For maybe the first time on The Check-In, we may be able to say it: things just might be looking up.
This week, the number of people in the United States who are fully vaccinated became bigger than the number of registered coronavirus cases since the pandemic began! As of March 16, 21.7% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. There’s been almost 29.5 million registered cases of the Coronavirus in our country.
The Centers for Disease Control has issued new guidelines for people who are fully vaccinated. If you one of them, the CDC says you can now:
- Gather indoors with fully vaccinated people without wearing a mask.
- Gather indoors with unvaccinated people from one other household (for example, visiting with relatives who all live together) without masks, unless they are at increased risk for severe illness or live with someone who is.
- If you’ve been around someone who has COVID-19, you do not need to stay away from others or get tested unless you have symptoms.
It's been almost a year since the onset of the pandemic, and we are taking this program as a chance to optimistically look ahead while taking a chance to look back on some of the challenges of the past year. The onset of the pandemic left Columbia, like many urban areas, deserted for a time. Planned graduations were postponed, leaving many students with an anti-climatic end to that leg of their academic journey.
Still, Mizzou will be holding an in-person graduation ceremony for 2021 graduates as well as a make-up ceremony for 2020 graduates. There is -- seemingly -- an end in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our community members are our guests on this episode! What will you do after the pandemic? What do you think the world will look like after this?
