Reflections on a Year of Covid
An end is in sight: My wife and I got our second shots of Pfizer vaccine this week. Iit’s one of the benefits of being old farts: We were near the front of the line for the shots. My second shot came 364 days after the identification of the first case of Covid-19 in Colorado. The limited freedom immunity brings starts in a week.
Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash
A year earlier our minds were on skiing. Our grandchildren love the sport, as do we. I lead, the two grandchildren follow me and my wife takes up the rear in case of any emergencies. “Skiing is my favorite adventure,” my granddaughter says. The last picture, actually a video, on my phone prior to lockdown is of my granddaughter dancing with the mountain. The week after that trip, the resorts closed.
With some luck, we will once again ski in the coming weeks.
I got a Zoom Professional subscription early on and in the early months of the lockdown, we would have “Zoom Happy Hours” with friends. I stopped going into the office in late March and Zoom, despite it being a “happy hour” soon became a burden when combined with my work life on zoom. As we retreated into our safe little bubble, it became harder and harder to see the people we love on a screen, to hear their voices from speakers. At some point it became easier to miss them.
Small gatherings by the 4th of July will be welcomed, as well as hugging our friends and seeing them in person.
In the early days, it was difficult to feel safe anywhere outside of our home. Masking and social distancing became a reflection of a person’s political identity, a simple act of care for one’s fellow man became, a violation of civil liberties. We listened to the stand-up of Operation Warp Speed and trivializing the disease. A year later, there are still those out there who have not learned to wear a mask properly. 560,000 Americans have died as a result of the “China flu.”
Response to a global pandemic became politicized and people died as a result of that politicization.
As the pandemic took form, it seemed we were living in two parallel worlds, one of science and caution, the other of conspiracy and disregard for others. A good third of the population rejected masks, injected hydroxychloroquine and believed that a black light up the ass would cure them of Covid-19. It would disappear. It wasn’t that deadly. It was only killing old people. As hospitals filled to capacity, then overfilled, people continued to go out without masks, to congregate, to spray their respiratory droplets far and wide.
A full third of the American population could not accept the minor inconvenience of wearing a face mask to keep their countrymen, neighbors and loved ones safe. This is the one truth I will take with me as we approach the end of the pandemic phase of Covid-19. On reflection, it is nothing new: At least twice per commute someone attempts to kill me by running a red light in their haste to get wherever they are going. People are more than willing to kill you over a 90 second delay at a stoplight. Or over covering their faces.
After the initial surge of Covid cases, things started to subside. We expanded our Covid bubble to a few dear friends. As summer became fall, we started to go to a local brewery again, if we could sit outside. Then came winter, cold closed outside seating, and the second big surge arrived. By then, most people were wearing masks, even if some had not figured out they need to cover their noses as well as their mouths. We limited our movement to grocery stores, home improvement stores, and stores serving our hobbies. Covid-19 was a powerful influence on the elections, the elections cost us contact with our son-in-law and served as a powerful incentive for a third of the population to do whatever the hell they wanted with no regard for others’ safety, or for that matter, their own. Cases surged.
Then the vaccines came. What could be a return to normalcy marred by haste to reopen and refusal to take the vaccine. Honestly, if anti-vaxxers could keep their infections to themselves, I would consider it their own stupid decision to deny the vaccine and nominate their dead for Darwin awards. But each unvaccinated person is a potential repository for the virus and each reproduction of the virus is an opportunity for a new variant to appear.
We are looking forward to normalcy. I have my first set of lift tickets to take the grandkids for at least one outing this year. I’ve been to the office three times in the past year and do not want to start the daily commute again. We have not seen our Colorado mountains up close for over a year. All of these things will be possible for us soon, for everyone a bit after that. But….
I will never forget the callous disregard for science and others’ safety I’ve seen in a third of my countrymen. A third of my countrymen denied the science, looked to a demagogue for false hope and fake news, trivialized the disease while others died. A third of my countrymen were willing to remain repositories a potentially fatal disease rather than accept a safe, effective, free vaccination. I will share the road with these people. They vote, potentially inflicting their malice and cruelty on me via “representatives” in Washington or Denver. They own guns. They are willing to invade the Capitol.
I have, unfortunately, learned the truth about my fellow Americans. It is not a pleasant thing to learn.
