High hopes! I had high hopes -- high apple pie in the sky hopes! I was going to go line dancing, learn how to play the ukulele, visit my granddaughter in California a couple of times (Toddlers grow so fast!), take a sailing cruise in Italy with a friend. After all, COVID-19 was little more than an annual flu -- from far, far away and would disappear, almost like a miracle. What? Me worry?
This has been a year of evolving information--a year replete with misinformation and disinformation. Our lifestyle will never be the same. There is no “normal” to return to.
As we move past the one-year mark of response (or lack thereof) to the novel COVID-19 pandemic, most previous plans are on hold. I plan, instead, to get my two-shot vaccination. I anticipate wearing a mask when interacting with people, probably from now on. And I’m OK with that.
Until we know more about this virus, its variants, how it is transmitted, how it is cured, and how to help those whose recovery is long and morbidly expensive, I will do my part to keep myself and others as safe as possible.
Some whom I love feel their freedoms are under attack by this mandate. That they have the right to refuse vaccination and mask-wearing. They think I’m a sucker, acting out of fear. But this is my choice as a senior woman--who escaped polio as a child because of a vaccine, and whose mother suffered through diphtheria and scarlet fever as a child because there was none.
And let me add, this is the opinion of one who did not have to deal with loss of employment, homeschooling children, providing for aged parents and a host of other challenges my neighbors did. In my opinion, I had it easy. And I am grateful.
This is Sharon Nicola and that is my perspective.
