The National Emergency We Have Forgotten

chris field
8 min readSep 17, 2021
A person wearing white rubber gloves prepares a needle to inject. The camera if focused on the needle.
Photo by: Joshua Bamidele, from
Burst, Some Rights Reserved

The kids are back to school, the ballparks are at capacity, and people are flowing out of bars and restaurants again. The economic engine of the country is oiled and pumping. It makes me glad to see so many people having fun and living their lives. Normal is what we have all been wanting. It is finally here. Something about it keeps nagging at me, though. It is not the web headlines or the evening news. It’s the data.