We've Come a Long Way

 It's been a long, strange, difficult year. As of the writing of this, the United States has lost a total of  568,962 lives to COVID-19. By my rudimentary mathematical calculations, that equates to an average of 1,425 people dying every day since the lockdown began last March. Sure, people die every day. It's a fact of life. In 'normal' times, an average of 5,500 people die in the United States everyday. But it's the way that a lot of COVID victims died -alone, isolated, afraid, struggling to breathe- that really weighs heavy on my mind. And what about all those people who survived their initial bout with COVID-19 only to continue to suffer "long haul" effects and ailments? I consider myself and my wife and two kids some of the extremely lucky ones. None of us contracted COVID-19 yet and my wife and I are fully vaccinated while both my kids have just received their first vaccine doses yesterday. I feel like we've managed to dodge a bullet for over a year now.  I've done live, in-person music gigs since May of 2020. In the beginning, they were all outside with proper mask and distancing protocols followed, but as the weather turned cooler, the gigs moved inside and so did I. Again, masks and social distancing/capacity limits were in effect, but you don't need a medical degree to realize playing inside is definitely more risky than playing outside. Still, somehow, I managed to avoid getting sick. It's pretty incredible when I think about it. The same goes for my wife. She certainly wasn't playing at any of those gigs, but she was usually there in the audience and so were a lot of my friends. My son has worked full time-ish since last July. He's a mechanic and works around numerous other mechanics as well as the general public coming in and out of the shop all the time. My daughter has worked at a shirt and souvenir shop in downtown Annapolis a couple days a week since last July too. When I take all that into consideration, it truly is incredible that none of us have gotten sick. I'm not bragging; I'm just extremely thankful.

Even those of us who have never gotten sick from COVID-19, have had our lives completely flipped upside-down by this pandemic. I hear people using the line, "When things get back to normal" all the time... I'm not sure we'll ever see those bygone days of how "normal" used to be defined. We've (most of us, anyway) definitely evolved in the past year. We've found or created new ways of doing things and safer ways to live our lives. We've learned more about our local and global society -and not all of those lessons were fun ones. We've all endured some mixture of financial, emotional, and physical hardships brought on by this pandemic and we don't seem to be completely out of the woods yet. For me, one of the most tiring and draining aspects right now is not really knowing what the future will look like. We're all still wearing masks (well, most of us are) and being careful and, as of today, 40% of the eligible U.S. population are vaccinated and half -50%- have received at least one dose. That's the threshold at which some studies suggest that new infections should start dropping dramatically. Let's hope those studies are right. Do you remember way back in April of last year when all the talk about coming up with a vaccine was heating up? Best estimates from most experts were stating a vaccine might be available in 18-24 months. Yet, here were are a little over a year later and we have half of our citizens with a vaccine in their arms. That's pretty incredible if you ask me. It shows the vital importance of investing in education, science, and technology. It also shows the importance of national and global cooperation and collaboration -something I believe was severely lacking in the beginning of this pandemic thanks to the orange-haired goof sitting in the Oval Office at the time. 

I think we've learned some valuable lessons; both through our successes and innovations and our mistakes and failures during the past year. We've come a long way and, I have to say, things could've been a lot worse. Take a look at poor India right now. They're in the grips of a staggering and deadly second wave of COVID-19 infections and, in just the last 24 hours, have recorded some 314,835 new coronavirus cases, while deaths rose by 2,104. Hospitals don't even have enough oxygen for patients that are sometimes double-up in a single bed. India thought they were out of the woods and obviously loosened restrictions too much, too soon. My heart goes out to the entire country and I sincerely hope the rest of the world, us included, pays close attention to what happening there so we can prevent similar nightmare scenarios from playing out here. There's still so much we don't know about variants and vaccine efficacy durations. It's scary. And it looks like this IS the new normal for us... looking over our shoulders and monitoring trends and statistics. And maybe that's not a bad thing either. Maybe we've matured and evolved into a more resilient, proactive society now. I've always considered a majority of Americans to be spoiled and entitled. I definitely attribute some of that sense of entitlement to the uproar by some of having to wear a mask and abide by some pretty simple social distancing rules. Some people just never got it -and never will. They're focused on their rights and their freedom and personal liberty -screw the rest of the world. I guess that sense of entitlement isn't a strictly 'American' phenomenon, but it's certainly not hard to come across here in the good old US of A.

Perhaps too many people are looking for the finish line in this pandemic. But what if there isn't one? What if winning against this pandemic -and future ones- simply means coming up with a revised version of normal? Perhaps we come out of the experiences of the past year with a new appreciation of our lives and the little miracles and highlights that we used to take for granted before. Personal connections. Solitude. Downtime. Appreciation. Gratitude. A sense of Community. Helping others. Letting go of the unnecessary people and things in our lives. And holding the people and things we cherish most just a little bit closer and tighter. You've probably heard this next quote at one time or another in one form or another. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It's attributed to writer and philosopher George Santayana. I think it fits in perfectly with what I'm getting at here. For as much hardship, frustration, and loss that we've all had to deal with this past year, I hope we've all learned a ton about the importance and frailty of life and how we can adapt and evolve given any circumstance or obstacle in order to preserve and enjoy our time here on earth. If so, we've definitely come a long way.