2021
January 13, 2021
What do you think will happen in 2021? Will Covid-19 be gone? Will school be virtual? What about sports? What will happen in 2021. Who knows. Well, we’re going to have to find out. The world has been in pandemic mode for a year and a half.
According to Verywell health.com, ¨The virus continues to spread at a slow burn; intermittent lockdowns are the new normal. An approved vaccine offers six months of protection, but international deal-making has slowed its distribution.¨ An estimated 250 million people have been infected worldwide, and 1.75 million have died. I’m not trying to start a political conversation here, but most of these, aren’t even Covid deaths. Sure some of them are, but not all… Anyway, Washington post.com states the ¨ The Pandemic is not playing out in the same way from place to place. Countries such as China, New Zealand and Rwanda have reached a low level of cases — after lockdowns of varying lengths — and are easing restrictions while watching for flare-ups.¨ People are slowly recovering from this, definitely not as scared as they were, but I can’t say that for everyone. Covid is here to stay, but I don’t think it will be this severe forever. According to Washington post,
¨Experts say that COVID-19 will likely become endemic, meaning it will circulate forever. ¨
A vaccine won’t provide full immunity, but it will still be a good tool for gaining control of the pandemic and lessening the severity of the symptoms that it causes. We will need to continue our face mask-wearing, hand washing, and social distancing efforts until the pandemic is under control.
Well, what about school? What’s going to happen there? According to school districts, ¨Every district plan some amount of in-school learning depends on children, who aren’t known for strong impulse control, to follow rules requiring them to stay six feet away from each other all school day, wash their hands repeatedly, listen to masked teachers and, in many places, wear masks themselves.¨ Last semester, some sat in parking lots near buildings with Internet service, and districts sent out buses to various locations to create hot spots. That will happen again, disabling the ability of teachers to teach and kids to learn.
Enough of all that boring stuff, let’s talk about sports. What’s going to happen to the seasons in 2021? Sports officials and head people said ¨When sports shut down in March, with the NBA, NHL, and MLB all pausing their seasons, it was far from a certainty that they would return in 2020. When he put the NBA season on hold, commissioner Adam Silver said that it would be “at least 30 days” until the league reconvened.¨ No one believed him, and they were right; it would end up being nearly four months until NBA players hit the floor again. And yet here we are, in late September, and those leagues have almost made it through. The Stanley Cup Finals and WNBA playoffs are in full swing (though they have experienced its first COVID-19 scare), the NBA Finals will begin next week, and Major League Baseball, the first sport to attempt the bank shot of a full, if abbreviated, un-bubbled season, begins its extended playoffs Tuesday.
Well, we can’t determine what is actually going to happen in 2021, but we can make predictions! Have a great new year!
Sources:
https://www.verywellhealth.com/covid-19-will-it-be-endemic-5083869
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/sports-pulled-off-a-miracle-in-2020-now-what-about-2021.html
