Living On Pandemic Time

I was reading a news article today about the pandemic. Specifically, it was discussing the need to deploy vaccinations to as much of the global population as possible. What caught me off guard from the article, though, was simply a statement that started, “As we are about to enter the third year of the pandemic.” The third year.

I find this so curious. On the one hand, entering the third year of the pandemic makes sense to me. When it started, most of the experts said they expected we would be dealing with this virus for at least three to five years. So I am not shocked that we are still in the clutches of Covid-19. What is crazy to me is that it seems like we’ve been living with this virus much longer than that. Traveling back in my mind to a time before masks, before the debate over vaccines, it seems like forever and a day ago. But it’s not. It’s less than three years. I think the stress of living with Covid, all its uncertainties and all the changes it’s brought, have made the past two years a blur.

My husband said today that he feels he lost a year. All of 2020 was a loss. This year was better than last. At least this year we’re able to move around more. But the pandemic, with its death toll and loss, has been exhausting. It’s no wonder that the past two years feel longer. So, year three will be more of the same. Hopefully, sometime soon, we will adjust to life with this virus and maybe time will seem to normalize.

I think this is possible. But we definitely need to get more people vaccinated or we’ll continue living this Groundhog Day for the rest of the foreseeable future. That is, if we’re lucky and don’t end up with a deadlier mutation that causes what we’ve been going through look tame. Mother Nature is amazing. Science is amazing. Now if we could just use science to get Mother Nature under control in this instance, we’d be getting somewhere.