I think I might just stop watching the news. When a 'promoted' article appears on my newsfeed claiming that 'a vaccine won't be available for everyone before the end of 2024' I can't help but feel my heart sink.
That's a bit like appearing in September 1914 and bursting the bubble of every jolly Tom, Dick and Harry who still thinks it'll be 'over by Christmas'. Thanks a lot, newsfeed.
The thing is, this is a bit like a war, and there is no telling when it really ends - at least not yet. Another article claimed that the virus itself seems resistant to mutation - which is a very good thing; it means that a vaccine might work when it's ready, and the world can at least start to repair itself.
Others of course, are still twisting themselves into spirals, claiming it as a gigantic hoax intended to enslave humanity. There were scenes of a protest I saw, somewhere in North Carolina, where a whole bunch of well-meaning people held a 'no masks rally' - at which they protested their personal freedoms. It's hard to imagine those people queuing up for the vaccine when it arrives. They looked angry, which, I concluded was a slightly better look than 'dead'.
I suppose with the war, we sent our men abroad to fight on our behalf. They went whistling into a skirmish, and came face to face with a brutal reality - but it was a brutal reality somewhere else, over there, Europe, where you can never imagine the trenches, the bodies, the despair and the mud.
In this century, the war has come to us - airborne and invisible like a sophisticated mustard gas. There are no verandahs to drink tea from and no broadsheets with 'news from the front line'. There are no troops, no army, no foreign powers marching over disputed lands, no furious dictator burning in rage in a stone palace. Nobody to point a finger at.
There's us and there's the virus. And at the same time as we may be fed up with it, it, a microorganism with a biological impulse, is simply trying to survive and replicate by infecting as many warm-bodies as possible. It isn't done with us. So, really, we shouldn't be done with it either.
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That being said, it is all getting rather tedious isn't it? The famous 'rule of six' came into force this week, making it illegal to gather in groups of more than half-a-dozen. There are exemptions, naturally, like places of worship, but on the whole, social gatherings, meetings, group nights... we're now at a maximum of six, and there are fines for contraventions.
I think they'll implement curfews too eventually - especially if the numbers keep rising. Seems the UK government at least, were concerned about that complacency I talked about last week. As September turns to October, and as the air starts getting chilly, it seems inevitable that the war will intensify, the restrictions will tighten, and we'll be looking for Spring again.
But I don't want to be depressing. Remember the good stuff that came out of lockdown? The family time, the new, slower pace of life? We do still have all of that - not to mention the complete opportunity for reinvention! There's still so much that we can do, change, craft, dream of! If we are to be locked-in over winter, or curfewed, or just warming our hands round the fire, there will always be room to love and to laugh.
In the meantime, I think I might stop watching the news. I can't see how spreading fear and misery is going to help anyone, and I do choose to believe that there's gold to be found in times of hardship.
If this is a war, and I think it is, then I want to be one of those who still fights for the land I believe in, the hope and the glory of a group of people who stood up to our enemy and protected each other when it counted most - protected each other - that's what the No Mask people are missing, I think. This isn't just about them; it's all of us - we all need to be protected, we all deserve our freedom from this virus, and we will win it.
There will be a day when masks are no longer necessary, and we can meet in groups again, and hug and dance and sing under the stars together. It's worth holding on to.
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