AS 2020 draws to a close, we are all too well aware of the ways that the novel coronavirus COVID-19 has changed our lives.
We no longer take the easy familiarity of close personal contact for granted.
We no longer think it's strange to apply hand sanitiser wherever we go, or wear masks in public.
And we converse with a global lexicon of COVID terms, developed as country after country - some more reluctantly than others - came to accept that the virus required an unprecedented series of public health programs, even if influential voices still questioned the necessity of change.
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As disturbing as the onslaught has been for the general public, the infectious nature of coronavirus - now amplified in the new British strain - has put particular pressure on the world's health care workers, the foot soldiers in a medical war, forced to hide any fears behind masks of not-always-effective personal protective equipment.
Today, the Newcastle Herald says a heart-felt thank you everyone who has played a part in this year of the pandemic.
Globally, confirmed cases passed 80 million on Christmas Day. Deaths attributed to the virus are closing in on 1.8 million.
The across-the-board death rate is 2.1 per cent, although we know the disease leaves its greatest immediate marks on the elderly, and the less well.
Even though more than 900 people have lost their lives to COVID in Australia, it is widely realised that things could have been far, far worse.
As health reporter Anita Beaumont recounts today, the situation looked existentially grim back in March, when Hunter health workers were "planning for the worst while hoping for the best" as horrific scenes emerged from the emergency wards of New York and Spain and Italy.
For all of our cluster-based case spikes, Australia's brush with coronavirus has been mild indeed when compared with many northern hemisphere nations, most notably, of course, the United States, where more than 19 million cases represent almost a quarter of the global total.
Even if quarantine shortcomings have threatened Australia's defensive ramparts, the collective efforts of thousands of healthcare workers have helped to balance the scales.
We thank them now for the work that awaits them in 2021, as they distribute the vaccines that will hopefully suppress, if not eradicate, the virus, restricting most of the carnage to this most singular of years, 2020.
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