Hoping that 2022 will be better than 2021, 2020 were

Happy new year and may everything good come your way in 2022. It marks the beginning of the 114th year of publication for this newspaper.

Don Estep is publisher of the News Journal.

Last year at this time we entered 2021 with optimism knowing we had a vaccine that could control Covid and things would get back to normal. Unfortunately they didn’t. In the comedy on Netflix, “Death to 2021” it is described this way. “The year 2021, a year that made 2020 feel like a mirror prequel.”

For myself, I call it the worst year I have ever been a part of because of a variety of things. As I said, we started the year with a vaccine to control a virus that ruined 2020. But the year is only six days old when a crowd of bone heads try to overthrow our government. Rioters stormed the capital aiming to prevent the vice president from certifying the electoral college votes. In the Netflix comedy it shows a guy saying, “We’re coming to get you Mike Pence.”

After that horrifying scene the optimism of the vaccine vanishes as many anti-vaxxers refuse to take the vaccine. They spread all kinds of tales and it also becomes a political football. Thus, Covid continues to plague us.

After a few months the infection rates start going down and “normal” starts to look more promising. But around the first of August a variant called Delta comes along. It is more deadly than ever and starts spreading fast.

Here in Whitley County, for one day, we get the notice that we have the highest percentage rate of Covid infection in the nation. Hospitals are full and and over 60 percent of our local population still has not been vaccinated.

Nevertheless, schools open with requirements for students to wear masks. Again the infection rate starts to go down. But just when we start to get optimistic again another variant comes along called Omicron. The infection rate of this variant is out of control. For every person that has it, three more will get it. The good news is that it probably won’t kill you, but just make you wish that you were dead. And this one is attacking those who have been vaccinated, even those who have had a booster shot there is talk that they may have to get a booster shot for their booster. As the year ends the virus is the worst it has ever been and predicted to get worse.

If all of this wasn’t bad enough in 2021 there were wild fires that almost wiped out the west, floods that sank the east and tornadoes that obliterated the midwest. In 2021 it was hard to find anything that was good. Or as the Netflix comedy stated, “With events more apocalyptic, more bizarre than any previous year in the history of years.”

We do know that much of our misery came of our own making. We have denied climate change for years and 2021 showed us how wrong we were. Had the unvaccinated taken the shots there probably would not be another variant and we would be getting closer to normal.

I didn’t mention some of my personal problems. Among them was another discovery of lung cancer. This is the second time I have had it in the right lung. The first time about 12 years ago I had the lower right lobe of my lung removed. This time the cancer is not operable, thus I took five huge shots of radiation to control it. It has controlled it thus far but in the process I developed tracheomalacia, or simply put, a collapsed trachea. I was coughing every breath and it took five months and seven doctors to find out my problem. The specialist in Cincinnati  told me I was too old and not in good enough health to operate and that I would have to live with it.

And to put the exclamation point  on how bad 2021 was, Betty White died on the last day of the year.

So now I’m searching for optimism in 2022 and I believe there is plenty for all of us to be optimistic about. We will conquer Covid this year and our lives will get back to being more normal. If we can get China and Russia on board we will be paying more attention to climate change. But the biggest and best of all is that we have each other. Nothing replaces family, friends and the best place on earth to live, right here in southeastern Kentucky.

For 2022 may you have the best of everything and thanks for your readership!