COVID Review

It’s been nearly four years since the outbreak of the Coronavirus (Covid-19).

With that, I was looking back the other day and trying to remember how life began to change for so many millions of people.

All of a sudden many people were forced to wear masks in order to get into places they were going, many restaurants either shut down, curtailed their hours and some closed altogether.

I can recall one day the Stock Market dropped 2,300 points, its worst day in three decades. The NCAA canceled not only March Madness, but all the winter and spring sports championships.

The NBA suspended play indefinitely. The PGA canceled tournaments for three weeks and the Masters Golf Tournament was also put on hold.

The Oklahoma Secondary School Athletic Association postponed indefinitely and finally called off the state high school basketball tournament. That directly impacted two area teams, the Dale Lady Pirates and the Dale Pirates who were scheduled to start play on the Thursday that the Association made that decision.

The list of cancellations, suspended and postponed activities just went on and on. It seemed like it was almost endless.

I’m a Eucharistic minister at my church and remember that when I showed up for Mass that Saturday evening I was advised no handshaking, no wine was being given until further notice.

Eventually, our church, like so many churches in this area stopped having services, people weren’t allowed to attend church at all. That went on in our church for a couple of months if I correctly recall.

Then after it opened up, we were still not obligated to attend and there were all kinds of restrictions for those who did.

Some restaurants, in order to survive, got pretty creative. I remember some installed driveby windows, others were orders to go only and masks were mandatory in most places my wife and I went if and when we went.

We tried to patronize some of those local eating places that were providing creative ways to survive.

All the time this was taking place, and while companies were scurrying to develop vaccines against the COVID-19 virus, millions were being hospitalized and countless lives were lost.

Once the vaccine was approved and ready for distribution by November-December of 2020, people were lining up almost in a frenzy to get vaccinated.

May wife and I each were vaccinated three times in 2021, once in January, then a month later in February and received our first booster in October of that year.

We each have gotten two more boosters, one in 2022 and the most recent one about six weeks ago.

While variants of the virus are still around, and the scientists indicate will continue to be, at least the vaccinations provide some protection I’m convinced.

To look around us today, three years after the first vaccines started being distributed, much is back to normal.

Not only am I extremely grateful, to me it’s just amazing the turnaround of getting back to normal.