If you want to believe there’s a team backing you up in the COVID fight, don’t look behind you

They used to say in the NFL that the Sunday after you played the Bears, you couldn’t help but win.

Upon emerging alive, more or less, from a battle against the likes of Dick Butkus, Jimbo Covert, Bill George and Doug Plank, the next bunch of opponents seemed like kids.

Maybe that’s what it’ll be like for all of us in 2021. After persevering in the unique, disease-ridden hell of 2020, it’s got to be easier this year.

Right?

Employing another athletic metaphor, maybe it’s like going up to hit after swinging two weighted bats in the on-deck circle. Once in the batter’s box, your game bat feels as light as a broomstick.

But maybe that’s not good enough.

A light-feeling bat is not necessarily going to help you draw a bead on a good cutter as it slips down and away. 

And the team that played the Bears one week may be facing a pretty good team the next, too, even if they aren’t as physically brutalizing as the Monsters of the Midway. Before you know it, some sneaky-fast rookie on “the kids’ team” has an 89-yard runback.

It’s likely to be that way for us, too. COVID-19, despite the burgeoning availability of vaccines, will not be a patsy for us in 2021. The little buggers have a big lead, and they won’t be giving it up without a fight.

The post-Thanksgiving surge of the virus drove the count of new cases from 4 million in November to 6.4 million in December, and the deaths from about 37,000 to over 70,000.

From May through early November, fewer than 1,000 people died per week. By early December, over 2,000 were dying every week. Before the year was out, several 7-day periods had topped 2,600.  

As this was going on, about 84 million Americans traveled for the December holidays, over 50 percent more than at Thanksgiving.

This is happening when we already know that a new-and-improved, fast-acting virus variant from England has been confirmed in Colorado, California and Florida. Now that 84 million people on the move are mixing the pot, we're going to soon laugh ruefully at the charming memory that once, the super-infectious virus strain was only known to have reached three states.

And, according to a new analysis of the data in England, where the variant now known as SARS-CoV-2 has been killing people since at least September, the news is worse. It’s 24% more infectious to children up to age 9 than the old strain, and 14% more for those 10 to 19. 

Oddly, those aged 70-79 are 20 percent less likely to be infected, and those aged 60-69, 12 percent less. Unfortunately, that’s not really good news for older people, because the new strain is not supplanting the original virus. Both virus types are getting people sick at the same time. It’s like being invaded simultaneously from land and sea. 

The CDC predicts that the total American COVID dead will likely reach 424,000, not by the end of the month, but by Jan. 23. That’s probably about the time when those infected during Christmas travel will be starting to die in impressive numbers.

Some of the people they infected upon their return will follow them. And on and on.

Most of us will be lucky if we can get a first dose of a vaccine by February, which means, of course, we won’t be confident of any immunity until March, at the earliest. It’ll probably be much later.

While we wait, we’ll live in a world where COVID contagion is much more likely than it ever was. We’ve sacrificed all this time, and we’ve been dosed with hope, only to find in this shiny new year that the conditions we’re living in are worse than ever.

Andy Slavitt, head of the U.S.  Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2015 until the end of the Obama administration, has maintained at least since July that if we did a 90% lockdown for four to six weeks we’d be out of the woods.

What does that mean? Bars, restaurants, churches, schools and public transportation would be shut down. Trucks would be curbed. No international or interstate travel. Hotels would be enlisted for quarantines. And everybody wears masks.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease specialist advising President-elect Joe Biden, agreed with Slavitt in a media interview Nov. 11.

Nov. 12, he said he was just speaking for himself, not the administration.

He added that there was no will in any branch of government, now or in the future, to do what really needed to be done, though he didn’t say it exactly that way.

The American anti-COVID fight is apparently not a team sport. It’s not like football or baseball. It’s like tennis or golf. 

Every person who self-isolates as much as possible, and masks up when near others, is helping slow down the rate of infection until vaccines can get a foothold.

The fight remains in our home states and home towns and, principally, in our homes. 

We’re on our own.

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