It seemed overdue and premature – all at once.
If you’ve had your vaccine, said the President, you can (in most everyday situations) take off your mask, stand next to each other, hug your friends and your family. In many work and leisure environments where you know the people around you and you’ve all been vaccinated; things can return to normal.
Where there are large numbers of people (who you don’t know), like on an airplane, riding on the subway or bus; visiting a nursing home or hospital, you should still wear your mask. It’s likely that you’d want to do so.
The fact is, our efforts to control the COVID-19 virus in the United States are, at long last, showing results. It’s not just the vaccines, which have obviously helped. It’s also the masks. So simple, so accessible and such an obvious, normal step to control the spread of a virus – masks have been an effective tool in helping us to tame this monster called COVID-19. Widespread use of masks almost completely stops transmission of the virus, depriving it of new hosts. Starving the beast, you might say.
Because the previous administration so egregiously politicized the wearing of masks, the American public is understandably skeptical of relaxing the practices that have brought us (finally) to this point. The infection rates in all 50 states are trending sharply downward. While there are new cases and sometimes breakthrough infections (see New York Yankees) among groups who are vaccinated, these are rare. In nine Yankees’ cases, eight of those individuals have no symptoms at all.
The vaccines WORK. These folks will not be spreading the virus to others. There is now significant data to support the claim that Americans love to make on any number of subjects …
We’ve got this. For real.
It is a glorious thing to hug your friends when you meet them and when you part. It used to be so routine, so completely taken for granted. It’s a human thing to do. If there’s a good that comes from this horrible pandemic, it should be our newfound appreciation for the human connection.
It’s also a completely human response to need some time to adjust. This time last year, I found that trips to the grocery store gave me a surprising amount of anxiety. I talk to people in the grocery store. I chat with fussy kids when their parents are trying to get through the checkout line. This just wasn’t possible a year ago – between masks, distancing and the need for all of us to get through and get OUT of the store in the shortest possible time.
We did all of these things to keep ourselves and our extended families as safe as possible. We came to understand a new normal – ordering online, sticking together by staying apart. Now, we have to adjust again and this time it should be much easier.
I am among the luckiest of people. I’m a relatively new grandmother and I see my grandsons every couple of days. We decided early on that my son and daughter-in-law’s household (just a few miles from mine) would be and extension of ours – that we’d be a “pod.”
My younger grandson was a newborn when this began last Spring. Now, he’s walking, talking (a little), climbing and a bubbling fountain of new discovery. This year, we can make plans to go to the State Fair and get those 10,000 steps that have been lacking in my routine. Cows, chickens, pigs and horses with (this Fall) a two-year-old and a four-year-old.
Glorious.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97-9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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