My father had a saying.
He tendered many a saying, actually.
Oh, your father too?
Dads are good for that sort of thing.
Here’s one of his golden oldies.
It’s not the end of the world until it’s the end of the world.
I love that one.
It implies so much with so little.
I’m a wordsmith. I appreciate stuff like that.
The first Monday in mid-November of 2020, after that anxiety-ridden election, the gods decided to levy a potential boon upon taxed Americana. Big pharma giant Pfizer announced their analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial, completed by an outside panel of medical field experts. They found the vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing Covid among nearly 44,000 trial volunteers who’d had no prior evidence of infection before the administering of the vaccine. They were the first company to announce verifiable results from any late-stage vaccine trial to date. They said it was a milestone. The vaccine’s effectiveness involved injecting part of the virus’s genetic code to train the body’s immune system to fire up antibodies and activate T-cells. It required two doses, three weeks apart. Trials held in the United States, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, and Turkey showed 90% protection was reached seven days after the second dose. Initial data was scrutinized carefully, as they were still unsure whether the vaccine stopped people from spreading the virus, stopped the development of symptoms, or if it worked as well with high-risk populations.
The $20,000 question, how long immunity would last, might’ve taken months, maybe years, to answer accurately. Then there were the issues of manufacturing, distribution, and logistics to consider. Immunizing several billion humans was no small task. Pfizer’s vaccine had to be stored in cold storage at 80 degrees below Celsius. An interesting paradox, in that a potential world saving vaccine for all humanity had to be cold-stored in a warming world humans were overheating with their fossil-fueled follies.
Health care professionals, first responders, and those populations at the highest risk would get the first opportunities to take the vaccine. John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, tentatively suggested that life could be return to normal by spring of 2021. That was, as we now know, overly optimistic. Not because of the science, but because of undisciplined American proclivities.
A vaccine at long last was in the offing, a potential godsend. I’m no fan of big pharma nor am I am an advocate for late-in-life vaccines or unnecessary boosters, but there was a reason we were free of smallpox and polio. Conspiracy people losing their shit over the idea of forced vaccinations should’ve chilled and looked at the science, instead of forming paranoid fears from FOX op-eds and Reddit sub-forums.
I started daydreaming about summer of 2021, what life might feel like free of Covid, and all the things I wanted to do that we weren’t able to do in 2020. First and foremost I wanted to see my boys, maybe take that long overdue trip to Tahoe. Wave-running on the lake, hike the upper basin trails, hit the poker rooms at South Shore, lots of family face time, laughing, probably some crying. In person, face to face concourse, the way humans were designed to interact. Then I wanted live music, and lots of it. Ideally a rescheduled Stones tour, maybe some G Love at the Belly Up in Solana Beach, maybe Green Day, Robert Plant, Sting, Gary Clark Junior, or Jack Johnson. I honestly didn’t care who toured. I was thinking I’d go see anyone, maybe everyone. I just wanted to dance again.
Having a date night with my girl sounded like an epic time after nine months of relative isolation, one where we didn’t have to wear masks, where there wasn’t a constant threat of pestilence, where people enjoyed good food and drink and music and talk, that taken-for-granted American pastime. My girl and I talked about where we’d like to go first: the Lone Eagle Grill in Incline Village, Musso and Frank in Hollywood, any number of mom n’ pop taquerias across SoCal, a piping hot bowl of Monterey’s Old Fisherman’s Grotto chowder with fresh sourdough bread and an ice-cold Sierra Nevada brew.
Hope.
It felt good.
Better than good.
Hope felt fan-fucking-tastic.