Lessons learned from 2020 appear to include an obvious one- to respect nature. While it is not certain, it appears the corona virus c-19 was created due to treatment of animals and eating habits on the other side of the earth. When nature is harshly violated, we will be reminded that we are a part of nature too and as vulnerable to it, as its creatures are to us.
We learned a more subtle lesson, which is to value time spent with humans beings. Time spent with family and friends has always been cherished in life by most people. What seems less obvious as a lesson of 2020 is that any time with civil human beings, no matter how trivial and commonplace, is valuable. Who will look at seating in an airplane or taking a taxi and meeting a friendly person the same way again? The physical barriers we constructed around us in 2020, felt more and more like psychological ones as the year wore on.
Last lesson, is perhaps that we are reminded of our common humanity. The whole world was felled by a single micro-organism. This singular focus of humanity, was the reason I predicted in my interview of May 2020 on KSNV NBC Las Vegas, that the virus would meet its vaccine by the end of the year. I was confident we would create a vaccine in 2020 where others doubted this. I researched vaccine development as an National Institute of Health Fellow in the prior decade. But the reason I was confident was I believed the entire world’s scientific focus on a singular vaccine, would result in success.
We are not out of the woods yet, but with continued precautions and increased immunity in most countries, there is a light at the end of the tunnel…