Member-only story
CULTURAL PROMPT — WHAT DOES DECEMBER MEAN TO YOU?
Pandemic Fatigue
A Christmas Tale
The pandemic, a concept that was once as foreign to our modernized Western psyche, as air travel was in 1903, has become a part of our everyday life. The new normal, as some have coined it, is anything but normal. For close to a year, we have all existed under a veil of threat and harm. The pressure to constantly do the right thing is beginning to take its toll, as there is much debate over wearing a mask and the rights of citizens.
I believe it was Dr. Spock who said, in the the Star Trek movie, the Wrath of Khan (1982), “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many, far outweigh the needs of the few.” A statement that holds power and weight, especially in light of the current world situation. Yet people are saturated. It’s not that as a society, a community and human beings, we don’t want to follow these mandates, it is more likely that the exhaustion of constantly having to remember to mask, physically distance and socially isolate has now created a new type of fatigue, pandemic fatigue.
