Updated version with missing Telluride waste water graph! This week’s war between Hamas and Israel has made it manifestly clear that we need to focus on things are truly important, and deprioritize lesser concerns. COVID was never an existential threat for humanity, or any race, ethnicity, country, sex or other demographic. It was a serious threat, which brought its burden of death and misery—misery sometimes compounded by hysteria and over-reaching governmental response—but it was not even remotely in the league of the Bubonic Plague, the 1918 Influenza, Smallpox or Typhoid epidemics. COVID eventually revealed itself on a population level as a nuisance virus, a killer primarily of the old, the sick and infirm, and of course those at high risk who chose not to be vaccinated. Many, many humans choose risky behaviors, don’t we? Taking drugs we know are addictive, drinking at all or far worse then driving, skiing, climbing, parachuting, diving, riding motorcycles, not exercising, eating things we know are unhealthy, having sex with anonymous strangers, walking around in large US cities at night, the list is endless. Perhaps none of these make sense to the outside observer as a source of enjoyment, but then we don’t get to live inside anybody else’s head, and commune with their dopamine receptors.
Love your post today. Can you please invent a vaccine to combat evil and stupidity? 🙏