Day 350: Shots In Arms

350 days into the Pandemic and America has lost at least one-half-million people to the pandemic. We should probably pause there to think about that sobering datapoint. 

That number is more than just a five with six zeros following behind it. That number represents the multitudes of lives snuffed out. It does not even begin to cover those who are still sick, still suffering and those who lost a loved one. Too many have been lost. I don't want to dismiss that number before I continue.

And yet with every bitter winter, no matter how long, no matter how cold, a spring follows. 

The snow is melting, the United States has a new president, and vaccines are going into arms. Even the best hopes scientists gave us 350 days ago did not include vaccinated citizens within a year of the start of the pandemic. Furthermore, the dream that vaccines would be 95% effective seemed impossible back then. So in some ways we are living in one of the good multiverses- a world where we get a second chance.

Slowly the people in my life have been acquiring their first or second doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. And for me, personally, I feel this opens the door. Through that open door I can imagine a world where I eventually resume some activities that have sorely missed during this last year.

Going to restaurants, going to the movies, seeing relatives and friends. Even the very first day of this vaccine has given me a feeling of safety that I have not felt since the very early days of 2020. The vaccine feels like a magic feather and yet it's not magic, it's actual science at work.

Will these vaccines actually cause the COVID virus and all of its mutations to start to die off? This remains to be seen. We can hope that our lives might return to something that resembles our pre-pandemic world. But we have to also be prepared for the fact that this virus might be with us in some form for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, however, the world has moved on from the early days of 2020. More of us now work from home. More of us have found new hobbies. For my household that means my wife and I have played more board games this year than all the other years in our lives combined.

Other people have taken up jigsaw puzzles. People have learned to knit. Books have been read. TV shows have been unearthed from the archives of shows people have always meant to watch but never had the time.

Some of us might even be better people than we were 350 days ago. That's a nice thought, isn't it?

Yes, the world has moved on...

This post may end up as a coda, one last "sign-off" for the crazy year that was COVID-19. Or... this post may just be another signpost along the long strange road that we are all now driving down. One of those back country no-man's-land stretches of highway. Cruising along in the middle of the night, your eyes heavy and your head wanting a bed. The road never seems to end. You wait for a sign of civilization and it doesn't come. 
Have we arrived or have we only just started?