The Pandemic Year retrospective.

 Sunday, October 3, 2021

What a strange and terrible year 2020 turned out to be.  The day we stepped foot off the Princess in San Pedro (Los Angeles), California was February 1, 2020. That was the day the Diamond Princess was placed under quarantine for what was to prove a historic moment in the evolution of what is now known as the COVID-19 pandemic.  

We were fortunate to be able to return to our homes before the lockdowns began.  We heard stories from friends whom we had cruised with before, getting stranded in the South Pacific in a state of limbo before being evacuated by air back to the US when their transpacific cruise was abruptly terminated.

We had to cancel multiple cruises including a Viking River cruise in Portugal and Spain, a Princess cruise that would have taken us from Rome to Jerusalem, and then across the Mediterranean to the Canary Islands, and then across the Atlantic to Fort Lauderdale, and a Christmas cruise with our kids in the Caribbean.  We also canceled cruises circumnavigating Australia, a camper van Australian exploration from Brisbane to Sydney, and a transpacific cruise from Sydney to Seattle via the South Pacific.  

Our travel agent Theresa was an angel working like a devil to get all the cancelations, refunds and credits sorted over several months.  

A year ago, there appeared to be a light at the end of a long dark tunnel when vaccines became available for COVID19.  We were so relieved to have received our vaccinations last winter and were so looking forward to a return to normal that we book a Christmas Caribbean cruise for December 2021, confident that the pandemic would have receded into the folds of history by then, at least for the US where vaccines were free and widely available.  

We never imagined such a large faction of the US population could be held in trance by irrational and superstitious anti-mask and anti-vaccination movements fed by misinformation campaigns amplified by social media.  These were undoubtedly sponsored by shadowy forces that wished to see the US suffer as greatly as possible.  This pool of unvaccinated anti-science individuals served as a massive Petri dish for COVID-19 to feed upon and sustain itself through the summer and fall.  As of the end of September 2021 over 700,000 Americans have been killed by COVID-19, with a very large number of deaths occurring needlessly because they occurred in individuals who turned away from science and medicine and refused vaccination and masking.  Ironically, several conservative talk show hosts responsible for spreading the worst of the anti-vaccine and anti-masking misinformation and vitriol have been silenced by the virus they so vigorously denied.

The massive third wave of COVID-19 deaths is fortunately abating as the number of unvaccinated dwindle down either through infection, or reluctant late vaccinations.  We are hopeful that testing requirements will lessen as prevalence of COVID-19 continues to fall.  We are hopeful that we will be able to take our Christmas Caribbean cruise in 3 months.  

Despite all our canceled cruises, we have kept busy. My mother Betty passed in June, and I was kept very busy dealing with her estate.  We, like many others during the Pandemic, purchased a RV to allow us to continue some form of travel within our own personal "bubble".   I have a backlog of diary entries from our RV trips that I will publish to this blog shortly, so stay tuned for the further travels of Ben and Janet.