No one could convince me that the FDA and CDC are functioning anywhere near optimally, and maybe their biggest failure is a lack of effective messaging. They should very clearly (and repeatedly) discuss the common theme of needing to adjust their directives in response to the US's changing covid environment. Their directions keep changing because so does the virus, and vaccine effectiveness, too, in fairly complex and unpredictable ways. Attempts at messaging have been made, but nah. Nah. Not sure who to blame.

Pretty weird that some of the establishment still chooses to die on the hill of "definitely 100% NOT from The Wuhan Laboratory for Coronaviruses", seemingly in large part simply because Trump suggested it. The more important plot line is that Trump had the intel warning of grave danger, but played covid as a threat he should try to minimize, for political gain, yet he also weaponized covid against China to project a strongman image and deflect blame. I wished his voting base wouldn't let him have it both ways. The uptick in hate crimes against Asian Americans since his rhetoric should also hover over him. Luckily, Biden's first big foreign policy move went off without a hitch!! #1 BEST PULLOUT SINCE 'NAM

'K sorry. CDC and FDA have probably interfaced less, of lately, with international organizations like the WHO (see: Trump hated WHO), but most foreign Western government health policy recommendations for covid-19 have a lot in common. The general understanding of covid-19 is even less in dispute. What drives any differing policies right now, the top three things: case numbers, vaccine availability, and vaccine uptake.

The US needs more vaccine uptake. It's available. Pretty much anyone else around the world without it wants it. Demonstrably, case numbers are bad in areas with low vaccine uptake right now. The vaccines also make you at least 90% on average less likely to die if you are exposed, currently. I've taken it, I'm fine. Wellllllll, no, but I was always like this.

Abroad is my only sibling. They're on a 9 pm to 5 am curfew, mask mandates, even outdoor exercise limitations now. They've been on three separate month-ish sets of something like this, because the gov't figured that was their best strategy. The most recent one comes as the vaccine is finally becoming available. They're gonna reach higher vaccination rates (total % vaxx'd) than us (US) within a few weeks, looks like. Drives home how conditions are evolving in different phases and social climates of this virus everywhere in the world right now.

I don't think most anti-vaxx folks are saying "straight to the googles for an hour to check UK's Ministry of Health against Germany's _________ to learn about foreign state health recommendations". I think anti-vaxx America is on Insta, Fbook, Tweeters, etc. where they choose their preferred narratives, subconsciously or not, notably with the gratuitous help of big tech's algorithms. I don't think it's going well.

So: IN A WORLD, where covid was used by state actors to seed social division on the internet, with both of us each the victim but also both to blame, in a complex web of meme referencings and "harmless" pranks, directed by (and starring!) Hubskiteer, the lovable Hubski K9 and Three Quarters Mascot™ (don't re-read it, it's not a sentence). That's four people roles played by two people, primarily featuring a dog, set in the Golden Retriever Potterverse, and it's our movie plot. See you guys there.