Did we survive the pandemic?
As I was editing this prior to posting, the CDC released that if you are fully vaccinated a mask is not required, I would say almost giving an incentive to being vaccinated.
Cases among younger people have been rising. Understandably so because up until a few weeks ago no one under 45 without a health risk was allowed to get the vaccine 1. From there it’s a month out from another dose and two weeks from then for it to start working. I was told to get an appointment under the pretense that no one would ask what health risks I had… So lie to get a vaccine? If anything it turned me off to the whole situation. I was not in a rush to be first in line by any means, but with that being said, I recently got my first dose.
Getting the vaccine should be the light at the end but we are still not there. And yet there’s a lot of mistrust and “theories” about the vaccine out there. I agreed to it with the idea that I am doing it for everyone else, in the name of gaining herd immunity. Days after getting vaccinated, I learned according to a New York Times reporter on ‘The Daily’ podcast that with the variants of the virus, herd immunity is slipping away for America 2. The virus variants increase the percent to something of 90% vaccination rate to achieve it, compared to a 55 – 70% that was previously expected when the idea of getting a vaccine out came into talks.
Things are not back to normal and being in Portland is not helping the situation. The perception of the virus is so intense and overwatched. Something that drove me crazy was the mask-wearing outside, not at a park or trail, just outside. I am not walking in Chicago or New York. It’s simple to keep a 6’ distance in a place where there are no cars or people. It has been so suffocating. While there are states like Texas and Arizona that have been open, returning to a normal state of social activities, we are still dealing with hard restrictions.
Regulations continue to change on a state-by-state basis and “recommendations” continue to evolve. Things will never be the same again but we all want to see a true sign of the pandemic ending. Will there be a day that marks it definitive over? Or will it be a slow shift, looking back and think of how things once were?
Jane Theory 
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