In this malleable, ebb-and-flow pandemic world, there may be one certainty gleaned from the last nearly two years of living with the coronavirus: that here and there may not look very much alike.
When New York City was all sirens, silence and grim isolation during the first wave of the pandemic, it was easy for someone in, say, Medicine Lodge, Kan., to shrug and wonder what all the fuss was over this coronavirus — until a couple months later it swept through the plains.
It has continued since, this cresting and falling, with mask and vaccine mandates, new variants, and the uncomfortable and unrelenting dance for policymakers — who have been tugged one way by science (that quickly shifts) and another by a fitful business community (that may not always tend to its employees’ well being with the same vigor it tends to the bottom line).