Island Senior: If We Make It Through December

If We Make It Through December - Collage by Peggy Sue McRae

“Island Senior” is a reg­u­lar col­umn on the San Juan Update writ­ten by Peg­gy Sue McRae.

Pret­ty sure Mer­le Hag­gard was not think­ing about a spik­ing glob­al pan­dem­ic when he penned the lyrics to his clas­sic coun­try song, If We Make It Through Decem­ber, yet I can’t think of a more fit­ting song for wrap­ping up the year 2020.

Can we hun­ker down for one more hol­i­day? Can we resist all the hug­ging and singing that would nor­mal­ly be cheer­ing us through the longest, dark­est and cold­est nights of the year?

Accord­ing to Dr. Fau­ci, direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases, “We’re in the mid­dle of a steep slope” refer­ring to the country’s cur­rent increase in coro­n­avirus spread. In spite of being urged to stay at home this Thanks­giv­ing mil­lions of Amer­i­cans did travel.

We won’t know for a few weeks yet what effect that will have on the num­ber of new cas­es of coro­n­avirus. With the Decem­ber hol­i­days approach­ing dur­ing that same time peri­od we will like­ly, accord­ing to Dr. Fau­ci, “see a surge super­im­posed upon the surge we are already in.” He added, “It is not too late to do some­thing about it”.

Local advice from San Juan Coun­ty remains, “get­ting your flu shot, stay­ing home with your house­hold fam­i­ly, not trav­el­ing off island, not gath­er­ing indoors with oth­ers, cov­er­ing our faces, and not hav­ing friends or fam­i­ly vis­it from off island.”

This virus is a real Grinch! Yet, if we hang in there, wear our masks, wash our hands, and keep on keep­ing our dis­tance, vac­cines for this dis­ease are on the hori­zon. The begin­ning of the end just may be in sight.

As Mer­le Hag­gard sang it, “If we can make it through Decem­ber, we’ll be fine”.

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