A Journal of the Plague Year 2021–chapter 203

Tuesday, March 23

Things to worry about after you’ve gotten your two anti-COVID-19 shots (including some things I simply don’t understand):

  • Officials are urging people to get vaccinated before any more new coronavirus variants emerge. Why? How effective will the existing vaccines be in warding off new strains? Or is the idea that you need to ward off the existing strain of COVID-19 before it morphs into a new strain, using your body as a host?
  • I have participated in NO zoom calls—none. Am I now hopelessly antiquated?
  • My brain is flooded with memories from the past. I dream about BusinessWeek colleagues and scenes that never took place. I daydream about embarrassing moments, some of which took place when I was in junior high school. Why?
  • I think about my mother, my uncles and cousins, my old friends all the time. What?
  • There are the ever-present anxieties about death. How much longer do we have on Earth? Isn’t true old age worse than death?
  • Things to fix at the house: a leak in the bathroom ceiling that shows up when it rains hard; stuff in the basement to throw out and insulation to be fixed; driveway pebbles to be replaced.
  • Do I need to get the car’s oil changed even though it has traveled only a little over a thousand miles since the last oil change?
  • Other health anxieties too gruesome to list
  • The squirrels are eating the tulip shoots as soon as they come up in the yard or planters outside? What can be done?
  • I’ve finished reading Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Viet Cong spy novel, The Sympathizer. Should I try to get his sequel, The Committed—or maybe Kazuo Ishiguro’s new book, Klara and the Sun?

Dinner: black beans and rice and a green salad

Entertainment: one episode of the German show Anatomy of Evil on Mhz and episodes of season three of Fargo.