Oh, it’s not gone. It’s unlikely it ever will be. But most of us have incorporated it into our normal, just as we have with many other endemic viruses. Institutional stalwarts are following suit. And that’s putting it where it needs to be.
From 2023, it’s easy to armchair-quarterback 2020 and say we screwed it all up. How many businesses perished? How many really had to? There were several significant stressors for our family that were unambiguously and severely aggravated by sustained lockdowns. And I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to tally the worldwide toll on mental health accurately.
Of course, the other side is that we had to learn as we went. The first big painful lesson was that it was never plausible to “break the cycle” by getting everyone to stay home for some prescribed amount of time. (This was mostly because “everyone” was never at all close to everyone, nor could it ever have been absent martial law.)
(Oh no, I said “martial law.” There’s a conspiracy theorist dog whistle if ever there was one.)
I lost friends to this pandemic. Some of them are people who didn’t care for my failure to indulge them in their paranoid nonsense. I believe others used that as an excuse not to associate with someone who loves and supports his transgender daughter.
Whatever the sociocultural tolls of the initial approach, they were substantial, and they remain so. Here’s hoping we really are at the end of this road, and also that we don’t go merrily marching down another one.
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