The end is near.
A good end, thankfully, a door reopened for us to re-enter the world lost to us.
Eventually, though. Not today, not next week or month. Not even early next year.
Maybe we’re only about halfway into the tragic pandemic.
Maybe we’re even wrongly assuming a mellifluous, militaristic, logistical miracle to apply the historic phenomenon of a record-breaking vaccine we initially thought might be yet a year away.
Maybe we’re mistaken in assuming the vaccine is long-lasting, that it prevents asymptomatic transmission and not only COVID-19 symptoms, and that the virus will not morph to render the cure inadequate.
I wonder: Now that we – or they, and only a few of them for awhile – have taken the first vaccines in British Columbia, what will we do while awaiting it? This will be the most interesting study of our behaviour, because at last we have some definition on the duration that we were lacking in the early stages.
Most of us went indoors, cut most contact with the wider world, learned to Zoom and wash our hands, limited our travel to the towns of Nesters and Stongs and the exotic London Drugs, and denied ourselves many of the instant gratifications we knew as normal in this society of convenience and abundance.
But now, as we are on the cusp of learning when we will qualify for the two-dose liberation from hibernation, will we skirt the system knowing the needles are imminent and confusing that with the belief that the risk is subsiding?
Will we stay the course, even though it might be frustrating and even maddening to see others ahead in the queue gain what seems to be immunity?
Will we even choose to be more conservative, to retreat further into our shells, knowing that our patience will be rewarded before terribly long?
And what of those who refuse to take the breakthroughs? The coronavirus can’t be quelled without a substantial majority here and elsewhere overcoming their doubts – or their beliefs – and submitting to one of the several vaccines bound to be available in 2021.
In some ways it has been easier for people to participate in the grand recede than it might be to partake in the grand resumption. But vaccination has to be a public-health mission to take best effect.
In parts of the province, there is a considerable anti-vaccination cohort, many of those hundreds who turn out on weekends for anti-mask rallies in downtown Vancouver are bound to be among them. In America, fewer than two in three say they will take the needles – although that number is up from only one in two in September – but that is far short of what is needed to develop what Dr. Bonnie Henry politely calls “community immunity” in what is more precisely described as a herd.
If we do not understand how long the vaccines hold power, how do we contend with those who won’t even take up the impending opportunity? How might that confound our expectations of an economic recovery? Can we bank on the normalized economy, can we be weaned off governments spending our money on ourselves, if there are too many outliers in our midst? How might our fatigued health system be hobbled by sustained caseloads that ought to be suppressed? How many intensive care units and operating theatres will need to be reserved for the pandemic when they ought to be available to those with other medical needs?
We all have our decisions to make soon. Each stage of the coronavirus brings upon us a greater need to lead through our choices. We will only be safe not when each of us, but enough of us, take the vaccine.
My disposition is to be a social creature. I have missed even the most trivial interruption in what had been pre-pandemic a ceaseless cascade of events, shows, games, meetings and encounters. It’s practically in my job description. My children gave me a little lecture over the weekend about what I consider my meagre pandemic presence; the message was not to err now that we’ve come this far.
My New Year’s resolution is bound to be topsy-turvy – into the socially distanced fitness centre much less often and only when it’s almost vacant, consciously not seeing close friends except online, reading much more social media to gauge the ether and emotion of this vital next stage. How long I can hold to that is, like all my annual resolutions, an open question that usually gets answered before we get to March. I hope I can keep on it until my turn comes to gladly offer my tricep, which can’t come soon enough.
Only now, finally, I know it’s coming.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
