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With the arrival of more detailed Pfizer data, it's time to start preaching the gospel of the good news of the vaccines to everyone we know. That gospel has two parts: the already-not yet of the end of the pandemic, and the darkness of the time until its final defeat.
The good news: early reports on the vaccines are showing efficacy in line with the wildest dreams of optimists. This means that even if some remain reluctant to vaccinate (and as time passes, they will be fewer and fewer), the pandemic will end, and soon.
The bad news: between now and then, especially in the US, the situation is bad and getting worse. There's one EXCELLENT way to motivate those who can to double down on restricting indoor socializing, however, and that is the imminence of the end.
(The screenshot is from the always excellent Derek Lowe, https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/11/18/vaccine-possibilities)
We are tired. We miss each other, and we want to be together. The holidays are coming up as winter and darkness tighten their grip on the Northern Hemisphere. If people think this might just go on indefinitely, they're much more likely to grab the chance to be with loved ones.
If we can make the point that things look *so good* in the medium term, though they look terrible in the short term, people might be much more likely to postpone for just a few short (but dark) months, until at least people over 65, healthcare, and frontline workers get dosed.
My mother turns 70 on Christmas Day, and I so wish I could be there with her. But we will celebrate *so hard* in the spring, because the data suggest that the pandemic will end-end, not just recede, as vaccinations take place.
No more masks, which have never been a no-cost intervention. We'll slowly unlearn the instinctive shying-away from other bodies. Unexpected encounters will happen again. We'll have casual conversations with strangers. We'll experience collective bodily euphoria again.
The trauma of this time has lodged itself in our bodies, and it will take time to let go of it, and to grieve all the losses. You know what makes those processes easier? Being able to go through them in the presence of others.
And that is JUST over the horizon. Music, dance, worship, all of it, will slowly come back. The hated "new normal" will become the old aberration, though traces of it will remain.
The time, my friends, is short, and we continue to have trouble. But the end is certain.* And it is already dawning.
*As certain as anything can ever be in the contingencies of finite, bodied existence.
*As certain as anything can ever be in the contingencies of finite, bodied existence.
