One year ago today I was about to end my second week of working at home, still a bit unsure how long that would last.
This whole last 12 months (15, really) have been astronomically historic in so many ways, good and (mostly) bad, but nothing is as incredible as this disease, this little impossible to see protein, infecting 20 million people in the US (at the very least), and having the scientific community find a workable, insanely-effective vaccine, and shoot over 100 million vaccine doses in arms, all within a year.
Covid has crippled the world. It may not always seem that way, with the stock market having mostly recovered and the world economy on decent footing, but it has wiped out the service and hospitality industries. It has shuttered borders in a way that hasn't happened since World War II. It has had a greater societal impact of anything since, again, World War II. It is a period that will absolutely go down in history books - a perfect 101 years after the last world-wide pandemic of this scale. And in a way, I'm happy I lived through it.
In the literal sense, I am happy that I literally lived through it - I'm still alive, and to my knowledge escaped contracting Covid over the past year-plus. I'm doubly happy my immediately family were also able to avoid it, and even in my extended family only a couple I know contracted it and they came through. I know millions of people, families, were nowhere near as lucky. That all goes without saying.
But what I mean is I am truly happy I lived through it. I detailed many reasons in alphabetical order before, and while there were pangs of sadness even in that A to Z, there is some happiness in those pangs. For every trip I couldn't take, there was a weekend at a home I could enjoy, with another Friday meal to cook and curate. For every weekend I couldn't meet friends (probably the biggest loss) there was a weekend I was with my family (including my sister & fiance), and still able to chat with friends over zoom.
More than anything, this past year taught me perspective and patience. The perspective of what really matters, and what could and should provide joy in your life. It taught me to see what life would have been like decades ago, before it was easy to get on a plane and go wherever, where your entertainment options were more or less limited to what was around you.
The largest learning on perspective is more around respect - respect on the immense power of viruses and disease, and the immense ability of the scientific community.
It is still crazy to me that this little microscopic bits of atoms was able to truly cripple the world. From one outbreak in Wuhan, literally a few dozen people getting sick all together at once, was enough to raise alarm bells. It's always amazing when you read stories about the coronavirus how just those first couple dozen people was enough for disease control centers to realize something is afoot.
It's so ridiculous to think those few dozen people would lead to a few hundered million people globally getting infected (probably what would've been a billion if not more had no restrictions been put in place). This 'silent' enemy was able to transit across the global in such quick execution, setting off a global pandemic. There is incredibly weighty power in that fact, that spread.
It's also so weighty how quickly the scientific community was able to find a vaccine. Within a year is unheard of. By March (probably a year ago exactly) the genome of the virus was isolated and shared. By May or so clinical trails had begun. By November, ironically the day after the election, initial trail results were unleashed showing the Pfizer vaccine (and soon after the Moderna one) to be amazingly effective. Nature crippled the world, science will bring it back to life.
I've long thought, and even debated with people, around what life will look back when we return to normal. I still don't know when that is but I do think we'll, some will say sadly, return back to normal as quick as allows. The example people point to is the "Roaring 20's" coming immediately after the Spanish Flue pandemic in 1918-19. A lot of people have pooh-poohed that idea given that people are generally smarter today than they were back then, but also because maybe this lingers.
I disagree to a point. I think people will be 'slow' to getting back to normal (excluding the people that went back to normal in Summer 2020 and never stopped), but once they're vaccinated, and once the risks of getting COVID are basically like getting a cold, it will return full bore. I hope I'm write, I want to be right, but what comforts me is the human is quick to adapt when they want to be.
In the end, we are a social animal, and that is the lasting impact of this past year. Relationships not made or not progressed. Interactions not had. The global isolation, the shuttering of communal society. Zoom and outdoor seating and other things made it not as dark and desolate as 'global isolation' would make it seem, but those were temporary panaceas. We need interaction, and a full year later we are so close to having it.
I'll still never forget getting the email from our client sponsor telling us we can't travel to client site. My view on the virus changed that day and has basically been the same the whole time. The final amazement I'll comment on is how we adapted. How restaurants, and stores, and airlines, quickly moved to make things safer. How our work adapted wholesale to doing everything remotely and not suffering (from an output standpoint, from a mental health....). How the world adapted to living in social distance. I'm ready for all that innovation to be torn down and negated because it isn't needed, but this past year has been one of the more educational of my life. Never again, let's hope, but let's also hope we never forget.
