A year ago, people were starting to get the covid vaccine. Before the shots were available, deaths from covid were significant. So when the vaccines became available, the public -- well, a lot of the public -- jumped on them with tears in their eyes, so relieved they were that something was available to protect them from dying or getting seriously ill.
The whole vaccine hesitancy thing is a sadness. When the vaccines became available, older people were some of the first in line to get them. Older people remember a lot of things that others don't. Like seeing polio kill and maim people until a polio vaccine came onto the scene. It's a lesson others should heed.
No doubt, thousands of people have died because they were led down the path of covid being a hoax or the vaccine being unnecessary or masks being useless. And even after hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from covid, such attitudes prevail.
A year later, we are in a better place, but we can never seem to get clear of the woods. The virus flips and folds and shapeshifts, quickly bringing new varieties out to replace the ones we were only starting to understand.
Things that didn't happen last year are again not happening this year. Meetings are going back to virtual encounters. Hospitals are chock-full of patients, even if the variety out now isn't as lethal as the previous one.
Jefferson Regional hospital, the one we all count on, has had its own staff depleted from covid as cases rise and rooms and wings fill.
Individual doctor's offices are also closed. We saw one the other day that said it was due to a covid outbreak and the doc would be back when everything cleared up.
The Jefferson County Courthouse closed last week for a thorough cleaning. Why? Because several people in various departments had tested positive. The sheriff's office also closed the jail for a couple of days. And schools are struggling with how to react to the new waive, with some switching to at-home learning.
So while many of us are vaccinated and are protected against serious illness from a covid infection, in a lot of ways, this is deja vu all over again.
And it's a wearying place to be as the new year starts. Even people who have had all their shots are coming down with the omicron variant, and while it's not delta, it's not just the sniffles either. People are still suffering from it and going to the hospital from the complications. And while we don't know if omicron can cause long-covid symptoms, some health officials see no reason why it can't.
So there we are. Scared again to go out to shop, scared to go out to eat, wearing two masks, fist bumping a hello, avoiding crowds. They say omicron will burn itself out soon. But there are other letters of the Greek alphabet just waiting to be tapped. Well, that's the fear. The best way forward is to get vaccinated, but we're guessing most people have heard that by now and either rolled up their sleeves or gone on their way.
As one health care worker put it: "I just want it all to go away. I want everything to go back to normal."
Maybe it won't take another year to get there, but we really don't know.