MY View

BY JOHN McLOONE

Making up for lost time

Two years seems a lifetime ago.

So much is different in the world, as we are being allowed to come back to life after the COVD-19 pandemic.

It was St. Patrick’s Day 2020 when we plunged head first into the pandemic. We may never know the real origin of COVID-19, but we sure know that it changed our lives forever.

I look back on St. Patrick’s Day, 2020. When you’re Irish, that’s how you remember things. I had plans to celebrate St. Patty’s, and virtually on that day our lives changed. I went from planning to wear green to actually having to wear a mask instead. We were to spend a couple weeks in isolation to curb the spread. Here we are, two weeks before St. Patrick’s Day and 50 weeks since the last one, and our sanctions are being lifted. If you like to think this whole thing was a political hoax, you believe bringing America out of the panic stage has a lot to do with the midterm elections this year. On the other end of the spectrum, maybe you think we’re moving too fast on this. We were in Madison over the weekend, and I’ll admit I seemed to be one of the few at many places ignoring the mask mandate.

Personally, I don’t believe COVID was a hoax. Some of the measures taken in defense of it perhaps were too harsh. It’s a lot easier to look at things in retrospect, however. I’ll admit that I’m vaccinated and boosted, and I was happy to do that. I travel for my job about 75,000 miles a year, and I’m around a lot of people. I felt like the vaccine gave me a layer of protection. I still do. I accept that others don’t feel that way, and they’re very strident in their opinion. I also know that for a lot of people, COVID-19 was very dangerous. Too many people died, even if they did have comorbid health conditions. Some lives were cut short. Diabetes isn’t supposed to be a death sentence.

History will show us that the pandemic is going to have a profound effect on children. Keeping them apart and forcing restrictions on them is going to be something that researchers will have a field day with for years to come.

I appreciate the work done by public health workers and advocates. Their goal was to see less people get sick and die. They were doing their job. And we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone in the medical field. We were inconvenienced with masks, while they were on the actual front line of the pandemic.

The past two years did bring a lot of change. As we emerge, it’s a whole new world, and not in a good way. We get mad at each other more easily. We’re split as a nation. Our world is in turmoil. I’m not even going to get into the effect inflation and the price of gas has on a guy that drives 75,000 miles a year.

We all lost a lot in the last two years, so let’s make up for lost time. I know I’m going to. St. Patrick’s Day is coming.