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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

With the mask mandates lifting, cases in the US slowing, and vaccination rates rising, it feels like, if not the end, the beginning of the end of the pandemic. Recently on Kottke Ride Home I heard about how people got through pandemics in the past. For example, students tuned in to school lessons on the radio. Which got me thinking: how will people in the future wonder how we in the past got through the pandemic without the technology they will take for granted? Perhaps they will say, “How could they get through a pandemic without 3-D virtual reality goggle space? They must have been so lonely!” Or, “I can’t imagine being isolated without autonomous delivery vehicles.” Or, “A pandemic lockdown without on-demand printed food is unthinkable.” Best of all would be where competent government, well-supported and regulated pharmaceutical systems, and equitable political, social, and medical treatment means that potential epidemics are identified and shut down right away. Will people of the future say, “That Covid-19 pandemic is completely bonkers, how could something like that ever even have happened.” I hope so.