Disclaimer: fully jabbed, masked wearing compliant person here, but also a teacher and a parent who has witnessed the devastating effects of lockdowns on young people in particular.
I have noticed the likes of Christina Pagel and Deepti Gurdasani on Twitter using the word "hopium" to describe anyone who is mildly optimistic that omicron might be a milder variant or that we are not in as bad a situation as we might otherwise be without vaccines or compared to last year, and I think the use of this word captures why I find them so awful.
Hope is a fundamental part of the human condition it seems to me, and to deride it as "hopium" just seems contemptuous and joyless. If they have read Emily Disckinson, or Barack Obama, or St Paul, surely they would understand the need for hope, even in the most dire of circumstances? But there seems to be a determination amongst some to deny any sense of hope that we may be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel and in stead they seem to delight in the misery and fear of it all.
Is it just me??