A new bright day has dawned after a long slog through darkness and isolation. At long last, after nearly 17 months, there is a light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel.
We shouldn’t rush to celebrate just yet, however; the Delta virus variant is making headway, partly because too many people have refused to get vaccinated. Still, all in all, the near future looks a lot brighter than it did just months ago, even though there lingers the haunting sadness of a half million deaths.
The pandemic revealed, at times so starkly, the inequities in society, as well as the good and the bad of human behavior.
Inequities? Workers living a paycheck or two from disaster; a lack of affordable daycare for many desperate families; people who had no choice but to go to work, virus or not, if they wanted to put food on the table and survive.
The bad? The virus crisis exacerbating the political polarization in this country; maskers vs. no-maskers, including some cases of cold-blooded murder when no-maskers shot to death clerks or assaulted airplane attendants; vaxxers vs. anti-vaxxers; some people dismissing the crisis as a politically-induced hoax; eruptions of anger or blame against virus scientists.
The good? Fortunately, the good outweighs the bad. The following list is just a partial one:
Courageous medical personnel often under agonizing stress (doctors, nurses, aides, technicians, receptionists) risking their lives ‘round the clock to keep people alive.
People, even total strangers, helping others, including the sewing of homemade masks, donations of food and money, help with chores and giving rides to appointments.
Parents and children, teachers and school staff, school bus drivers and other school personnel bravely adapting to a “new normal” with astonishing flexibility, adaptability, ingenious make-do-ism, last-minute improvisations, schedule rearrangements and new ways of learning. Virtually all aspects of their lives were affected, turned topsy-turvy, and yet they managed to endure and even thrive with grace-under-pressure. It’s almost certain the stresses and struggles made all of them stronger.
Business owners having to endure total shut-downs, partial shut-downs, closings (some permanent) after working so long and hard to make their businesses successful. They had no choice but to lay off many employees, who in turn suffered in a sudden world of economic anxiety and frightening uncertainties. But through it all, business owners and employees (those laid off and not laid off), adapted in remarkable ways, and most of them managed to squeak through the dark tunnel to these brighter, better times.
Front-line workers, like those in grocery stores, also performed courageously and deserve our deepest gratitude.
Last but not least, at the very top of the “Good List” are those virologists and lab technicians. Their persistent, challenging explorations of virus components and the cells of the human body made possible the vaccines that brought us to this point, to this exhilarating rush of hope and gladness.
Hopefully, viruses old and new will forever be vanquished or quickly kept in check. But, in the meantime, there is another worrisome “virus” of sorts that has reared its ugly head. That contagion is the constant assault on our democracy. It is fueled by outrageous lies, conspiracy theories, divisive tactics, pseudo-populist bluster and, last but not least, by widespread legislative schemes to suppress our free and fair voting tradition, the very bedrock of this democracy, the “we” in “We the People.”
The vicious mob insurrection Jan. 6 at our nation’s Capitol is – or should have been – a dire warning of just how fragile a democratic nation can become when people prefer preposterous lies over facts and truths. This is a frightening time, in some ways scarier than the virus that stalked us for so long.
Hope springs eternal. All of the qualities listed above in this column (those all-American virtues of compromise, adaptation, kindness, practicality, innovation, respect for science and facts) will hopefully come together to lead us out of this dangerous darkness into a brighter future.
