A Trying 2020 Holiday Season
By Albert B. Kelly
Like all things connected with 2020, the holiday season this year is disorienting and even intimidating. That is a strange feeling especially for those who look forward to the holidays whether to spend time with family and friends or even just to slow down and recharge before we dive into the New Year. For some, Covid-19 simply takes those possibilities away. For others, Covid casts a menacing shadow over what should be an enjoyable time of year.
As I write these words, the news reports place the seven-day moving average for positive tests above 5,000 which is a nearly 80% increase from just a month ago. We’ve lost some 17,800 of our fellow residents in the state and we ended this past week with a positivity rate above 10%. The one piece of good news is that a vaccine was just approved and might well be in the process of being administered to certain populations as the holiday approaches.
Heading into and coming out of the Thanksgiving break, I was surprised at the number of people who simply went about their business with little regard to social distancing, the wearing of masks, and avoiding gatherings despite the warnings and the potential risks. In some instances, people appeared to care little as they took to mugging for the camera and posting on social media. How many of these folks came down with a positive test result and out of those, how many needed more intensive medical care or infected someone else who needed an ICU bed? It’s hard to know.
We, and include myself here, are quick to scream and yell about our rights in society, but how often do we stop and consider our responsibilities whether to our families, friends, employers, colleagues, or those who have to clean up our messes whether at home, at work, or even in a hospital when the worst happens? As I say, I include myself here because I can be far more sensitive to my rights than my responsibilities and like most people, I’ll tend to cut myself some slack even when it’s not earned.
As we approach the home stretch of 2020, there has been an unbelievable amount of pain and grief for thousands of families who will never be the same because of this virus. I’m thinking now about the thousands who took their loved ones to a hospital never dreaming it would be the last time they would be physically present with them as they walked out of the ER.
How about the thousands who had to say good bye over a device because they could not be physically present with the people they loved most in life. How about the nurses, doctors, and aides who became the source of comfort for the sick and dying in the absence of family, what price will they pay emotionally? How much of the pain might have been avoided if more of us worked more diligently at observing precautions.
I also think about the thousands of businesses that disappeared over the course of 2020, or will soon disappear, because life as we knew it changed. The fallout will take some time to wrap our heads around, but the business owners and the employees who worked at these establishments are also casualties of this pandemic.
If I had to guess, we are getting close to the beginning of the end. What I mean to say is that vaccines will become increasingly available over the next several months and this should help us collectively get past this pandemic, but we simply don’t know how much of 2021 it will eat up until we get there. Vaccines will not be 100% effective, but they should help greatly in making this virus less deadly.
All of that is to say that if we’re thinking about gifts this 2020 holiday season, perhaps the best and most thoughtful gift we could give the people we care about is to do whatever we can to try and stay alive and healthy until we get past this pandemic. In line with keeping ourselves alive and healthy is not infecting the people we love and care about or those that others love and care about because we’re unwilling to even try. Have safe Holiday and New Year.