COVID IS OVER (?)

I just looked it up.  On January 31, 2020 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued the following: "Determination that a Public Health Emergency Exists Nationwide as the Result of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus."  

I bet on that date no one paid much attention...or even knew what "novel coronavirus" meant.  Oh, it was mentioned and we were starting to be cautioned, but wasn't that something that happened in China?  Or Italy? Or New York City?   We here in the city where I live had a bit more of an early wake-up call since at some point early on it was determined that a patient at the hospital a couple miles from my house was the first diagnosed person in the U.S. with the virus, after returning from a trip to Wuhan, China.  Still...it seemed weird and maybe a little concerning, but life just went on.  It was a "flu thing", right?

Wrong.  In February 2020 our state was in the news again as a resident at a nursing home in suburban Seattle was the first reported death from the coronavirus, as we still called it then, and it spread through the facility with lightening speed taking the lives of many.  We all got serious and started to wonder what was going on and what to do about it.

By mid-March 2020, the country and the world were shutting down.  The "lockdown" came. Daily activities, like work, school, national sports, arts and entertainment, retail establishments, the travel industry, churches, and social gatherings...essentially everything we'd always taken for granted was shuttered, suspended, over.  Streets were deserted as we were admonished to stay inside and away from other people.  We thought it would last for maybe two weeks.  We couldn't even imagine at that point what was ahead of us for months, years.

Slowly over time things got back to something like it was in the "Before Times".  And now, a little over a week ago, on May 11, 2023, the Public Health Emergency officially ended.  Finally enough people have been vaccinated or achieved a level of immunity through exposure that the virus is not as virulent for most of us. New vaccines and medications meant that even those who contracted the virus were likely not going to suffer life-threatening symptoms, were likely not going to die.  

But does that mean "Covid is over" like some people want to believe?  No.  I sat with an old friend at a fundraising dinner this week who shared that he and his wife, both of whom had avoided the virus for 3 years, had succumbed within a month of each other early this spring.  My own son has had it three times.  All have been fully vaccinated.  It is out there, waiting.  Those who are older or who have underlying health conditions that make them more susceptible are still at increased risk.  So we stay vigilant.

Hub and I went yesterday for yet another "booster" -- this is our 6th Covid-19 vaccination since January 2021, when we got our first and long-awaited shot.   At that time the vaccine was new and so many people were clamoring, one had to sit for hours/days/weeks online trying to secure an appointment at one of the large vaccination sites set up in arenas and parking lots trying to vaccinate thousands of people.  We took photos of ourselves getting our vaccination.  I actually wept -- not from fear or pain, but from gratitude.  Now we try to stay up to date with the new vaccine boosters that fight the variants that have morphed from the original virus and I continue to be grateful, if not tearfully so.  It's just a commonplace thing we do now; humans adapt.

Yet, as we waited for our shot yesterday, Hub reminded me of that first one and I got teary again.  I had a flash of memory of that awful time of constant news stories, and personal stories, of the suffering and death Covid brought to the world, and probably every single person in it, either personally or through someone they know.  I thought of all the anti-maskers and anti-vaccs-ers (including those in leadership in our government) who contributed to the ongoing spread of the virus out of a misguided notion that they knew better than all the reputable doctors, scientists, and researchers who were so desperately trying to stop the pandemic.  They helped prolong the suffering and death unnecessarily.  

I could write pages and pages of memories -- both horrific and grateful -- about the past three years of living through this historic pandemic.  It was a time of terror and a time of optimism.  It was a time of confusion, isolation, and heartbreaking loneliness and a time of reaching out and making connections in new ways we had never imagined.  It was a time of boredom and a time of creativity.  I wrote lots of blog posts then and I suppose those will suffice as my personal chronicle, but I know there was much more to my experience that didn't get recorded, because it couldn't.  It was too all-encompassing.

Today I'm still dealing with the fallout of it all.  I am outrageously grateful that my family survived (we've all had it except Hub and the grandchildren).  I am outrageously grateful that science and (finally, with a new administration in D.C!) good policy won the day.  But I still also recall the terror, the frustration, the rage, the helplessness, the loneliness, the sadness of it all.

I think we've all learned, even while life on the surface looks like everything is "back to normal", that naively thinking we are immune to some future similar event is just wishful thinking.  We know now.  And maybe we will be more prepared next time.  Or not.  People want to "forget" and move on.  They want to leave it all in the past.  

But for me, the past is fertile ground for learning and remembering.  I will take those lessons with me into the present and the future.  Hub and I still mask in enclosed spaces (airports, airplanes, stores; we choose to eat outside when we can at restaurants, etc.)  These days that just feels like common sense to me and I'm a little uncomfortable when I can't do that.  The possibility of contracting Covid is still just at the edge of my awareness.  Because it's still with us.  And likely always will be,  Health Emergency officially ending or not.  We need to be mindful of that and take nothing for granted.  Every day is a gift.

At least that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit: I took this photo in the public restroom of a local coffeeshop/bookstore.  It hangs as a piece of early history of the pandemic.   It feels silly now to read it, but then we had no idea.  We had so much to learn!   Be well, my friends. 🙏🏽