That Time it Felt Like the Pandemic Sort of Kind of Went Away

We actually got to go to a music festival this year! Beach Road Weekend in late July to see Tedeschi Trucks: Fireside Live Tour.

Here we are, mid-August 2021, almost 18 months to the date when the world stopped on a dime because of COVID. I thought this would be mostly behind us by now, but alas life is full of surprises, and wouldn’t you know that even scientists can’t predict the trajectory of a pandemic, it relies on public health after all.

I got vaccinated in North Carolina on April 10, 2021. We were on another road trip visiting our friends Brendan and Natalie outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, the “Research Triangle” as I would come to learn. Natalie, a research scientist at UNC at the time, suggested we try to get vaccinated in the area, as supply was high and demand was low, especially compared to the now highly vaccinated New England, and particularly the resource-strapped Martha’s Vineyard.

Gavin had been dutifully tracking potential vaccine possibilities for us to get jabbed on the trip. There was a possibility of getting pricked outside of Savannah, GA, an insider tip I got from a retail associate at the Verizon store while buying a hot spot device for the RV (this is the kind of small talk we get to enjoy now). We thought it might be easier to get the vaccine away from home but with the two-part Pfizer and Moderna vaccines we were unsure if we would have to return back to the same location we got the first shot. 

Once Natalie alerted us to the ample vaccine resources in North Carolina Gavin went about trying to make us an appointment and successfully found us one at a beautiful UNC clinic the same day. We could get the J & J shot which meant “one and done.” We’d get the single shot and be fully vaccinated two weeks later, weeks before we were set to return home to Martha’s Vineyard. We were excited, but also a little nervous and didn’t know what to expect.

The vaccine kicked us on our butts for 1-2 days but we remained confident that it was worth it for the protection, and it gave us extra time with our dear friends Brendan and Natalie in North Carolina. Their daughter Ada affectionately came to refer to us as the “bus people” in light of the RV we lived out of in her driveway for two weeks, and she was distraught to find us gone once we finally departed.

Two weeks later we were fully vaccinated and feeling good. We knew the vaccine offered hope, that it could ease our fears of contracting COVID every time we entered a public space. We came to breathe easier and sleep harder. We still wore masks and took precautions but it was as if a burden had been lifted and we could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

At the end of May, the governor of Massachusetts lifted the mask mandate along with many of the COVID restrictions. There were no more limits on capacity and people could finally go back to the bar. It seemed sudden since we had been living within the confines of the virus for so many months, but a return to normal was an exciting prospect.

After Memorial Day visitors and seasonal residents descended on Martha’s Vineyard in drones. It seemed like more than I’d seen in the last seven years here, and we knew we were in for a very busy summer. Some local businesses continued to require masks for entry, but for the most part you were free to go about the Island maskless in June and July. 

I started dining out with friends and even sitting inside if needed. I still preferred to be outside (as is always the case in the summer, weather permitting) but I wasn’t scarred to be inside with strangers in the same way I had been just a couple of months earlier. I was vaccinated after all, and while I didn’t feel invincible I felt far more protected and was trying to get comfortable getting back to normal.

By July I was really beginning to settle into post-pandemic life. I spent July 4th at a house party at my aunt and uncle’s on the Cape, some 40 people (many college aged) dancing, singing, gallivanting around the house as the gloomy weather kept us inside. The return of the house party I thought, what a treat! I couldn’t remember the last time I had been happy to be inside with so many people (likely a bar on our other road trip pre-pandemic). 

Soon after I enjoyed an overnight stay at a hotel and spa for my Mom’s 60th birthday (my first hotel stay since Austin Texas in March 2020) and felt comfortable enough to get a facial and massage, sharing tight quarters with a stranger hovering over my face. Then I spent a week visiting Cape Cod with family and friends, entertaining Jessica and Franchesca at my mom’s condo. By that week I really felt like the pandemic had passed. 

I was running in and out of stores massless, ordering drinks at bars inside. We even spent one night listening to live music at a packed Chapin’s in Dennis, and shut the bar down, another first for a long while. We even accepted a ride from a maskless stranger (the hostess of the bar) when we couldn’t get an Uber - it was equal parts hilarious and annoying, but not a result of the virus. That week I also pressured my sister to buy plane tickets back for a friend’s wedding in September, feeling much more comfortable with the concept of traveling and flying, and knowing how much my mother would appreciate her visit. 

By late July things started to be reversing course and the freedoms I had just started to feel comfortable enjoying began to feel wrong and dangerous again. The week I got back from Cape Cod the Delta variant was front page news every day. It was more contagious than chickenpox they said and despite initial reports that the vaccine would prevent the virus from infecting us inoculated folks from getting it and passing it on that was no longer the case. Breakthrough cases were popping up all over and many clusters were among the vaccinated. Outbreaks in Provincetown became national news, as local business owners petitioned to get the town to require visitors to be vaccinated.

Vaccines were still proving effective (if testing positive you were thought safe from serious illness/hospitalization/death) and many of the severe cases were being experienced by the unvaccinated. State and local leaders continued the push to get residents vaccinated, incentivizing them with money and more, a tactic I find especially perplexing and honestly quite disturbing.

So here we are in August of 2021 living back in fear of the virus. While I’m optimistic that if I was to become infected I would hopefully not experience anything more than a summer cold (fingers crossed) I hate to know that I could be part of the problem–unknowingly passing it on to others and further contributing to the prolonging of this evil curse. 

I’m back to avoiding indoor seating as much as possible and always wearing a mask when I do. I continue to wear masks when servicing my hair clients, a practice I have never stopped. I have upcoming travel plans in the fall that might have to be reconsidered and am once again grateful I purchased an RV before the rest of the world. 

My latest concern is when I will be able to visit with my nephew Mason, an immunocompromised toddler with no access to a vaccine anytime soon. I'm looking at RV parks in Santa Barbara where we can camp for the winter to allow for proper time for quarantining, testing etc. in hopes I can be let into his bubble again.

With the Delta variant on the rise, children are being more affected by ever and the prospect of little Mason falling ill and ending up back in the hospital again is far too much to bear.  

In the news:

Taliban Takes Over Afghanistan as Soon As US Forces Leave: After nearly two decades of war, more than 6,000 American lives lost, over 100,000 Afghans killed and more than $2 trillion spent by the U.S., the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan and the speed of which the the Taliban was then able to takeover was absolutely shocking.

The White House is working on a plan to start offering Covid-19 vaccine boosters to some Americans as early as October.

Amazon is now the world’s top retail seller outside of China. Thanks in part to stay-at-home Americans shopping from home, Amazon's now topped Walmart by about $44 billion.