This year is over, man. And it almost feels like the only thing left to do is shake my little bird head.
My takeaway from 2021 is that everything would be much easier if we all just learned how to communicate with others and genuinely sought out reality rather than ideas that strengthen our existing belief systems. This whole COVID-19 thing would have gone a lot smoother without all of the misinformation and open hostility that surrounded it.
Students’ return to the classroom in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District wouldn’t have been so hard for the district and its teachers to figure out if administrators and the teachers union didn’t talk past each other. In the stories we wrote about strife in the district, it seemed like the district wasn’t done negotiating with teachers but didn’t want to give them what they asked for and teachers were done negotiating with the district and didn’t want what they were offered.
So, that’s a no for compromise?
Administering vaccines would have gone a lot smoother if people didn’t believe fake news about conspiracy theories and instead believed in science. Maybe California wouldn’t have mandated vaccines for teachers and medical professionals and the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors wouldn’t have voted to give its employees two options—get vaccinated or get tested often—if the majority of folks would have just done what Americans did in the past. Get vaccinated and thank their lucky stars that they live in a country where medicine is advanced and vaccines are plentiful.
Maybe we would have dodged all the COVID-19 variants that continue to multiply in the unvaccinated population and gently nudge their way into the vaccinated population if, as a whole, we could have voluntarily reached for some semblance of herd immunity.
Instead, we got to hear the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department beg residents to get vaccinated. Even though there are areas of the world that are begging for vaccine access.
Maybe local medical professionals wouldn’t have experienced the trauma of dealing with surge after surge of extremely sick and dying patients if a greater number of people opened their eyes to reality—that COVID-19 meant business. Instead, they watched helplessly as some area residents lost their lives to a virus that science told us would kill people.
Maybe next year we can be smarter, more intuitive, more friendly, more apt to apologize for our wrongs.
Maybe perennial conservative talk show radio host Andy Caldwell will stop trying to stir up his listeners just to stir them up. Maybe the cannabis and wine industries will kiss and make up. Maybe we will begin to see the fruits of independent redistricting efforts from Santa Barbara County and the state to be a little bit more fair in a process that has historically thrown the word “fair” out the window. Maybe we will stop blaming the other for the woes that we see in the world and instead try to reach out to them as a way to bridge the divide and find amenable solutions.
Maybe. But I’m not holding my breath.
The canary is disappointed. Send thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 30, 2021 – Jan 6, 2022.