By JOSH RESNEK
More than three weeks since the state relaxed nearly all restrictions it put in place to control the pandemic; Everett has the appearance of a city where not much has changed.
Many, many people are wearing masks wherever they shop or walk about in this city.
Nearly every major and minor business place has not removed plexiglass partitions intended to separate the masses from the virus that shut us down for longer than a year.
Speaking with shop owners and major business managers, one is left with the strong feeling that returning to normal will take quite a while.
We have spoken to friends and relatives about returning to the new normal and what that means.
For those of us who have been vaccinated, the new normal is a far safer place than before we were vaccinated.
Everett’s population, at least its adult population, have been largely vaccinated.
Why not?
Vaccinations protect us from the virus.
Who wouldn’t want to be vaccinated?
Many people in so-called red states believe vaccinations are an intrusion on their freedom by the government.
the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. (Photo by Jim Mahoney)
Good luck to them.
I’m happy to be living in Massachusetts.
I thank God for living in this state.
We are much smarter than the red-staters – but this bit of unbridled hubris is canceled out to a large degree by our pompous and belittling political correctness
now morphing into wokeness.
Some Massachusetts folks don’t know which end is up if you know what I mean.
Everett isn’t quite so politically correct or woke.
The mayor goes about his post-pandemic tasks honoring Haitians, Blacks, Browns, transgenders, and gays. This is the new normal for the mayor, who, frankly, doesn’t give a hoot for Haitians, Blacks, Browns transgenders, and gays.
On the outside, the mayor is politically correct and woke.
On the inside, he is as nasty a man as can be found in this city, doing things publicly to advance his own personal pandemic palliatives against his opponents while on the inside just plain old hating and being jealous of everyone.
I do not want to eat inside a restaurant just yet. I prefer outside dining.
I don’t want to find myself in a crowded movie theater.
I don’t want to be at Fenway Park or in the stadium in Foxboro with tens of thousands of people all breathing on one another.
This is the new normal for me.
I don’t mind being at the beach or in the water.
I enjoy takeout food.
I will not enter a shopping center – but then – I didn’t go to shopping centers before the pandemic.
This I know. This we all know.
The pandemic we just lived through, and which took the lives of 600,000 Americans is not the last.
This we can be certain of.
Maybe all those people still wearing masks know something I don’t know.