Make the Most of the Rest of Summer

If nothing else, the Summer of 2021 has taught us an age-old lesson: The only thing that is certain about life is uncertainty.

Remember when President Biden told the country in the spring that his goal was to have the pandemic restrictions lifted across the country by July 4?

At that time, the Delta variant of COVID-19, though already responsible for a huge surge in deaths in India and other places, constituted only a tiny fraction of cases in the United States.

But by July 4, almost all of the COVID cases in the U.S., among both the vaccinated and unvaccinated, were attributable to Delta, which is many times more contagious than original COVID and proving to be far deadlier among the unvaccinated, particularly for younger age groups.

Today, COVID-19 is raging as never before and restrictions on our normal living are being reinstated.

The extent of the tragic and sad situation that has been unfolding in Afghanistan (though foreseeable by some) caught the U.S. government and the American people completely off-guard. Afghanistan registered barely a blip on the news cycle at the start of the summer, but now it dominates the news.

And although scientists have long warned us of the overall effects of climate change, the catastrophic weather events of this summer — the floods, wildfires, and drought — have been felt in every corner of the globe.

Then, as if to place an exclamation point on the extent of life’s vicissitudes, just this past weekend, the wonderful Concert in Central Park was cut short by a lightning storm.

If the Summer of 2020 was notable for lockdowns, the Summer of 2021 will be remembered as a real-life version of Whack-a-Mole, when we never were able to regain our footing on the path to normalcy because of all of the obstacles that continuously sprung up along the way.

There are just two weekends left in the Summer of 2021, our Summer of Uncertainty.

We hope that all of our readers will make the most of the summer days that are left, but do so safely.