CARLTON FLETCHER: Let’s give ourselves a hand … we’re surviving

“Changes, Just gonna have to be a different one. Time may change me, But I can’t trace time.”

— David Bowie

Everyone, it’s now apparent, has made his or her choice as to whether he or she will get the vaccination(s) that were created to stave off the coronavirus pandemic that has pretty much held the world in its grip for 14 or so months.

Whether it be political, religious, fear of the unknown or just plain stubbornness, there are those who vow they will not get the shot.

(SIDEBAR: A very political person I know said the “fake news media” is up to its usual tricks in crediting President Biden with the push to make COVID-19 vaccine available to as much of the country as possible. “This wasn’t Biden’s doing, it was President Trump’s ‘Warp Speed’ program that got the vaccines available.” I asked him if he’d had both shots yet, and he surprised me by saying, “I ain’t getting no shot. That’s just a Democratic hoax to try and get people under their control.” Ummm … well, you get it.)

There is another group that has declared, “I might get the shot, but it will be later, after all you guinea pigs show me what will happen when you get vaccinated.”

And still another group pooh-poohs the idea that there even is a pandemic; they have it on good authority that the coronavirus is nothing more than a strong strain of flu and that the casualties that have mounted are simply because we’ve weakened our immune system by not taking large doses of … whatever their particular guru tells them this week.

Of course, we can’t leave out the groups that swear COVID-19 is nothing more than a weapon of that cabal of laser-toting pedophiles — led by Hillary Clinton — and those who say it’s Bill Gates’ way of eradicating a large portion of the population, making it easy for his emergence as world ruler.

All these groups aside — and forgetting for now the millions of people who have gotten their vaccinations — I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how far we’ve come in that year-plus since the outbreak of the virus/Democratic plot/pedophile-controlled weapon. And it’s pretty freaking amazing.

Maybe you’ve put those early days of the outbreak out of mind, but I can’t help but think back to the daily reports in our region and the astronomical growth over the first couple of months of the virus. It was like a bad science fiction movie, only we were living it. I remember driving through the heart of downtown and seeing those eerily vacant sidewalks and streets. I remember all but “essential” stores closing and people trying to work out a way to get their essentials without running into a carrier of the virus.

(SIDEBAR II: Nobody ever told me — and, believe me, I asked — how liquor stores were allowed to remain open as “essential” businesses. And, trust me, I know enough to know it wasn’t to keep the alcoholics and casual drinkers happy. It was to keep the big-time contributors to political campaigns happy. Remember, boys and girls, in politics, money trumps killer pandemics … always.)

I sometimes felt like a character in an Edgar Allen Poe story in the early days of the virus, and there were times — as the numbers mounted locally — that I admit to wondering if we would ever return to normal. Now, though, I think most of the world — except those with dogmatic political/religious/conspiracy theory views — has agreed that there will be no “going back to normal.” What we’re looking at now is moving forward toward the “new normal” that awaits us. No matter how much we wish it, the days of mom-and-pop stores and sit-down restaurants on every corner are gone. The days of paying double to these delivery services are, I’m afraid, here to stay.

(SIDEBAR III: It’s amazing how quickly we “adapted” — without so much as a peep, no less — to these phony delivery and service charges we’re now paying that double (or more) the price of a meal. $48 hamburger, anyone?)

Still, even though we’re not through with this virus by a long shot, we at least can envision the “other side” of it. The big question now, though, is what that other side’s going to look like.