The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 413 (913)

Various people have, on Facebook, advised me to take it easy as I emerge from covid. They evidently think--or know--just how Type A I am. I'm actually not sure I could do too much right now. This morning, I read the newspapers, printed information for The Professor on the 100-miler The Sons are running this weekend, started a load of laundry, sewed six short seams on a quilt, and was exhausted. A post-lunch nap has helped immensely. 

The head of WHO says that the end of covid is "in sight." The number of deaths worldwide last week was the lowest it has been since March 2020. Comparing it to a race, the WHO director warned, "Now is the worst time to stop running. Now is the time to run harder and make sure we cross the line and reap all the rewards of out hard work." I am glad he did not suggest that we stop running and rest on our laurels.

The Lancet covid-19 commission released its report and blamed WHO, the US government, and others for failures in international responses. The chair of the commission said, "What we saw--rather than a cooperative global strategy--was basically each country on its own. National leaders deciding ... the strategy and fates of their countries in an incredibly haphazard way." An editorial accompanying the report summarized the pandemic as "...nothing less than a massive global failure--a failure of rationality, transparency, norms of public health practice, operational coordination, and international solidarity." There was some controversy within the commission on the origins of the coronavirus. I loved the words of a Baylor virologist who served on the commission: "Along with a couple of other commissioners, I helped lead efforts to keep the conspiracy nonsense and the whacka-doodle out of the final report." Whacka-doodle. I like that.

The commission proposed five pillars as essential in fighting emerging infectious diseases:

                    Prevention

                    Containment

                    Health services

                    Equity

                    Global innovation and diffusion

Finally, the commission's report warned that "long covid might itself be an emerging pandemic." If that's not reason enough to take it easy, I'm not sure what would be.