This Thursday, Nov. 26, is Thanksgiving.
While this year has been one of the roughest globally, perhaps since the Great Recession or even the end of World War II, depending on who you ask, there are still many things about which to be thankful.
For those who have not gotten sick from COVID- 19 or overcame it with minimal symptoms, there is our health, knock on wood.
While some of us may have lost friends or family due to COVID-19 or a host of other causes and were unable to attend funeral services because attendance was limited or services simply did not take place, we can take hope that the end may be nearer.
It appears from news reporting that not one, but four pharmaceutical researchers have potential vaccines for this disease that has ravaged our population.
While a vaccine from the University of Oxford is purportedly 70% effective, those from the pharmaceutical companies Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca are reportedly 90% effective or more. All require more testing to verify these claims and their duration of efficacy, and we should be careful before mass inoculation — a lot of horror and zombie movies begin with a failed cure and 2020 has been unusually cruel with our hopes — but the bigger fear is that one vaccine may appear successful in the beginning, then quickly lose its effectiveness, leaving the inoculated again at risk.
But 2021 might be a year for a new hope and, assuming there are no significant side effects, most Americans and citizens of developed and developing countries might get access to a safe and effective vaccine by the middle of next year, with most of the planet possibly having easy access by the end of 2021 or in 2022.
We can also be thankful that we live here, in this place, where many of us long-term residents have been able to see the red rocks and same views day after day.
Sedona is a location that many around the world long to visit, even if only for a few days, but we get to live here long term and take the time to explore the trails, canyons and secret places that most will never see.
The fact that COVID-19 struck during this time of global interconnectedness was likely inevitable. One can wake up on one side of the world and be almost anywhere on the planet within 36 hours, which means viruses can spread just a fast. But it also means we can be anywhere in a day-and-a-half — something no humans until recently could say.
Our technology can also connect us when we can’t meet. Whether you plan to visit friends or family in person locally, or follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and not travel, but celebrate Thanksgiving via video conference, we can still celebrate with family.
Video conferencing itself is an amazing technology that can connect families across the country. Having once proudly owned a pager, I am amazed my 2-year-old daughter will never know a time when she could not communicate with her grandparents via video chat. Assuming you have the bandwidth, you can host your entire dinner with family in faraway Wichita or Boston or Anchorage.
Granted, a long-distance Thanksgiving via video will never take the place of an in-person gathering with family we can touch and hug, but it is better than a decade ago when we only had cell phones with prohibitively expensive long-distance phone bills or 30 years ago when we only had land lines.
On today’s digital devices — pocket computers more powerful than the computer with which we sent men to the moon — we have access to nearly all the information on Earth within a few keystrokes. We can use these tools to send messages to more friends and family than we could ever fit around a dinner table.
Even as we are more distant this year than ever before, the innovation and creativity of human invention connects us closer than ever.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
