Fear

Monday

Gilbert T. Sewall

Downfall of the California Maskies

Remember three years ago this month when shoppers were emptying supermarket shelves and locking themselves down inside? The masking of America was beginning — and for some it has never ended. On March 4, California’s governor Gavin Newsom terminated a three-year Covid state of emergency. His Department of Public Health will end mask requirements in medical facilities, prisons and homeless shelters beginning April 3. The nation’s official public health emergency will end on May 11. Blue-state and federal authorities are having a hard time letting go of the crisis. With the end of California’s rules, the city of San Francisco — bless its heart — has instated its own mandatory masking.

Tuesday

Peter Van Buren

Exhausted by America’s culture of fear

When I try to sleep at night, I can't relax. I blearily turn on the TV, but I can't change the channel. My TV is telling me I am going to die, maybe from Covid (they say there's a new variant, you know, called Monkeypox); maybe from climate change because it is likely already too late. Before I drown because of climate change, I'll be hungry because supply chains don't work anymore, and inflation is stripping away my purchasing power, and some sort of fascist coup will happen, and I'll probably have to wear all gray clothes all the time like in the dystopian movies. Then there are the TV diseases, bowel disorders and skin problems that medicines I can't afford might fix except side effects can include blindness, paralysis, saying thingstoofasttounderstandanditallisjustablur of fear.

Thursday

Karol Markowicz

The United States of Fear

We recently left the country for the first time since the pandemic began. I could say that we’d always wanted to go to Iceland, but the truth is, we’d wanted to go to Iceland ever since we heard how sanely they handle visitors. Even at the height of the pandemic in 2020, they didn’t require COVID tests for children. They still don’t. Iceland is the world’s most vaccinated nation, with 86 percent of the country having gotten the jab. A recent ‘spike’ (they peaked at 170 cases per day in mid-August) led to an indoor mask mandate, but it doesn’t apply to kids. The mandate is also very loosely enforced. There are no Karens shrieking at people to mask up in shops, and I saw many unmasked Icelanders indoors.

travel

Sunday

Bridget Phetasy

A matter of life and death

The ice on my right breast is a painful reminder of the limbo I currently find myself in: the anxiety-provoking space between a biopsy and the results. The time when you try to think positively — as if your magical thinking could change the results, the nature of whatever cells the needle procured. I’m simultaneously telling myself ‘worry is praying to the wrong God’ and repeating the word ‘benign’ over and over and over again. But the knot in my stomach is wondering if I’m about to enter a nightmare. You do your best to stay present but work falls through the cracks. You explain it away by apologizing and vaguely mentioning that you have some ‘health stuff’ you’re dealing with: nothing serious, just annoying.

Biopsy