| Last week, I was on vacation with my family in Canaan Valley, W.Va. My younger daughter and I had fallen in love with the area during a short visit last October, so we arranged a return trip. We made the reservations earlier this summer, when it seemed like the pandemic was easing. We were looking forward to visiting the places we had avoided on our previous trip -- such as visitors centers, restaurants and stores -- without concern, or masks. By the time the trip rolled around, however, we realized that wasn't to be. Although my family is fully vaccinated, only 56 percent of the residents of Tucker County, W.Va., have gotten even one dose of a vaccine. And the delta variant poses a risk to everyone, regardless of vaccination status. So, rather than planning to eat out, we brought most of our food with us -- again. We packed plenty of masks – again. Though 10 months had passed, we were almost back where we were had been in October. It was deja vu -- but bad deja vu -- because I really didn't want to go through the experience again. I felt the same way as I tried to keep up with covid news: Alabama was out of ICU beds. In Texas, a parent ripped a mask off a teacher's face. The CDC announced the delta variant was responsible for 98.8 percent of new cases. A GOP state representative in Maine attended an anti-vaccine rally days after his wife died -- of covid. A pharmacist was arrested for selling covid vaccination cards online. A hospital in Hawaii was so overwhelmed by covid cases it had to shut down. I didn't want to go back to work, to more of the same stories I had been editing for 18 months. I was tired of thinking about covid, sick of bad news, angry about the Americans who refused to get vaccinated and allowed the delta variant to spread, weary of worrying about vulnerable people, not sure I could get through another fall and winter of relative isolation. Thankfully, I had assigned a story just before my vacation that came in on the day I returned: "How to handle the infuriating 'here we go again' feeling as the delta variant rages," by health writer Stacey Colino. In it, psychologists offer seven tips for getting through this difficult time, though the advice can apply to overcoming any challenge (two suggestions that really spoke to me were to embrace what you can do and reflect on how you handled past challenges). By the time I finished editing it, I found myself agreeing with one of the experts, who said, "The experience of [the pandemic] getting better in the spring brings a sense of realistic hopefulness that it will happen again. This setback is not going to last forever." Take care! |
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