Hurry up. And wait.
Then wait some more.
That has been the modus operandi since the great coronavirus landed ashore one year ago.
Initially confident we could survive COVID-19 the way we survived serious flu seasons we carried on with business as usual while devoting half our stretched-thin attention to the disease’s ransacking of China.
Then came the stay-at-home advisories and we rushed out to the groceries stores, prompting an artificial shortage of staples such as bread, milk, flour—toilet paper.
So we were forced to wait.
Wait in lines to enter stores, wait for shelves to be restocked with minimal offerings and wait for things to get better. Wait at home.
Businesses closed or reduced hours and operating procedures in response to calls to “bend the curve”—reduce strains on hospitals by not contracting the virus—and people were furloughed or lost their jobs altogether.
Income for thousands of people stopped but the bills kept coming.
In a hurry to get back to normal we rushed out to greet the sunshine and summer after two months of uncertainty, fear and relative isolation. Then we were forced to wait again after the first resurgence of COVID-19 washed over us and more people we know and love became infected or died.
It is a cycle we have repeated a number of times in the last year. Hurry up to get back to normal then wait when we discover our rash missteps set us back further than we imagined.
Along the way, however, progress was incremental, even if it was unseen and unappreciated.
Treatments and vaccines were worked on and developed. Federal, state and local aid packages were made available to struggling businesses and families. Of course, in too many cases the advances were too little, too late and our communities suffered losses.
But we are still making progress and for those of us fortunate to have made it this far, we are still surviving.
This last year has forced us to be patient and resilient.
We owe it to ourselves, our family and friends and especially those who are no longer with us, to carry on, help each other when and where we can. We owe it to each other to persevere.
