NORTHAMPTON — It’s a little hard to remember, but I have a vague sense that 2021 opened with guarded optimism — that, with highly touted vaccines just over the horizon, it would bring a steadily growing freedom from the coronavirus pandemic.
It was possible to hang onto this springtime promise for a while. The masks came off, the gatherings edged back to normality. Then a new virus variant called delta came along, quickly gaining a bad reputation. Maybe it was just a bump in the road, but it didn’t look good that cases were rising and it was still summertime.
By the first week in August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 83% of counties across the United States were experiencing “high” or “substantial” transmission of COVID-19, with new cases, hospitalizations and deaths all rising under the onslaught of the delta variant. The anxiety was back.
Here in the Valley, the Northampton and Amherst boards of health reissued their mask mandates for all indoor public spaces. UMass and the other colleges said they would require students to be vaccinated and to wear masks indoors with the return of in-person learning in the fall.
When schools reopened, Massachusetts required all students to wear masks indoors. In Amherst, the regional school committee even implemented a vaccine mandate, requiring all eligible students to get their shots by Dec. 1.
Somewhere along the line, the virus became a political issue. School boards and health boards have faced criticism and outright threats over their efforts to keep students and the general public safe. Hospital workers have been confronted by angry people who don’t believe COVID is real, who are convinced it’s a government plot, accusing them of making their relative sick.
Strangely enough, the former president most often accused of stoking this ideological division now finds himself on the opposite side of the fence from the right-wing anti-vaxxers who still thought he was one of them. Donald Trump announced this month that he had gotten his booster shot, and in a recent radio interview cited development of the vaccines as “a great, great thing that we did. We saved tens of millions of people throughout the world.” For once, he wasn’t just blowing hot air.
We’ve had a month now of the omicron variant, which came out of South Africa like one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, rabidly infectious and loaded with ominous mutations. It’s now believed to account for 59% of all COVID cases in the US — a downgrade from the CDC’s earlier estimate of 73% — which means delta is still a significant threat. Despite its resistance to some of the antibody treatments available to high-risk infected patients, reports suggest that omicron generally causes less serious illness than delta.
As December comes to a close, with COVID-19 cases in the U.S. eclipsing even the pre-vaccine highs of last winter’s surge, the stress, the isolation, the shrinking of the world we knew so well from 2020 are still very much with us. Cases in Massachusetts, and many other places, are setting new highs every day. Testing sites are swamped.
The only silver lining compared to last year is that relatively fewer cases are resulting in serious illness, which can be attributed to widespread vaccination and the high numbers of young people getting infected.
Even so, the CDC reported Thursday, an average of 334 children 17 and under were admitted per day to hospitals with the coronavirus from Dec. 21-27.
In his always entertaining year-end review, syndicated columnist Dave Barry wrapped up July thus:
“The month ends with the Delta-variant surge worsening, bringing back mask mandates and social-distancing requirements as health experts, government officials, and the media join together to convey the following clear, consistent, and reassuring message to the public:
■ You should get vaccinated, because the vaccine will make you safe.
■But remember that even if you get vaccinated, you can still get infected.
■Also you can infect others and kill them.
■So just because you’re vaccinated, don’t go around thinking you’re safe.
■NOBODY IS SAFE, YOU FOOL.”
You have to laugh, right? But it’s true. Nobody’s safe, everybody needs to get tested, which has pushed demand off the charts, and the fractured U.S. health systems aren’t coping well. Why, at 21 months and counting of this pandemic, are we still scuffling for at-home test kits, short of a lockdown perhaps the most direct and effective way of slowing the virus’ spread?
What will 2022 bring? New variants, new treatments, new boosters maybe. Increasingly, like colds and the flu, it looks as though COVID is coming for us all. Unvaccinated people may get very sick and may die. Few vaccinated people will need hospital care, and many will hardly know they were infected. We may be learning, slowly, how to manage it. Just the same, as Bette Davis might say, fasten your seat belts — we’re in for another bumpy ride.