Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Federal coronavirus guidelines released this week promise just a bit of normalcy for fully vaccinated people.
That announcement overshadowed a potentially more significant development: Research shows vaccines to varying degrees work against fast-spreading COVID-19 variants and can be quickly adjusted to be even more effective.
Is there such a thing as a double whammy of good news?
The "not so fast" caveats remain, however. A lot of people will continue to get sick and die from the disease before this is over. Experts still warn of another potential surge of infections, in part because virus mutations are floating around and some parts of the country may be moving too fast to scrap restrictions.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says it's OK for small groups of vaccinated people to gather indoors without masks, most of COVID life won't change for a while. Masks continue to be required in public and many commercial areas, distancing remains a must and the market for hand sanitizers will stay hot, possibly for years to come.
The CDC and every health expert under the sun are pleading with the public not to let its guard down as the nation enters what could be the stretch run to the end of the pandemic, or at least to a semblance of what life used to be.
Texas, Mississippi and other states are lifting mask mandates and other restrictions, creating plenty of controversy. But as research consistently showed that masks save lives, more people have been wearing them. There's some notion that many people will continue to do so even if it's not required.
In California, some counties have been allowed to open up more, even as the state just recommended that people wear two masks, saying that will improve the fit and filtration of facial coverings.
There have been a lot of mixed, or evolving, messages about coronavirus protections. A lot of that has to do with growing knowledge about COVID-19 as well as changing circumstances, like reinstituting shutdowns amid a new surge in cases.
Doubling down on individual protections while slowly lifting restrictions isn't necessarily contradictory. People adapt.
Yet, the potential for blowing it just as things are looking up looms large. But that doesn't mean we can't rejoice a bit about the train heading in the right direction and picking up steam.
President Joe Biden recently said enough vaccines will be available to inoculate every adult in the United States by the end of May. Increased efforts are being made to untie the Gordian Knot of school closures in California.
The $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package will bring relief to tens of millions of Americans and should provide a boost for the overall economy.
Compare all that with the outlook as spring approached in March 2020.
Still, celebratory feelings need to be put into perspective. It's not over yet — and will never truly be over for people who have lost loved ones, livelihoods and homes.
If anything puts the pandemic in the past tense, it will be because science came through for us. The rapid development of vaccines may be one of the remarkable scientific achievements of all time.
But just as the vaccine rollout commenced, information — and worries — surfaced that COVID-19 mutations were more infectious and possibly more deadly than the original virus. There were questions about how effective the vaccines would be against them, if at all.
In a recent story, Jonathan Wosen of The San Diego Union-Tribune did a lot to allay those fears. Mutating versions of the virus are and will continue to be a concern, but local researchers told Wosen current vaccines work well against many of the variants and can be modified to do even better.
Companies that developed the vaccines were able to collapse what is typically a yearslong process into less than one year. Having gained approval, they won't have to start at square one to tweak the vaccines for the variants, Wosen reported.
"On a one to 10 scale, my concern about variants is two or three," said Dr. Mark Sawyer, an infectious disease expert at Rady Children's Hospital, who served on the panels that recommended that the Food and Drug Administration authorize the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
"I am worried about them. They could create problems — they could create big problems. But at the moment, based on what we know, they look like most of them are going to be manageable."
The difference may be getting relatively mild symptoms, if any at all, versus dying or being put on a respirator, as Dr. Douglas Richman, a UC San Diego virologist, told Wosen.
Nevertheless, as with masks, a lot of people are skeptical about the vaccines for a variety of reasons. Some believe the vaccines may do more harm than good, or they won't work against the mutating virus, or that the pandemic is a hoax. Government and health officials are working to convince those people they are wrong.
A lot of focus has been on Black and Latino communities, some of which have not always trusted the health care system because of how they have been treated in the past. Also, in some regions, vaccine distribution has come up short in heavily minority areas.
Polls have found that some of the deepest opposition to vaccines is among rural Whites and Republicans, according to Politico.
The vaccines were developed while Donald Trump was president and he and his wife, Melania, were quietly vaccinated before he left the White House. Yet, his downplaying of the severity of the pandemic along with social media misinformation have contributed to the wariness.
But there's hope that a consistent public campaign about the safety and benefits of the vaccines — with the promise of getting back to normal, or close to it — will help persuade those who are reluctant. Celebrities and other influential people are continuing to get "jabbed" publicly to help the cause.
Before she received her first dose, Dolly Parton sang a short version of her song "Jolene," thematically reworked for the occasion ("Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I'm begging of you please don't hesitate"), as part of an effusive pitch for people to get vaccinated.
Could there possibly be a more upbeat messenger?
