Carlo G. Romero

First of all, we should and will remember all the lives lost.  More lives lost in a single day than were lost on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.  For that reason alone, that ground is hallowed ground.  If you visit, you’ll feel it.  If you’ve visited, you know.
 
After 20 years, I remember that day very clearly.  I’m not the only one.  If you are of the right age, I’m sure you do, too.

I was in New York that day, about to go to the World Trade Center when I turned on the television in the morning.  The south tower was spewing white smoke, as it had during the original attack eight years before.  I wondered why they were showing historical footage.  Then I read the caption.  It wasn’t historical.  It was live.

It was a Tuesday.  I remember that the skies were a clear blue.  There was a hint of the impending fall in the air.

I remember the utter shock of watching what once seemed impregnable collapse to the ground as if it were made of sand.  After the shock, there was fear and after the fear, anger.  But, mostly, I felt sadness and heartache.  Too many lost their lives.  Many more lost loved ones.  But all of us lost something that day.  

I remember feeling comfort watching American fighter jets patrol New York’s skies, knowing that they wouldn’t allow any other attacks to succeed that day or any other day to come.  The military deployed to the City.  Men and women with heavy weaponry and the American flag on their shoulders roamed the streets.  And we were all right with that.

I remember that you could smell the ashes for weeks after and from miles away.

I remember the righteous anger.  The Special Forces landed, soon followed by tens of thousands of troops.  We were all sure that they would avenge us and and mete out just punishment.

But out of all these memories, what I always want to remember is the unity we all felt.  E pluribus unum came true.  From the Pacific to the Atlantic, across the majestic plains of the midwest and from north to south, we came together.   New York City felt like a small village, where everyone knew each other, and the whole country felt like a small town, where everyone supported each other.

Twenty years later, with the country as polarized as it is over clear life and death issues, it would be good for all of us to remember that there once was only an “us”, not an “us” and a “them.”

At the beginning of the year I predicted and hoped for a maskless summer.

Vaccinations in the United States had just begun.  I assumed I was on the bottom of the priority list and that I would get the vaccine by June but I also assumed that most people would also have received their shots by then.

Instead, I received my shots by March.  Most people I know received their shots by April.  By May, any one who wanted a shot could get one.
 
It may have been in May when I stopped wearing a mask on regular basis.  I don’t even remember.  Other than following the requirement to wear a mask on public transportation, I didn’t bother to wear one anymore.  Fewer and fewer people in New York City did.  Daily infections, hospitalizations and deaths dropped.  I went to restaurants and bars, watched a performance at Radio City Music Hall and even watched a movie—on a big screen!  The worst seemed to be over.

And then there was delta.

As the summer ends, covid-19 has made a comeback.  In some U.S. states, the pandemic is the worst it’s ever been.  In most countries, it never really got better.  Mask mandates are being brought back.  Long awaited events are being canceled or being made virtual.  And it’s not even cold, yet, when such infections proliferate even more because we need the warmth of proximity.

Even a cursory reading of history reveals that this is a horribly normal pattern for pandemics.  It will keep returning in waves for years until herd immunity is reached or the pathogen mutates into a less lethal variant.  Unlike previous pandemics, however, we have effective countermeasures.  We have vaccines.  We could end this right now if we wanted to, but for reasons I can barely fathom, we have chosen not to.  This is no longer an act of God but the decision of men and women.

It ain’t over ’til it’s over.  And it ain’t over.  And I’m not having fun.

He was a man at the twilight of his life, having a conversation with a younger man, who himself was near the peak of his cognitive powers.  The old man was reminiscing about his childhood, when he was the slowest child in his class.  By “slow”, the old man was referring to how long it took him to solve math problems relative to his peers.
 
We associate intelligence with speed.  When we were in grade school, we all noticed the child who arrived at the answer faster than anyone else in the classroom.  We called that kid “smart”.  Maybe you were that child. Conversely, there was always the kid who was behind everyone else, who took too much time answering the question or solving the problem—if he or she even answered the question at all within the time allotted.  We would have called that kid “slow”.  Maybe even “stupid”.

This old man, now in his 80s, remembered when he was the slowest by far. He needed so much extra time to complete the arithmetic lessons he had to work past his own period and well into the following periods.  For some reason, his teacher saw some something in him and allowed him to do this.

