Our world has changed dramatically since the Coronavirus was declared a global pandemic last spring. Businesses, schools, and recreational facilities have all been shut down. Masks are now a common household item and social distancing is a term known by all. Everyone’s lives have been impacted in some way. 

Throughout this seemingly everlasting year, people have continuously speculated as to when the chaos will finally end. Unfortunately, we may never know until it actually happens. There is no way to definitively predict when our lives will return to normal, but medical experts such as Irwin Redlener, a doctor who runs a pandemic resource and response initiative at Columbia University, says, “…it’s going to be a long time before things return to whatever it is that we envision is normal” (webmd).  

Recent developments and distributions of three FDA approved vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, are great signs of hope. According to the CDC, just over 187 million Covid vaccines have been administered. That being said, as of April 9th, 2021, the CDC reports, “The United States is in the fourth week of an upward trend in COVID-19 cases. The lifting of social distancing and mask mandates in some areas could be contributing to this increase. This increase could also be due to the presence of more contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2…”. With the spreading of new variants, it’s especially important to bear down and continue to practice social distancing.

However, focusing on our Greenwich Country Day community, new actions have shown tremendous progress. On Friday, April 9th, all grades were on campus for the first time since last year. What’s even more exciting is that all teachers are now second-dose vaccinated. Although nationally we might not be going back to pre-covid normalcy any time soon, recent actions taken by our administration demonstrate that we are doing our part to get there.

(Image via: Calmatters.org)