A lot can happen in a year. While it’s hard to say no one saw this coming, a spot at the head of the line for a vaccine wasn’t on my holiday wish list in 2019.
525,600 minutes.
December 2019:
Sure, I read the paper and I heard whispers of a new virus. But it seemed far away, “somewhere else.” I wasn’t worried. We’d done this before: SARS, avian flu, Ebola, H1N1. Deadly, tragic, yes, but always “somewhere else.” Even as China scrambled to construct two new hospitals in two weeks, I was pretty confident in my American arrogance that whatever this virus was, it wasn’t coming to a town near me any time soon.
Well, three months later, the virus was here–and likely had been here for some time. The second week of March — a week that gave us a full moon on Friday the 13th–and Covid was our new reality. Broadway: dark. Sports: Canceled. Restaurants: take out or delivery. Store shelves: empty. Schools: remote. Outside hospital emergency rooms in NYC, ambulances lined up at ER entrances like planes waiting to taxi at JKK. At seven each evening, a sequestered populace emerged on fire escapes, balconies and sidewalks banging on pots and pans in honor of front line medical professionals.
Experts who know so much more about these things than I ever will were telling us about social distancing, masks, flattening the curve of infection. We were learning about intubation, PPE, nasal swabs, essential workers.
Pretty soon, people we knew and loved were sick and some were dying. Yet our president announced Covid was a Democratic hoax, a political ploy created to rob him of a second term. Out of fear of offending the stock market, he perpetuated the fairy tale he knew was untrue: that like a miracle, it [Covid] would just disappear. He promoted false cures and further divided an already self-alienated populace and politicized face coverings. He lost interest in Covid after November 3rd, preferring instead to rant and whine about false claims of voter fraud. Meanwhile, the virus was running roughshod from sea to shining sea.
525,600 minutes.
December 2020:
Millions infected world wide. A mutant strain in South Africa and another in England. More than 320,000 Americans dead. Hospitals in El Paso and Iowa overwhelmed. Lines for food in So-Cal stretching for miles. Giant freezers for the dead in Brooklyn. Front line medical professionals nation wide still reporting shortages of everything from protective gear to ICU beds. Casualties in our black and brown communities have exposed inequities that we had been previously a little too willing, too able to hide. The only good news has been the arrival Pfizer and Moderna vaccines which we hope will help us begin to ease the pain of this crisis. An even in this bright spot, we see people whose distrust of science and government will prevent them from sitting for the shot.
Which brings us to the kids. We have all heard that kids are resilient and I believe this is true. But kids who have lost a parent to the virus, kids who have lost a year of instruction, kids who go to bed hungry will fall farther and farther behind their peers. There are legions of kids without the hardware required, without reliable access to the internet required for remote learning. There are parents who are struggling to keep food on the table. What about our special needs kids whose basic needs aren’t being met? How are we going to prevent the learning gap from widening?
When the crisis passes–and with the vaccine, we can see the distant light at the end of this dangerous tunnel–how will we address the needs of these kids to help them bounce back? How do we sustain the promise of the future for the kids we are leaving behind?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I know we must find solutions.
The next 525,600 minutes will be crucial.
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