"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer, by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house- in the deep bosom of the ocean
buried."
Richard III -Wm.Shakespeare
Oh that it might be so-- that our future selves will look back on our summer- June, July and August of 2020 as a Great Reawakening- sunshine bright. With the benefit of hindsight we will look back on these days with fondness. I honestly hope it is so.
Sadly, I balance such cheerful thoughts with a more sober assessment- built less on Tea leaves and more on my crude understanding of science.
That version of our future is one of Regret- of looking back with the sad realization that trusting in the good judgement of our peers was a huge mistake and that we never should have assumed restraint and sacrifice- Human Nature, being what it was and what it is. The days of working together, accepting that our daily lives needed to be filled with limits-they were brief and barely tolerated. Selflessness was more a cheerful goal than a practice. Given the go-ahead to resume something that looked like Normal life was more than enough of a direction for mass numbers of people to race toward an imaginary Normal- at least in North America. It was a false victory and one that lasted days, not weeks.
Finding out that it was Too Much and Too soon made life for all of us doubly hard- and no amount of second guessing will ever change that. So yes, I fear that in the spring of next year there will be plenty of talk of what did not happen and what we might have done.
Sadly, it won't change a thing