Running out of steam
---------------------

I think I'm doomscrolling way too fucking
much. I mean one could easily argue that one
shouldn't be doomscrolling at all. This is
true. I concede your point imaginary reader who
criticizes my every word as I type it.

But I think I've just started to lose myself to
reading more and more news about what's
happening right now, how bad covid is, what
long-covid is actually like, the rate at which
people are getting long-covid, the ways even
vaccinated people are getting chronic illness,
&c. &c. &fuckingc.

It's getting to me. It's getting to me bad in
part because there are so many people who it's
*not* getting to at all. So many people who
don't seem to care or worry about what's
happening.

I feel like so many people have hit a point of
thinking "eh, I'm vaccinated" even when
literally what's happening now is we have our
first strain that's easily infecting people who
are vaxxed and the more infections happen the
more we're making dice rolls that it's fitness
for further infection is going to improve.

I don't know it just makes me feel crazy right
now as there's so much talk of pushing kids back
into schools even though omicron is wrecking
children right now and causing childhood
hospitalizations to spike up.

Nearly a million people a day are reporting
infections and that's even with how bad testing
is bottlenecked at the moment.

That's absolutely terrifying, right? Or at least
it should be?

If that many people are getting infected we're
just waiting for inevitable further
variations. But I keep feeling powerless as I'm
reading stories coming out of schools that are
already open about how bad things are, how many
teachers are getting sick, how many *children*
are getting sick, how many siblings and parents
and others are getting sick from the children
being sick and we don't know five years from now
how wrecked we're all going to be all of this
and it feels like everyone with a bit of power
in my country has just decided that anyone who
dies just count as acceptable losses.

God, sorry, I've ranted like this before
repeatedly on this phlog but my point is that I
keep reading more and more because it feels like
someone needs to keep caring, someone needs to
witness, someone needs to be hurt and scared to
make up for all the people who aren't.

And I know that's self-destructive and I know
it's a very stupid kind of feeling in-control
when I feel powerless, but I don't know how to
stop without just locking myself out of my phone
for eight hours at a time or making myself not
have an internet connection.

I don't know, maybe that's what it's going to
take.