IT WOULD BE HILARIOUS if it weren’t so utterly, catastrophically tragic.

We identified early on a few very easy ways to limit infections. Wash your hands often, wear a mask, and don’t congregate in large groups for more than a few minutes at a time. That’s it. Enough people doing those three simple things would have cut down drastically on the spread of the novel coronavirus.

And then science moved with uncommon swiftness to deliver a series of safe, effective vaccines, which were offered free — free! — to adults, and later to teens, and still later to younger children. Enough people rolling up their sleeves to receive a nearly painless injection would have helped build herd immunity and lessened hospitalizations and deaths.

But, well, either of those things would have impinged on too many of our freedoms, right? Whatever the hell that means.

And now here we are, almost two years after all of this started, still wearing masks, still counting the deaths, still mired in suffering.

More than 10 months after I last posted about this awful pandemic, we’re still dealing with it — or, perhaps, still failing to deal with it. This despite absurdly easy and effective methods that science handed us to beat it.

It would be hilarious if it weren’t so utterly, catastrophically tragic. | DL