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I didn’t limit your choice of sources, merely asked for some so I and others can learn and understand the basis for your position.

Sorry I missed “from prior infection” and being overly pedantic about the difference between “natural” and “acquired.”

And sorry you assume you will be attacked for your choice of sources rather than being debated on the merits of the statements you choose to cite.

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DrBonzo, OscarCP

Now, now, Wavy, don’t tease our friendly advisor! While she hopefully has a wide enough view of “veering,” it must be admitted that we have been really polite in dealing with the few “vaccine skeptical” contributors, at several points asking them honestly and sincerely for sources or links that might support their stance rather than dismissing them in print here with the labels I’m certain come to mind initially. Because we really do want to know. Mostly. Whether we can accept the reasoning may depend on how closed or open-minded we ourselves are on the issue, but so far there’s been no name calling or overt sarcasm—which given the emotion of the topic is pretty impressive.

Never mind that I don’t think much of Oscar’s skills regarding the reading of poetry . . .

That, plain and simple, is a copout. If they exist, links to support your statement should take mere minutes to find and list for us to read, which I am sure we are willing to do.

As far as I understand, most authorities are accepting proof of vaccination, proof of having had covid at some point and thus acquired immunity, and/or regular testing. In Slovenia, it’s the recovered-vaccinated-tested (PCT) rule. The passport plus ID system, app, or printed QR code merely proves one of these conditions applies.

I do not believe anyone has “natural” immunity, only acquired immunity from having fought off the disease. If anyone does, he or she is extremely rare and lucky.

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DrBonzo, OscarCP

For example:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/unvaccinated-sask-covid-deaths-1.6191446

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OscarCP, DrBonzo

Re #2: This forum is AskWoody. We are all well informed and responsible and vaccinated by definition, so attention is already being paid, right? Hopefully, the question of why and what to do about it resulted in a good thread.

Re P.S.: My point was it’s not supposed to scan. Deliberately. For effect.

A self-exiled leader of the Catalan separatist movement was arrested in Italy on his way to a Catalan festival in Sardinia last week.

I’ll check back, but I think I’m done on the original topic—or the variant I pushed it toward on why the denial and what can be done (my impression rereading the initial entry is that the writer wanted merely a summary of the current state of play with regard to the pandemic, which is easy enough to find on BBC, CBC, and NYT pages).

Of the two methods I’ve advocated for, it appears that vax passports or the related restrictions to one’s “freedom” to access public spaces like malls, cinemas, stadiums, and so on are having the effect of increasing vaccinations, but a proper media fear campaign with graphic imagery and local covid death lists on the front page (for example) has not been tried. Such a campaign might not be as morally justified as the anti-smoking labeling campaign since smoking is clearly a personal choice (ignoring secondhand smoke for the moment) but extreme measures to combat extreme stupidity and stubbornness might be necessary.

 

I did say “Western world,” meaning primarily North America and Europe. We started, after all, bemoaning mainly the divisions and conditions in the USA. Much of the ROW, as you point out, retains medieval living conditions with resulting economic and human consequences.

Still unconvinced? Read aloud from “My name is . . .”; pause for dramatic effect after “despair”; and then basically continue non-stop right to the end. I assume you are well-versed enough to avoid the sing-song trap of reading line by line.

My missing comment entered at 7:09. I’m sure it wasn’t there before even when I reloaded the page to see new sub-comments. All hail to internet speeds and glitches!

I would argue that the dull thud ending of the poem was deliberate, poetic license perhaps to bend the iambic pentameter rules and rhythm to create the effect I mentioned before. Pretentious pride ending in a dull thud, vast unfinished emptiness? The point is, I think the structure is deliberate and effective.

I quoted “a pandemic by now perhaps under way to being recounted by generations to come along with the tales of those plagues that periodically desolated the ancient world” and then proceeded to explain why I think future horror stories will not be told in the West since the physical suffering has not been particularly visible due to hospitalizations and quarantine restrictions on visitors.

It’s gone now but I don’t recall any untoward behaviour on my part—and no explanatory email, just the notices of new comments.

P.S. It’s “decay” not “bare” in the Ozymandias digression (edited).

Is it my imagination or did an entire sponse-response set of comments just disappear? I swear I read (and quoted) an Oscar comment on future recountings of the 2020-2021 covid plague similar to accounts of the medieval plagues, and I responded with a windy exposition of why there won’t be any—limited access to hospitals for relatives, hence no tragic stories of final handholding and last wishes—and that a graphic fear TV campaign showing covid wards and autopsies might work.

Neither the original entry nor my comment appears above. What happened?

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210927&instance_id=41408&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=82372162&segment_id=70000&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F244026b3-76c8-5944-a3ac-deef5c609db3&user_id=4607fedbc12cad932f33c4a7a4e4b4c6

I’ve forgotten the concept of “scan” whether it refers to syllable count, rhyme, or logical sequence. I would agree that “away” doesn’t somehow connect back to “decay” regardless of the rhyming, but on the other hand the abruptness of the seemingly isolated last syllable hints at the vastness of the empty desert space, somehow unfinished and eternal.

Sounds like karst Slovenia with the Postojna and Škocjan caves:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

except that our coast is quite sunny much of the year.

Oscar: “. . . a pandemic by now perhaps under way to being recounted by generations to come along with the tales of those plagues that periodically desolated the ancient world . . .”

I suspect that in the Western world, a multitude of covid plague stories in later times will actually NOT occur much beyond the recital of statistics and immediate family memories of the dead when they were actually alive. During medieval plagues and the Spanish flu, masses died in the streets or at home so tales of wagons piled high with collected bodies, houses full of bodies, overburdened cemeteries, and the like had a visual and real basis. Today, the deaths occur out of sight in closed ICU wards or covid wards where no one is likely watching the guy in the next bed suffer because trying yourself to breathe is an all-consuming endeavour. And in many places, visitors were and are not allowed due to quarantine policies, so there aren’t even stories of handholding and last wishes to be recounted at the funerals.

So, out of sight, out of mind making willful ignorance easy enough to indulge in. So, I do not expect any mythology or descriptive legends to appear later about the great 2020-2021 covid plague that ravaged the Western world and how well we coped with it. Outside of the USA, it’s already “Trump who?” given the lack of constant headlines so why should the unseen effects of covid be any different?

All of which suggests the TV coverage of patients trying to breathe or even dying, relatives crying in the parking lot, autopsy shots of opened lungs clogged with mucous, and anything else to graphically illustrate that it’s really happening and it’s really dreadful might be an effective public health measure. Like the mostly now ignored but possibly successful cigarette graphics, it might work . . .

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wavy