The year of COVID-19: 'Always crashing in the same car'

The calendar year is finally ending, and a New Year is kicking off. The vaccine is here. There is a light at the end of this exceptionally long and windy and dark tunnel.

JANUARY 1, 2021 11:53

LET’S MOVE forward on a better path. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons) — LET’S MOVE forward on a better path.

(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

When David Bowie wrote his famous lyrics to “Always crashing in the same car” and talked about “goin’ round and round,” he likely didn't envision the year 2020.

Life in Israel for the last 10 months of the coronavirus crisis has been like riding in an automated vehicle, without a steering wheel and hoping not to crash.

Particularly, since the brakes do not work either.

As the coronavirus analyst, from the first COVID-19 case in Israel in February until the first person, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was vaccinated almost two weeks ago, I have written more than 600 articles on the subject.

I have looked at the biology of the virus; ways to treat it - no, there are still not any really good methods; death; and life after intubation, which is essentially life after death.

I have spoken to the health minister, two coronavirus commissioners, countless doctors and scientists.

Sometimes the storyline centered on the coronavirus cabinet and the government. The Knesset. The zigzagging on policy and protocol. The confusion. The chaos. The inability to make decisions that cost people’s lives.

There were nights the cabinet debated until after 11 p.m. only to break without decision. And nights that I had to get out of bed at 2 a.m. and update a story in my sleep because they rolled out new restrictions (usually that started that day!) at some ungodly hour.

Many times, I was certain the government was about to decide, only to find it riddled with indecision.

For example, earlier this month, the coronavirus cabinet met for seven hours to discuss possible new restrictions. At our daily editorial meeting, I proclaimed that the ministers would certainly decide that night and it would be a big story; they were five hours into the meeting then.

At its end, with thousands of new daily cases and warnings by the Health Ministry that the crisis was once again spinning out of control, they broke without voting and agreed to reconvene the next day.

My boss joked with me that he did not know what was crazier: that our government lacks the ability to make decisions or that I still believe it will.

Shabbats were spent reading and reading about coronavirus - in Israel, but also around the world. I pored into stories of people suffering from long-term COVID, how the pandemic sparked a wave of violence and a dark cloud of depression. One weekend there was a feature in one of the Hebrew papers about a professor who had never had any mental health concerns but had to check herself into a psychiatric ward for fear she would harm herself or her child after enduring the two lockdowns while studying the virus.

There are so many article ideas and not enough time in a day – especially when covering the pandemic is my side gig – yet it has become a way of life.

The calendar year is finally ending, and a New Year is kicking off. The vaccine is here. There is a light at the end of this exceptionally long and windy and dark tunnel.

If you had asked me a year ago what would be the tragedy and triumph of our generation, I would have said that for the Jewish people the tragedy would be the reemergence of classic antisemitism (which has only worsened under the weight of corona) and the triumph, annexation of Judea and Samaria (which seemed so likely to occur under Donald Trump).

Now, I will tell you that the tragedy and triumph is the same for the Jewish people as the world: It is coronavirus.

The tragedy is that we are living through a pandemic of seismic proportions that we have not experienced in 100 years and that we hope will wait another 100 years to come back.

The triumph is that we have got this one. In less than a year, our greatest scientists developed a vaccine. It is that the virus entered the world at a time of great divide and for better or for worse brought us all together - leveled the playing field, reminding us that we are all one under God.

The crisis is not over, I know. We must not become complacent. But looking back at 2020 and ahead to 2021, I hope that this fourth election will give the country the steering wheel it deserves to direct us onto a safer path.

Particularly, I pray the vaccine is really the brakes that will put a stop to the pandemic.

Instead of crashing “left and right,” let’s move forward on a better path. 

The writer is news editor and head of online content and strategy for The Jerusalem Post.