MONTGOMERY COUNTY (KYW Newsradio) — The big question for so many people: Where do we go from here — and when — to get back to how life was before the pandemic?
"I think we will get there," said Montgomery County Commissioner Dr. Val Arkoosh. "I can’t tell you how quickly, because that depends on a lot of questions we just don’t have answers to."
Some answers only time can reveal. How long will vaccine protection last? What might happen with variants? Can we win the race to vaccinate as many people as possible to try limit those variants?
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Arkoosh says, much like one year ago, when she was watching how the virus was spreading in other countries, now she’s watching how some of those countries are getting back to normal. She points to a recent photo of people at a concert in a country with tighter restrictions — likely requiring a negative test or proof of vaccination.
"But the end result was that photo of a whole bunch of happy people at a concert. So it may be that we have to do some things a little bit differently. Like maybe, when you buy your ticket, you’re going to have to show some kind evidence of being vaccinated for some period of time — or something like that. I don’t know," she said.
Testing — especially rapid tests — will likely continue to play an important role, as the FDA is slowly relaxing restrictions that prevented the production of cheap, easy, quick tests that could be used frequently, even daily, at home.
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Arkoosh says if one lesson is learned from the past year, it’s that political games don’t help slow the spread of the virus. And mixed messages from government made things worse.
"If you felt that it was hogwash and all of this was unnecessary, there were plenty of people you could listen to who were saying, 'Nah.' And that made the response extraordinarily complicated," she said.
She says most of the focus over the past year has been on protests and objections to mask mandates and closures. But she says she believes the majority of people are supportive, but aren’t speaking publicly.
“They’ve stopped commenting on social media because they get attacked if they say anything supportive, there’s a whole group of people who attack them, but I still hear from those people other ways.”
COVID: Then and Now is a KYW Newsradio original monthlong series looking back at the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic in Philadelphia. Reporters revisit the news from exactly one year ago and examine how protocols, restrictions and science have evolved since then.