What are we hoping from 2021? Are our expectations too high based on the fact that 2020 was especially awful. Probably. But there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the upcoming year. If you’re hoping to just have a year better than 2020, then you are in the right mindset. Here are some other outcomes that we’re all hoping from 2021
Let’s not go crazy: even under the most ideal of circumstances, COVID will not disappear next year. According to most medical experts, COVID isn’t going anywhere, and will most likely still exist in some form even after it is almost fully eradicated (on a similar note: did you know you can still get the Bubonic plague? It still hovers around a dozen or so cases every year. That’s probably the best illustration of what COVID will be once vaccines become widely distributed. It’s damn near impossible to completely eradicate a disease of any magnitude, and COVID is such a new disease that it is a gigantic miracle that we already have some viable vaccines ready for public distribution).
This has to be the major desire from everybody for 2021. We’re all hoping that the end to the “global pandemic” level of COVID is near, or at least within the next calendar year. If COVID can be dealt with (and thankfully it looks like we are getting a new president who is actually taking it seriously instead of holding maskless rallies and getting advanced stem cell treatments once he gets it), it opens the door to every other hope that we all have for 2021. Those hopes include…
God what I wouldn’t give to step into a tiny little club packed with people to hear a really loud rock band again. Whereas movie theaters seem to be imminently going the way of the dodo, there’s just no replicating the live music experience. Many artists have been doing live streams over the past year, and they have been a welcome placeholder for live shows, but that feeling you get at a live show is something that is sorely missed.
We don’t have to stop at live music though: live theatre, live events, festivals, and, yes, even movie theaters, need to make a comeback soon. It’s not just that we have been missing the experience, but a whole generation of people and their livelihoods are at stake. Arts are often not given the same respect (or funding) as STEM programs, and sure, it is harder to see a tangible revolution of culture than it is to see a tangible revolution in science and technology, but there is still a reliance on music, movies, theatre, and art in the world. Without it, the world is a far duller, less enriching, and depressingly dour place. Music has done so much for us over the past year to keep us from losing our minds, whether it was in quarantine or returning back to some semblance of normalcy, so the least we could do is go out to a live venue and check out a crappy little garage band. As long as we can do it safely.
Remember the days when we used to hang out with friends? Not just facetime or getting on a zoom call, but actually sharing the same space with people that you actually like in a safe and controlled environment. Yeah, me neither. It has definitely been a while. If there is something to be gained from 2020, it is probably that we are all going to be a lot less likely to cancel our hang out plans in 2021. We have been deprived, people! I know it’s way easier to just stay in sweats at home, but we have waited long enough to actually go to a party.
How long will it be until social gatherings of any magnitude actually come back in a safe way? It’s hard to tell, especially before the major rollout of vaccines and proper addressing of the coronavirus pandemic. Just like everything else on this list, it’s dependent on COVID. But if the vaccines find safe levels of distribution and intake, is it a little too optimistic to think that by august we could actually see our friends again? Here’s hoping! I just want to play weird board games and go to bars again with feeling like I’m about to get an infectious disease (you know, apart from the infectious diseases that usually hang around in bars). If hoping that 2021 is the year that social gatherings return feels like asking for our basic ability to interact with people back, it just illustrates how insane 2020 wound up being.
I can’t really blame Chipotle too much for their lack of lettuce this year. It was mostly out of their hands, and if . Still, a boy can dream. If 2021 is going to be a great year, I am wholly dependent on being filled up with Chipotle burritos. I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.
Ahahahahahaha. But no, actually, I’m serious.
Just think about it: we are going to have a new president who, for all his faults, will actually be someone who doesn’t treat scientists who work for the CDC as conspiracy theory spewing goons. Doesn’t that just sound so… refreshing? God I’m hoping it’s not too much to expect from half of America to at least consider that these “experts” and actually, you know, experts. Who am I going to trust: a guy who spent ten years in medical school and nearly fifty years after that fighting and researching infectious diseases around the world, or my rackpot MAGA uncle who also believes that QAnon needs to be a major political concern.
Asking for a return to logic and reason might be a step too far, but we have to be hoping for it, because the alternative is just far too depressing to fathom. We can’t be slipping into the darkest timeline yet, right? Here’s hoping that 2021 is a return to the light.
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