The younger man asking questions was Brian Greene, a physicist at Columbia University, one of the primary proponents of superstring theory. That old man reminiscing was Roger Penrose.  In fact, it’s “Sir” Roger Penrose.  You can see the conversation here: https://youtu.be/7oCQuvhQY6o (jump to minute 30).  He was knighted by the Queen of England for his service to science.  He also won the Nobel Prize in physics last year for showing that Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts the formation of black holes.  In other words, the slowest kid in the class, the kid we would have labeled “stupid” if we were in the same class as he was, grew up to become a genius.

Einstein himself said the reason he was able develop the theory of relativity was because he was slow.  He only started asking the silly questions that children ask when he was an adult, but by that time, he had the tools to actually answer the silly questions.  Indeed, he only started speaking when he was five years old.  Stephen Hawking only started reading when he was eight.

How much more could each of us have learned if we had been given the time?  How much more would we understand if we gave ourselves time, instead of surrendering to our incessant addiction to speed?

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
― Frederick Douglass

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses―behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”
― Muhammad Ali

I just received the second shot of the Pfizer vaccine.  The pandemic did not magically end with a snap of a finger.  I used hand sanitizer on my way out.  I still kept my mask on.  The virus marches on.  The decline in cases recorded in the winter is reversing itself.  The more dangerous variants are becoming dominant.  And, yet…

Biden’s goal of delivering 100 million doses in his first 100 days was met a month and half early.  The new goal is to deliver 200 million and we are on pace to exceed that.  As of yesterday, over 15% of American adults have been fully vaccinated.  At the beginning of this year, only half a million doses of vaccine were being administered.  Today, we are at six times that level.  In fact, the concern in the United States is not a shortage of vaccines by the end of spring, but a surplus.  

In chess, the end of the match is marked by a checkmate.  We aren’t there.  The virus still has many places to go.  But maybe we are in the endgame, the part of the match when victory is assured, even if it is many moves away.  We have the right pieces in the right positions now.  Maybe our return to each other is not that far away.  

March 14th marks at least two grim anniversaries.  It was a year ago today that New York City recorded its first death due to covid-19 and within two weeks almost 700 more New Yorkers would be dead from the novel coronavirus.  March 14th also happens to be the first day I experienced my first symptoms of the illness.  A year later, the pandemic still rages.  Rates of infection and death are, however, dropping dramatically (though they still exceed last summer’s peaks).  March 14 also happens to mark another anniversary: it was exactly three months ago, on December 14, that the vaccine was given to the US public.  Could we finally be seeing the end of all this?

A little over a week ago I found out from my doctor that I was eligible for the vaccine (let’s just say I enjoy the benefits of a high sodium diet).  I found an available slot early Sunday morning on turbovax.info (the benefit of staying up late and surfing the web) and signed up.  The appointment was for Monday, March 8.

The first side effect I experienced after getting the shot was hope.  I received the shot at The Harlem Hospital.  The operation was efficient.  I arrived early for my appointment but I hardly had to wait.  They had my name and information, they set the appointment for the second shot and then I received the actual first shot.  They make you wait 15 minutes to see if the shot has any adverse effects, but it didn’t for me.  I left after fifteen minutes and got on the subway home.

The trains are more crowded nowadays.  Not like they were before the pandemic, but certainly more than in the darkest days.  I actually had to stand up.  I wanted to shout to all of the people on the train to get off, sign up and get the vaccine, ridiculous as it sounds.

For all the disaster and tragedy of the last year, this is an incredible time.  The SARS-COV-2 virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December of 2019.  BioNTech started working on a vaccine on January 10, 2020, the same day that China released the gene sequence of the virus.  In February came the first known death of an American from SARS-COV-2. The WHO declared covid-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020.  Less than a year after the discovery of the virus, the first members of the American public received doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.  Less than a year after covid-19 was declared a pandemic, I received my own first shot of the vaccine. We are admittedly still some distance in time from having to forego all precautions. 

It is not quite time yet to throw all our masks away nor to end that six foot restriction in public places.  But that time is coming sooner rather than later.  The pace of recovery is accelerating.  I can testify to it.  And I can feel it.