A lot of y’all are clicking on these posts and reading what I’m writing this month, so here’s all I’ve got for this morning:

COVID is not over. People are still dying, and a lot more people are going to die over the next month.

This morning, I’m praying for a toddler and a 92 year old, both of whom are pretty sick with COVID, both of whom contracted it because someone in their close circles refused to be vaccinated. I’m furious alongside these people and their families.

I’m hopeful on a meta-level about COVID in general right now: more and more people are getting vaccinated around the world, and the vaccines are holding the line for the moment. There are new treatments for people who do get sick, and we know a LOT about how to prevent spread. My sense is that even Omicron, which is going to make a ton of us sick and end up killing a bunch more people, is less ominous than the previous variants.

But we’re all tired, and traumatized, and grieving, and fed up with the constant red-level alerts. And we just want to have Christmas dinner with people we love, you know?

I’m not an epidemiologist or a doctor or a public health professional, just someone who reads widely and wants to do all I possibly can to prevent harm. There are a few hundred of you reading these daily posts, and saying it to all of you is one way to prevent harm and take my prayers for a walk:

Get a vaccine if you haven’t. Get boosted if you’re vaccinated. Wear a mask in public. If you’re in charge of some gathering or community space (like, perhaps, a congregation…), request, encourage, and enforce mask wearing, especially over these next few weeks when Christmas gatherings will bring a bunch of us into close quarters with one another just at the same time as a much more contagious variant breaks its way into the US.