As the pandemic wore on and the popularity of denying danger grew larger the anxiety I had been feeling rolled into dread. Now in November with the number of cases diminishing that Sisyphian dread has rolled back into generalized anxiety.
Dread is worse.
Anxiety is not better.
Dread has at least the benefit of a somewhat clearer focus. The pandemic and the mounting infections, hospitalizations, and deaths it entailed were the subject of my dread along with a variety of sequellae.
Now those fears are mixed with hope that the numbers may be trending down and that the burden of disease will be reduced other the coming weeks. The dread of more childhood infections is mixed with hope that vaccines will begin to protect grade school kids.
I can't however leap into the position espoused by nearly half my fellow citizens, the argument that cresting the mountain is the same as arriving at home. Trending down from Very High Transmission into the realm of Merely High Transmission is not, in my understanding, just as good as being done with the pandemic. Back when these parents were toddlers I used to walk my dog around and over Rib Mountain; it is barely a mountain but it is enough to show that two steps over the top is still a long way up.
Trending down is better than trending up toward Extremely and Critically High Transmission. But the anxiety is more amorphous than the dread. We are not yet at home but more people are insisting that we are in our own front yards. People are dying but the argument that people always die is gaining acceptence and may be overflowing into other aspects of life: homelessness, occupational safety, environmental toxins, climate change. "Ah, well, people have always died. As we would not admit to culpability for COVID-19 so we ought not to take responsiblity for cancer and falls and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heat stroke and extinction." The range of risk spreads out and my confidence in the future is kept low even as the dread of the pandemic is eased.
In actual reality we don't know how the future will play out. We make guesses, some of them quite good guesses, about what is likely to occur. The virus will probably live with us forever, but it might die away completely or it might evolve into an existential risk to the survival of our species.
It is even possible that our neighbors declaring the end of the pandemic will be proven right. But I doubt it. The last 3 times they yelled "All Clear!" pandemic death rates became dreadful. My best guess is that a similar reversal is still possible and so I remain anxious and uncertain.
Dread is worse. But anxiety isn't better.