Year Like No Other

We all got through our virtual Passover and Easter celebrations to wake up today to a miserable day of rain, wind and tornado watches. We’re about halfway through April and have a couple of more weeks until Trump hopes we can start opening parts of the country and the get the economy moving again. He’s even appointed a new task force to work on this, in addition to the task force headed by Vice President Pence, and whatever  operation his son-in-law Jared is running. Trump is getting pushback from the medical community to be very careful about rushing back to normal when the wrong move could crush the health care system even more, mean thousands more deaths and inflict more damage to the economy. Trump says it will be the biggest decision of his life. That should make us all feel confident.

As we tried to celebrate Easter over the weekend, Trump was tweeting his brains out blaming all his perceived enemies for the mess we’re in. He even publicly took a shot at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert who is the only person the country has real confidence in to tell us the truth and guide us through the pandemic. Trump didn’t have the guts to go after Fauci directly. He took the coward’s route of re-tweeting. In a CNN interview over the weekend, Fauci talked about the administration’s delayed response to the pandemic, “…if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that…But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.” Former California Republican congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted that Fauci said on February 29th there was nothing to worry about with the “#FireFauci”. She got it wrong. Fauci said, “Right now at this moment (February 29th) there was no reason to change what we’re doing.” But the risk could change and we know it did. Trump, of course, never check the context of the statement. He and Fauci have disagreed publicly, and it’s been reported that Fauci’s contradictions have irritated Trump. Would Trump be dumb enough to sideline Fauci or even fire him? Remember, Trump doesn’t like to be told he’s wrong.

We all are wondering when life will return to normal, if it will ever be normal again. School proms and graduations have been taken away. Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer. It’s a day we honor those who have given their lives for our country. Will we also be counting those dying from the coronavirus? Will we be gathering for Fourth of July fireworks and barbecues. Will we be packing the beaches and the mountains? Will we going back to school after that last summer weekend of Labor Day? Will we want our kids going door to door on Halloween?  How will we safely be casting our votes in the most important election in our lifetime? Will virtual turkey taste the same on Thanksgiving? Will the kids have to stand six feet from Santa wearing a mask? Even when we gain control of the virus and we develop a vaccine, will there always be that lingering doubt or suspicion about how close we get to each other? Will a sneeze or a cough chase us away? Fear of the unknown scares us the most. There will be more  dark days of wind and rain. Hope and courage will show us the sunshine that will guide us through this year like no other.