Kendall Stanley: To better health?
This past week marked the end of the COVID-19 health emergency, but what does that mean actually?
Lots of confusion and questions, but first things first.
COVID is alive and well and mutating out there, folks. Just a couple of weeks before heading home, our neighbor came down with a mild case, thankfully. And the local newspaper, the Arizona Star, continues to publish a COVID dashboard showing the number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Pima County.
With the reduced chance of infection, you don’t see many masks on faces out in public. Some, mostly worn by older folks but by no means all.
As to what to expect, The New York Times published a frequently asked questions together at nytimes.com/explain/2022/coronavirus-questions?.
There are those who lost loved ones to the pandemic, including Shannon Cummings of Harbor Springs who talked with the Times about what it is like to feel that loss. “Shannon Cummings, 53, has tried to push forward after her husband, Larry, a college professor, died of COVID-19 in March 2020.
“She flew from her home in Michigan to Southern California to attend a Harry Styles concert with family members and friends. Twice a week, she meets with her group therapy classes. She started going out to lunch in public again, a step that took her years.
“‘We lost over a million people in the pandemic,’” she said. “‘It doesn’t honor any of them to not live my life.’” “Yet she is still grappling with the milestone the nation will mark on Thursday: something of an official end of the pandemic, as the Biden administration will allow the three-year-old coronavirus public health emergency — and a separate declaration of a national emergency — to expire.
“I feel like some people never really embraced that there was an emergency going on,” Ms. Cummings said. “It’s really hurtful to those of us who have actually experienced a loss from this.”
More than 1.1 million Americans have died of Covid, and the rate of death has markedly slowed in recent months. In 2020 and 2021, it was the third most common cause of death; by this point in 2023, preliminary data show, it has dropped to seventh.
There is no way to describe the feeling of knowing an anti-vaxxer friend who contracted COVID along with his father; he survived and his father did not.
As the pandemic winds down across the world, many will probably not display as much diligence as they have in the past.
Caution is the name of the game — as we were leaving Arizona the number of cases were rising. In that case, keep your masks and COVID tests handy.
Tickling the keys
It popped up on Facebook weeks ago — Petoskey officials showed a piano and bench someone left in the tunnel underneath U.S. 31 that runs down to the Petoskey waterfront. The city was giving a heads-up that they were going to remove it.
But people started playing it, dressing it up a little — making it part of the tunnel.
No one has claimed the piano and at least when I was writing this, the city hadn’t removed it from its unusual location.
On Facebook the consensus of commentators was a 100 percent yes to leave the piano in the tunnel for the summer and store it over the winter.
And then pops up a person who offers to store the piano over the winter! Bravo for them.
The Petoskey Piano is a wonderful bit of serendipity, an opportunity for piano players to perform in what is one of the most unusual venues in the city.
If I played the piano I’d play this one for no other reason than to say I had.
— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: To better health?
