Voting Day in North Attleboro: A breath of fresh air

I voted Tuesday (April 6) in North Attleboro, MA, in a town election, and the highlight of the day was just being around folks again after the last 14 months of living in a virtual purgatory. I ran into a couple of familiar faces, and the poll worker who checked me in talked baseball with me for a few minutes. (Turnout was low --- just 7.4 percent of the eligible voters --- so there were no lines to worry about and plenty of time for chatter.)
I realized how much it meant to me just to be out and about again --- albeit socially distanced and masked up --- when, while walking back to my car, I initiated a conversation with the police officer near the high school exit door for five minutes. I felt compelled to tell him that this was the first time I had been at the high school since running the Kids Day Race in 2019 --- the race and the annual July festival were canceled last year.
In addition, I told him that I used to enjoy running the May race to benefit the North Attleboro schools’ K-12 music program, but it was forced to go virtual last year, and will be virtual again this May.
This officer, who was very friendly, wasn’t aware of the race and my enthusiasm grew as I told him how great the race was as it used to feature high school band and choral members performing songs from various decades --- the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s --- in different years to match that year’s theme.
I grew sad as I realized that it could be 2022 until I get to experience a real road race in person as opposed to doing it “virtually,” which is just another euphemism for doing what I’ve been doing for 14 months now: running alone!
But my big takeaway from my excursion to the polls was that people are in dire need of getting out again before they go over the edge. I saw it everywhere I looked at the polls: everyone was smiling just because they were so darned glad to end their isolation for even a day.
I think the world of medical people --- and especially the first responders who have been helping patients for what seems like forever as nearly 560,000 Americans and nearly 18,000 in Massachusetts have died since the start of the pandemic.
But it seems as if not enough of the so-called “health experts” understand or are empathetic enough about the severe mental distress that we've all been battling due to our year-plus-long of isolation.
Yet, instead of acknowledging that we’re so much better off now as a nation with vaccinations ramped up than we were in 2020 at this time, far too many of these “experts” keep insisting on throwing more mind-numbing stats at us, and all those statistics do is make us even more depressed and further scar our psyches.
That’s why I find it tough to watch the nightly news anymore: they report stats, largely without context, and all their reporting is doing is scaring the hell out of us. What those “experts” aren’t saying enough is that the more people who are vaccinated will lead to fewer deaths --- and to a point where we’ll eventually see a significant reduction in cases.
But these “experts” had better not be waiting until COVID-19 is stamped out; that may never be. Any expert who wants to wait until there is no more COVID-19 to allow the rest of us to live our lives is going to have a lot of explaining to do when depression and suicides skyrocket – and that could very well happen, because here’s the truth that the experts don’t seem to care about:
Far too many of us who have been doing everything right --- keeping distanced, wearing masks and feeling miserable as we avoid relatives and friends – are at our breaking point.
And it’s unfair to ask those Americans who have been doing the right things and who either have been vaccinated or are getting vaccinated ---- to wait several more months to have our lives back in some fashion.
If those heartless and compassionless “experts” do ask us to do that, they’ll see millions of us getting nervous breakdowns.
And that’s no joke.