The End (?)

Be safe, be smart, be kind
―Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, in the first months of the pandemic

We have a chance to do something extraordinary. As we head out of this pandemic we can change the world. Create a world of love. A world where we are kind to each other. A world were we are kind no matter what class, race, sexual orientation, what religion or lack of or what job we have. A world we don't judge those at the food bank because that may be us if things were just slightly different. Let love and kindness be our roadmap.
― Johnny Corn

This morning, on the way to work, while the car radio was acting up, I heard something about the Israel Ministry of Health something something Corona in a month something something just another virus. Later that day, a friend confirmed what I wasn't sure I had heard: Within the month, the Israel Ministry of Health will be closing down all PCR testing centers in the country, eliminate the required quarantine for those infected, demote Covid-19 to just another virus, and officially declare the pandemic over.

My head is spinning. 

Despite the fact that most of the regulations, such as mask-wearing and crowding, have been over for months, and the more draconian regulations of quarantining if you've been in a two-block radius of an infected person and limiting entry to stores to two people and events to 20 for more than a year, it's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that the pandemic has passed. 

Because I don't live with any school-age children, and because, for the first year and a half I didn't travel abroad at all and rarely even on a bus, and I stayed away from all events, shopping malls, restaurants, and hotels (really, I did), I never had to go into quarantine for being near a sick person. 

I know of people who were very sick, people in the hospital, and people who died of the disease, but none who were close to me, so thankfully, I do not have those memories.

Otherwise, I think I experienced most other aspects of the pandemic. 

• Learned how to zoom and zoomed with family members, check. 

• Bought a new webcam and headphone to zoom more efficiently, check. 
• Enjoyed my time at home during the first few months of lockdown, check. 
• Used that time efficiently and creatively, check.
• Missed my friends and the old way of life (during lockdown), check. 
• Stocked up on food just in case, too much check.
• Had a Corona-20-person wedding, check.
• Gotten angry at the selfishness of others, check, check, check. 
• Had a war, check. 
• Got vaccinated, check, check, check, check. 

• Got sick and survived, check.

Over the past few years, I've read several articles and stories about other plagues and pandemics. I learned about rat-lickers and black weddings (shvartse chasene שוואַרץ חתונה) - one of which was held in my hometown in the Old Country - and that conspiracy theories have been around as long as disease has been. 

I'm ready for this pandemic to end. I have stories enough to tell the grandkids when they are older; about masking, and social distancing, and how we used to go into actual stores to buy things (oh the horrors!!)

There is, however, one element of the pandemic that I have not experienced. I resisted it, and hoped  the pandemic would be over quickly and I wouldn't need to go through it. But then I thought of my grandchildren, and how the stories would be missing a crucial element. Therefore, in order to be 'covered' (or as they say in Hebrew יוצא yotzeh) by the entire pandemic experience, tonight, I succumbed. 

I baked banana bread.

The end.