Endemic

There’s no finish line.

— Gov. Gavin Newsom

My hat's off to Gavin Newsom for declaring that Covide-19 is no longer epidemic, but endemic, in California. 

And so he's taking steps to mainstream it, acknowledging that government must combat Covid-19 perpetually, as it perpetually combats smoking, obesity, unsafe products, and water pollution.

And naturally, as with other public hazards, some people will die.

News flash, America: death is endemic everywhere. It always has been. It's inescapable and baked in.

Most of us simply choose to deny that cold fact.

Perhaps mainstreaming Covid-19, which to date has killed nearly 1 million Americans, will depoliticize it and wake sleepwalking citizens to the inexorability of their own deaths.

Our country would be a much happier place.

The existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger defined the human being as finite, a "being-toward-death" (Sein zum Tode).

Where man is concerned, death is baked in, Heidegger claimed. Death is life's "fellow." 

Heidegger also believed that accepting death—your own death—brought you unbounded freedom—and unbounded happiness.

"Turning away from a flight from death," he said, "you see a horizon of opportunity." 

Embracing your death—denying your denial of death—"puts you in a state of anticipatory resoluteness with a solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure perfused with unshakeable joy."

Who knows but that mainstreaming Covid-19 could make common courtesy and civility—the "solicitous regard for others"—routine again; and make vaccination and mask-wearing badges of honor that announce to the world, "I can't outrun death and don't wish to try. I'm terribly mortal—and happy."

As to those discourteous, miserable many who resist vaccinations and masks I say, so think you can outrun your own death? Good luck with that. 

There's no finish line but one.