COVID-19 vaccine’s promises for 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect everyone’s lives as infection rates rise, and social interactions become more dangerous. However, as of mid-December, the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer, Inc. and Moderna Inc. were FDA approved and began to rollout across America. 

As a new year began, there was hope that everything would rapidly change to normal once the COVID-19 vaccines were authorized and given to hospitals. With vaccines to prevent the virus becoming available, it would be easy to say that the vaccines will come to the public in no time with millions being produced for distribution. However, there are still many hospitals in need of vaccines, and there will be a priority among those who are more susceptible to being infected. Allowing public access to these vaccines will be a difficult and long process to organize. 

Due to the efforts of maintaining the safety of students and decreasing the number of potential COVID-19 cases, the school decided to close its campus, transitioning to an online format. This meant no physical social interaction amongst peers and teachers, leading to a very awkward online school year. Even with vaccines, a full school reopening does not seem likely until the 2021-22 school year as every student will need to get vaccinated and teachers would have to convert back to a normal schedule, all within a single semester. This leaves the continuation of distance learning as the more realistic option through the remainder of the school year. 

Students could expect to have in-person social interactions again this year.This means going out without any restriction or fear of catching the virus. Traveling with family would be ordinary and fun again. Seeing elderly family members would not be so terrifying to think about anymore. After almost an entire year of quarantine, students will be able to live out a typical high school life, being more mentally intact with revived physical socializing. COVID-19 has caused so much distress to people’s mentality, and we can see that slowly fading away as people will not have to be afraid of the virus anymore.

Generally, the future that the COVID-19 vaccines provide is a bright one, restoring the normalcy in students’ lives to some extent. For things to become normal again in 2021, everyone just needs to be patient and focus on being safe.