I am sure there will be universal consensus that we all will be glad to see the back of 2020. It is almost an understatement to say that it has been a tumultuous year. No language is adequate to capture what the novel coronavirus has done to our lives ever since it emerged in China and spread to the rest of the world by February 2020, throwing the entire world into a convulsion that none of us has witnessed for the past 100 years.

What we do know is that it has been a year of disappointments, of shattered dreams, of lives lost and hope diminished. It has been a year when the personal wealth and prosperity of the richest among us ballooned beyond even their wildest expectations. This when millions slid into poverty as they lost their jobs and became victims of the fragile economic infrastructure of their respective societies.

Yet, it has been a year when the best nobility in the human condition came to the fore, as the heroic acts of the front-line fighters against the pandemic in the face of grave danger, ennobled all of us and assured us that all is not lost.

Scientists bent their talents and professionalism to producing vaccines at terrific speed. This has given the world hope that at long last the invisible enemy that upended all our lives can finally be defeated.

Yes, 2020 has been a year in which we questioned long-held beliefs, especially religious ones, as we questioned the presence of God in all the tragedy that has unfurled. We have questioned our own ability to cope even when we discovered quiet strengths that we did not know we possessed.

As we enter 2021, this questioning may not cease, as the danger has not passed. There is hope that it will pass, but 2021 will dawn with the sad reality of the emergence of new strains of the coronavirus and the present existential danger that COVID-19 still presents to all of us.

In countries that never took the virus seriously, or where leadership was abysmally lacking, there is every indication that the carnage will get worse before things get better. In places like the United States, for example, where fighting the virus got caught up in the epic battle of the US presidential elections, rates of infection, hospitalisations, and death have reached worrying levels. There is real fear that what the country is experiencing is surge upon surge — from the Halloween observances in October to the Thanksgiving celebrations in November, and then the Christmas celebrations in December. Add to that the new year’s celebrations and we have the makings of a perfect storm of radical exponential increase in cases with the corresponding hospitalisations and death.

In the Los Angeles county in California, things are so bad that areas that housed gift shop businesses and hospital lobby areas are being commandeered to house victims of COVID-19. In some states parking garages are being contemplated as ‘wards’ for COVID-19 patients.

So, as the new year beckons, and vaccines assuage our fears, Jamaicans have to be realistic as to what their real prospects are. Everything will turn on the status of the virus. It will not magically disappear as some would hope. We are all fatigued by the virus, but we have to be realistic that, with the pandemic threat still present, we are likely to face spikes as a result of the Christmas and new year celebrations. We will be in for a tough time. There is every indication that we will have a rough first quarter, no matter what the most optimistic forecasts tell us.

This will be further exacerbated by the fall-off in tourist arrivals as the place from where most of our tourists come, the United States, will be under a pandemic tsunami in January into February. For all intents and purposes, the winter tourism season is already dead. This is not to sound the doomsayer’s gong, but just to be realistic about what we face.

The most prescient and resilient among us would advise that we hold tight and not go overboard with our expectations. We must evaluate our expectations in light of this reality. Plan incrementally and don’t be starry-eyed about what can be achieved in the short term.

COVID-19 would have revealed a great deal of our strengths and weaknesses. We must work on our deficiencies while improving on our strengths. It is only the foolish who keeps piling error upon error expecting that things will one day change for the better. Old habits are hard to break, as we all know. Many break them only when forced to do so, by necessity, or the pleading of loved ones. But breaking old habits is best sustained by personal choice.

What has COVID-19 forced you to seriously consider in your own life? What do you need to work on?

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the book WEEP: Why President Donald J. Trump Does Not Deserve A Second Term . Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.