.jpg)
It seems like a lifetime ago now, but it’s only been three years.
Three years and three months ago, we’d never heard of something called coronovirus. Life was normal – although we didn’t realize how important that was at the time.
But then we started hearing of this strange virus coming out of China that was spreading fast and was deadly. But we’d lived through transmittable viruses and diseases before; it couldn’t be that bad. But by February, health officials were trying to warn everyone that this was different as it spread in this country. We started worrying about gathering in large crowds. The ACC tried to have its basketball tournament without crowds, but gave up. Then the NBA shut down, and then the country shut down that Friday in March.
That next week, the streets of cities across the country, including Lexington and Buena Vista, were strangely quiet as those who could work from home did so. Others were temporarily laid off. Schools, businesses and churches were closed. Only the “essential” workers continued on, and we quickly found out we had a lot of essential workers that we all depended upon but perhaps had taken for granted before. As our hospitals filled with people sick from COVID-19, as it was officially known, our doctors and nurses, health care workers and first responders all put themselves at risk to save others. There were a lot of everyday people who became “heroes” for us.
We were scared then, really scared. Many of us, listening to what we were hearing from health officials, stayed inside our homes for days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months. Scientists thought at first the virus could be spreading by touching shared surfaces, so we cleaned our hands, surfaces around the house and even the groceries that were delivered to our door. Hand sanitizer and soap were among the first items to evaporate from store shelves; there would be many others.
Masks were recommended as things slowly began opening back up in the summer. By then, scientists were thinking the virus was being spread by air. But “social distancing” remained the words of the year; crowds were discouraged. We lived “6 feet apart.” We wondered if life would ever be the same.
And it would get worse. The weekly case count and deaths mounted sharply that first winter, here and across the country. Our local nursing homes were hit particularly hard. Our hospitals were stretched thin. Our funeral homes were doing everything they could to keep up. The number of deaths attributed to Covid locally had reached 78 by March of 2021.
By then the vaccines that President Trump had pushed as part of “Operation Warp Speed” and that newly elected President Biden were trying to get distributed were making it into the arms of local residents. Case counts, thanks to the increased number of people vaccinated and the natural immunity that was being built up from those who had been infected, slowed in the summer of 2021. But there would be more variants and more deaths. As recently as just over a year ago, at the start of 2022, the Rockbridge area saw its highest weekly case count of over 300. Local deaths by then had reached 143.
Now, a year later – and 23 more local deaths later things have largely returned to “normal.” Masks, for most of us, are a thing of the past. Schools and businesses are operating much as before. Hospitals are not as stressed as they were. We’re no longer staying 6 feet apart.
But what now?
For the immediate future, we need to remember that while the “pandemic” may be behind us, variants of the coronovirus are still with us. People here and across the country are still getting sick and dying. It’s not making headlines anymore, but over 250 people in the U.S. are dying from coronovirus each day. It’s not making headlines because at the height of the pandemic that daily death toll was in the 3,000-4,000 range, and it’s not making headlines perhaps because we all want to be done with coronovirus.
But it is likely not done with us. We will apparently be dealing with variants of it for a long time to come. Health officials remind us that getting vaccinated and boosted remain the best way to slow the spread of the virus and mitigate its affects on us if we do get infected. We may eventually see a combination yearly flu and Covid shot.
We encourage area residents to pay attention to the recommendations of our state and federal health officials as we move into our fourth year of living with coronovirus and beyond. Yes, some of those initial recommendations were based on scientific theories that didn’t pan out, but let’s remember that scientists were working “real-time” in a crisis caused by a disease no one had seen before. They didn’t have the benefit of hindsight, like we do now, three years later. Where some of those recommendations for staying safe unnecessary? Perhaps, but it was better then – and it remains true now – that we should do all we can to keep everyone as safe as possible.
In the long run, this country needs to make sure that mechanisms are in place to better prevent and mitigate future serious health threats and possible pandemics. Covid was the pandemic of the century, similar to the one that hit the country and world at the end of World War I, but the next one may come sooner than that. We should always be prepared, and – in the warm spring of “normal” life - never forgot what we just endured and the lives lost.
