As the US looks forward to summer relaxation, with more vaccines than people who want to take them (!!), the pandemic can feel over. But as at every stage in covid's march across the globe, there are other parts of the world where the crisis is ongoing and worsening. We hear about India and Brazil, because they are huge and in downward spirals because of Trumpian know-nothing leadership. (One recalls also the brash claims that India had miraculously dodged the bullet.) But the situation is bad in many places, and many are suffering the onset of second, third waves. WHO's global tally of three million two hundred and nine thousand one hundred and nine souls lost is almost certainly an undercount. A New York based writer whose family is in India describes an anguished cognitive dissonance all of us should be suffering:
Although I can look forward to picnics in the park this summer, India’s parks are becoming grave sites. All the justified optimism around me now feels unjust and even irresponsible. For many of us with friends and family around the world, the trauma feels like a never-ending loop: When your immediate situation improves, another loved one enters a crisis.
It would be nice to think that the shared experience of the pandemic would expand our sense of "friends and family around the world" but it seems we have far to go, unprocessed grief, guilt and relief making it hard even to recognize in the terror of Delhi the existential dread New York was facing not much more than a year ago.
