I agree with this.
But hereâs where I think youâre jumping to conclusions. I donât think this is necessarily true.
Rather, I think itâs like this: Even if we are all swiftly vaccinated we will not get the virus under control. We canât control it. At best we can slow it down, we can keep people from getting as sick as they would otherwise be when they inevitably get the damn thing. We should, and we have. But as the last few weeks have shown: A highly contagious but often mild virus will always eventually circumvent vaccines through mutation. And people are right to ask themselves - how long are we going to keep acting as if we could completely eradicate this thing?
I think weâre wise to put out the fires as they arise (with vaccines, medications and some well thought through public health measures), but we are really just waiting for the virus to run its course and become yet another endemic coronavirus (like the four others that already have been for at least a few hundred years). Evolutionary pressure on the virus will mean that the most successful version of this thing will be the variant that spreads as fast as possible with minimal damage to the host. Once a variant arises that has a low enough mortality rate (perhaps one similar to influenza), we will all have to say âalright, we will have to live with thisâ and then go on to offer seasonal vaccines to the sick and vulnerable. There is some growing evidence that Omicron might be a step towards that. Letâs see.
Finally, another great quote from Paul Kingsnorth on control.
I feel some strange glimmer of hope. Control: this is the story that the Machine tells about itself, and it is the story that we would all, at some level, like to be true. But control systems never last. The world is beyond both our understanding and our control, and so, in the end, are people. We barely understand ourselves. Perhaps Klaus Schwabâs desire to âimprove the worldâ is real and felt: but he will still never be able to grip it tightly enough to bend it to his will. Who can?
The world is not a mechanism: it is a mystery, one that we participate in daily. When we try to redesign it like a global CEO, or explain it like an essayist, we are going to fail: weakly or gloriously, but fail we shall. The Machine, the technium, the metaverse: whatever we name our 21st century Babel, and however overwhelming it seems to us in the moment, it can never conquer in the end, because it is a manifestation of human will and not the will of God. If you donât believe in the will of God, call it the law of nature instead: either way, it speaks the same thing to us. It says, gently or firmly: you are not in charge.
