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[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. I really, really wish hospitals would refuse to treat the unvaccinated if they get Covid.

Treat them for anything else, absolutely, but not for Covid.

And here's something I've been saying for quite a while now about all of this.

Pretend it's the spring of 1939, you and I are good friends and we're planning a trip to Europe next year. We've been scrimping and saving, working extra jobs, planned at least some of where we'll go and what we'll do. We can hardly wait! It's going to be a fantastic trip.

Then September rolls around and war breaks out. Oh, crap. Clearly we won't be going to Europe next year, but we're optimistic that the war won't last long and we can go in 1941. Alas, the war drags on and on. It doesn't finally end until May, 1945 in Europe. The very soonest we could make that long-postponed trip will be 1946, maybe even a year or two later. And when we finally get there, the Europe we see will be unimaginably different from the one we would have seen in 1939.

And so it's going to be with Covid. Things will change, change more, change differently from anything we could have imagined a year and a half ago. I hesitate to make any solid predictions, but I'm hoping that the kinds of things President Biden is trying to do will be among them. Better health care, a far stronger safety net, a more robust infrastructure. None of these things will happen quickly or easily, but perhaps in a decade, maybe less.