Thurston folks, let’s celebrate the hope in Phase 2, but move forward thoughtfully

Hallelujah. Thurston County is in Phase 2 of the governor’s reopening plan – a welcome development and cause for (careful) community celebration. Many people – not all, but many – are getting their jobs back or reopening their businesses, and that is a special cause for rejoicing.

We have each other to thank. All that time we spent staying at home and social distancing is paying off. We also have our state and local governments to thank. We are fortunate to live in a deep state rather than a shallow one.

This tentative, partial opening makes us feel like bears emerging from hibernation. The world is so bright, and we are so hungry – for social life, for dinner parties and restaurant meals, and for a ratcheting down of the ambient anxiety level.

Now we have to learn new rules about how to behave in public. Do we wear a mask while walking down the street, or just put it on when we go in the grocery store? Is it OK to greet people with an elbow bump, or should we still not touch each other at all?

We also still have to accept a lot of uncertainty about the future. No one knows what the next few months or years will bring – not the scientists, not those who publish predictive models, not the economists, and not our elected leaders.

The pandemic’s course in other, less careful states is unknown. So is the date on which a safe, effective vaccine will be developed, and who will be first in line to get it. (If you haven’t seen the movie “Contagion,” you may not have thought about how big a deal equitable global distribution of a vaccine will be.)

In the absence of certainty about our safety and our future, we are all trying to balance reason and data with instinct and emotion. How safe is safe enough? Who among our friends and relatives do we think is now OK to socialize with?

Some people are forming “quaranteams,” or “covid bubbles.” These are pacts among groups of people who agree to socialize only with other members, and to abide by group rules about mask wearing, sanitizing routines, and other protective measures.

Making those rules won’t be simple or obvious. Experts now tell us that most disease transmission is from close proximity to other people, not surfaces or objects, and also that we’re much safer socializing outdoors. So we have to recalculate risks. Do we dare wipe down all the doorknobs less frequently? Can we safely have backyard barbecues but maybe not indoor dinner parties?

And how do we enjoy our new opening when we are still living in a fog of grief for all the lives lost, for the bitter truth about the lethal effects of longstanding racism, and for the shattered economy that leaves so many living in misery?

We will need to rely on the coping strategies we’ve learned in the last couple of months. Many of us will keep baking bread – even though we’ve baked so much we’ve created shortages of yeast and flour. We will keep making and listening to music, and be grateful that songs of comfort are the new genre du jour.

Even more important, we can cheer ourselves up by thinking about millions of Americans acting together for the common good. There are, to be sure, the skeptical and the selfish, but strong majorities continue to support a careful, cautious course even though it requires more patience and sacrifice. And masks.

In the media coverage of Memorial Day last week, we were reminded of all the hardships Americans have endured before. One centenarian veteran recalled the successive national traumas of World War I, the Spanish flu pandemic, a decade-long depression, and World War II. It was grit and common purpose that prevailed through all that and made us a stronger country.

Today there is a lot of conversation about how this pandemic is changing us. Is this the beginning of a renaissance of citizenship and mutual support? Has it opened everyone’s eyes to the urgent need for livable wages for those who risked their lives to feed us, care for our children and our elders, and work in our health care system? Do we all see now why universal health care is common sense? Will this result in real progress in overcoming our nation’s legacy of racism?

Those are all tall mountains to climb. But in this time of both hope and peril, the one certainty is that the future will only be better if we make it so.