March 5, 2025
So. It’s been five years now. Well. That’s nothing to celebrate. Almost four years ago, some of us, starting with the man then in the White House, celebrated too soon and quickly felt the anvil of another massive surge drop on our heads. That wasn’t the last time. For the immune-compromised, the seniors at high risk, and the millions with long Covid, it’s still going on.
Don’t sweat it if you don’t remember all the milestones: the cruise-ship cases, Delta and Omicron, the bulletins, the first shots, and the several rounds that followed. For me, the weeks and months of the lockdown period are blurry, almost blank.
I know I sanitized groceries, stood six feet from other people, wore an N95 every minute I wasn’t at home, and got seriously mad at those who flouted the precautions. But I don’t recall the act of staring at four walls. Or the sensation of lying sleepless at night, nearly every night.
An awful lot, and I do mean awful, has happened since, especially in the last several weeks. Looking back at the first post in my pandemic diary, written in March 2020, it strikes me that the notion I emphasized then — that we’re all in this together — is equally true today.
As my dad wrote home from the Army in WW2, “There is an awful big show going on, and I’m glad to be a very very small part of it…if sitting here in this office pounding a typewriter all day and part of the night will help to bring that end about, this is where I belong, and I wouldn’t get out for anything, even if they’d let me.” Time to re-enlist. Take care and be safe.