.” Very accurately, Breton writes that “politics has vanquished science.” The world has given up on reducing transmission, it seems. We have also given up on looking out for each other, Breton concludes.

Breton then states that contracting COVID is no joke and that it’s not a simple cold or standard flu. He worries that there is no guarantee that his recent case is going to protect him from future infections because scientists have said the new subvariants have evolved to the point where they are evading immunity.

Because of the high number of people testing at home or not testing at all, new cases of COVID-19 are being underreported. The CDC has been reporting an average of 100,000 positive tests a day, but Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research Translational Institute, thinks that number could be as high as a million individuals.

Now “across the globe, transmissions – and, yes, deaths and hospitalizations – are trending upward,” but as I’m noticing, there seems to be very little coverage of this on our news stations these days. The main story these days is Dumpf, Dumpf, and Dumpf and the events of January 6, 2021.

Breton shudders to think if Paxlovid, the new drug prescribed to battle the symptoms of COVID in its early stages, had not worked for him and his family. He feels that their vaccines, their boosters, and taking Paxlovid likely kept them out of the hospital. He calls the experience “miserable and unnerving just the same.”

The writer feels that many people have given up on wearing masks indoors or have given up on trying to reduce transmission when it’s appropriate to do so because it’s become too much of an inconvenience for many. “People can’t be bothered with COVID anymore,” he writes, because people are fed up and want to “live our lives.” He understands this fatigue with COVID until he and his family got sick.

Breton admits that he won’t walk into an indoor crowd without wearing a mask. And it will be a while before he boards a plane once more. Oooh, and we’re going to an airport tomorrow. Of course, Elliot and I will certainly wear masks at JFK. I will predict that many people coursing through the airport will not be wearing masks, despite these alarming trends. I’ll tell you when we get back.

The conclusion to the article is Breton’s acknowledgment that he doesn’t want to get the virus again. “You don’t either.”

So since this will be my farewell blog before embarking on an overseas adventure, I will not write about a former president and his many offenses against God and the country that birthed him. I can assure you he will still be in the news, sadly, when I get back, which is Tuesday, July 26.

So have a good two weeks while I’m gone. Also, please take our worsening COVID situation very seriously. I’m sure you do, really.

Stay safe and be well.