Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Four Hundred Fifty Five

We are truly in summer now, the days warm and the evenings pleasant. It has been as hot a June as I can recall with several days in the thirties. With the lifting of some of the quarantine restrictions, restaurants with their patios are now fully open and people are flocking to them. It is wonderful to see people gathering, smiling faces and laughter.

The retreat of the grippe reborn continues in these parts. Each day brings dwindling numbers, even with the relaxation of the protocols. It is proof, as if we needed more having seen what has happened elsewhere, that the inoculations work. I am due to receive my second before the end of the month. Hopefully my love will be able to as well. It seems most everyone who wants them should be able to have their doses by the end of July.

But therein lies the problem. Those seeking out their first doses have dwindled as well. We are stalled just below the seventy percent mark that the government has set for ending restrictions. They have grown desperate to encourage more people to take up the doses, launching a lottery and trying to reach out to those communities where the uptake has been slow. With the shrinking footprints of the dread lord many must feel that there is no rush, that the risk without is minimal. And for now that may be true, but in the fall as flu season returns the dread lord will as well, perhaps armed with new and seductive powers.

There is no convincing some people though. No matter how many millions receive their doses, with few showing any ill effects, no matter how much the dread lord is thwarted by those who have received it, there will still be those who claim the inoculations don’t work. They talk of it as being an experimental treatment, as if every treatment we receive from doctors, every drug from every pharmacy wasn’t based on experiments and trials. They dismiss the dread lord’s power and say there is no need to protect themselves against him, forgetting all those who do not have any defences.

It would be one thing if they simply declined to have their doses, but they feel the need to always loudly insist upon the righteousness of their refusal and to verbally assault those of us who make another choice. They demand a choice for themselves, which they have, but that isn’t enough for them. They loudly scream against anyone who feels differently and it is evident if they had their way none of us would receive an inoculation. They are the same loud, vain, fools who have spent the last year crying out against the quarantine protocols, preferring to pretend that the dread lord isn’t real. Life would be much easier if the things we can’t control were all illusions. What will happen when they are ended, I wonder, where will their anger take them?

As I write this my parents send word they at the inoculation site awaiting their second dose. Day by day there will be more. It really does feel as though we are approaching the end this time, though, of course, the war against the dread lord will never be won entirely.