I was in a meeting at my church last Sunday and the topic came up of how do we handle another Covidlike outbreak? Well, perhaps we should just presume that Covid never went away and go from there. A new variant was noted in September sweeping across Singapore. Since then, it has spread like it was the new kid on the block. And perhaps it is. This version, like other mutants seems to be an even faster spreader. It too is a member of the SARS-Co-V-2 virus. But of course, it dodges regular monoclonal therapies except this good news, Pfizer’s newest vaccine catches it.

Bad news? There are seven other kinds of this “scrabble” XBB Covid variant. More bad news is Americans are mostly tired and fed up trying to deal with the Covid. “This virus has had its way with us for too long, so goes the reasoning and we’re tired of it.”

I’m pretty sure we are tired of the face masks and inoculations. We’re very tired of our messed-up school schedules and, in general, our way of life. I for one was used to our health delivery system coming up with sure fire ways of ridding our communities of these pandemics. I speak of the MMR shots virtually eliminating Mumps, Measles and Rubella (whooping cough) and important to my generation was Jonas Salk riding the world of Polio. Now, much of our body politic are skeptical of what is told by their government officials and for sure have become non-compliant to government guidelines. And we all are paying the price for that. Paying in lives lost and in the high costs of runaway disease in our society.

Health experts have noted their inability to motivate people to get out of their “Stone Age” thinking which gave these same people excuses to sidestep the shots. Folks laid aside their masks and in general ignored common sense protocols. This thinking enabled the pandemic to just get away from us. Now here we are. I don’t foresee people changing any in this regard. So, look out America. As for me? My doctor just gave me the latest shot and, while I was at it, got the regular fall flu shot. My hope and prayer is that this pandemic will just go away.

Changing the subject, I wrote a story a few months ago about Vladimir Putin’s unwarranted invasion of the Ukraine. One of my observations was that President Zalinski and his country didn’t have a chance. But I, like so many others, overestimated the strength of Russia’s army. I underestimated the political power of Zalinski — how he would be able to rally his little nation against this Huge foreign invader. He has pushed the Russian troops back causing Vladimir to take leave of his senses. Vladimir went sort of crazy (some say) and had his military fire a flurry of rockets into several high rises and large apartment complexes in several cities in the Ukraine killing many civilians and many children. This was another political mistake on Putin’s part.

So, here it is in October. Most likely a harsh winter is upon these Ukrainian survivors. Another world crisis on the doorstep of the Western world. What will we do? Or to put it another way, what should the world do as it looks on at the horror? Probably a question for our President Biden. I hope he is better on this than he has been on the border crisis. If not, we can look forward to a lot of television news misery this Christmas and indeed, throughout this winter. Let’s hope and pray that Putin doesn’t warm up the great Ukraine prairies with some nukes.

In closing let me say I got some interesting email last week and thanks for that. I like hearing from my readers. Be sure and go to Church Sunday.

Wayne Bullard, DPh

cwaynebullard@gmail.com