COVID -- What Have We Learned?

While the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be winding down in America, it’s still raging in many parts of the world.

I usually try to be a bit humorous in these columns, but with more than 600,000 dead fellow Americans and millions more across the globe dying and continuing to die, it is no laughing matter.

But let’s take stock of what some of us survivors have learned from this woeful experience.

To start, we learned that — for many of us — we don’t need to suit up and drive into work five days a week anymore. More and more jobs these days are tied to a phone and a computer, so there’s no longer any justification for wasting gas, creating pollution, fighting traffic, worsening climate change, battling for a parking spot and not being home when your dogs need to go potty.

We learned we didn’t need to get out of our pajamas or even wear pants while doing our work-related tasks. Talk about freedom...

And with our kids studying from home during many of those long scary months, we learned -- with understanding employers -- that we could be there to monitor their studies while still earning a paycheck — at home.

We learned that we could do so many things — order food, buy Internet junk, stay in touch with our loved ones, etc. — while remaining safe at home.

We learned to appreciate our brave front line workers — hospital staff, school teachers, grocery store workers and delivery drivers — who helped protect us and kept our lives moving forward.

We learned to appreciate science and the scientists who were able to develop vaccines that could tame the COVID beast — and in record time.

We learned — many of us anyway — that wearing a mask and social distancing was something that only truly works if we all pitched in and did it together.

And, of course, we learned there will always be those who feel their rights are being trampled upon by having to care about folks other than themselves.

So patriotic…

It feels great to be vaccinated and seeing life beginning to return to some kind of normal in the U.S. Thank God for the leaders — especially since Jan. 20 — who showed us how to be kind, thoughtful and caring about our fellow citizens in a time of extreme danger.

Hey, with these new COVID variants popping up, we’re not out of the woods yet. But we know so much more about ourselves and nature’s dangers than ever before.

And those are good things to learn.