Are we getting close to the end of the quarantine?

 

 

What does it feel like to be done with quarantine? Can we see the light at the end of the tunnel? I recall the day, a year ago, when California went into shelter at home status.

We are not quite done with quarantine.  However, many who have had the two doses of the vaccine have started to step out of quarantine but with the required precautions (mask wearing, social distancing and hand hygiene). The unknowns about the nature of the pandemic were frightening. The rate of hospitalization and deaths were the most impactful of factors creating concern. I can recall how shopping was a cumbersome chore a year ago, with everyone trying to avoid the infection.  Now it has become second nature to take all the required precautions to prevent transmission. The effect of vaccines, in minimizing severity of the disease, as well as greater knowledge on how to treat the disease has been helpful in reducing the concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic to some level.

After a year of quarantine and working from home it is liberating to be able to get back to working in the normal surroundings in the midst of other individuals.  The mere experience of driving and observing the changing scenery is exhilarating.

Getting back to work, outside home, is only one small step.  Having spent one year without social gatherings one wonders when that slice of life will be back. It is likely that for the fore seeable future, it will have to be very small gatherings, outdoors and short visits.

Yet another aspect of life affected by the pandemic has been travel.  Those of us who were starting to take holiday trips greatly miss the travels.  We will likely have to take baby steps towards travelling and holidaying once again.  The first steps will have to be domestic trips, not involving air travel.  This can then be followed by air travel to domestic destinations and finally international travel.  This will all depend on absence of resurgence of the infection. By then populations would have attained herd immunity and things will be back to normal around the world.

COVID-19 swept through the world and dealt a serious blow to life as we know. COVID-19 taught us about pandemics, viral transmission, novel methods to develop vaccines, how vaccines are tested, public health strategies to prevent transmission and the chaos a pandemic can create in individual lives and the world over. With appropriate attention let us hope that we can slowly get back to life as we knew before the pandemic.

Wh