Normally, New Year’s is a highly festive time of year. It’s a holiday where students gather to bring in a new year and to celebrate all of the accomplishments the previous year brought with it. New Year’s is an incredibly important tradition for our society, especially this year. Yes, COVID-19 is still here, we’re smack in the middle of a racism renaissance, and we’re seeing worsening climate disasters, but, believe it or not, there are still things to look forward to.
For example, the COVID-19 vaccine has been approved by Health Canada and is being rolled out. For the past year, we’ve been waiting for a vaccine that will help fight the pandemic. And now that day has come. This is great news. If all goes well with the vaccines, students just may be able to congregate for in-person classes again in September.
Another great reason to bring in the new year is the chance to see the positive changes that COVID-19 has brought us. It’s become disturbingly easy to talk about how many people COVID-19 is killing, or how we are all alone and were unable to directly connect with our families for the holidays because of restrictions. Yet I would argue that when all is said and done, we’ll wind up with a better world after COVID-19 than the one we had before COVID-19.
Another of the positive things that COVID-19 has done is shine a light on one of the most threatening problems we’ve ever faced: climate change. In a previous article, I wrote, “As we go through phase two, think of the environment.” I showed that as a result of COVID-19, high amounts of pollution from several resources—including transportation, industrial works, and business—has been scientifically proven to be greatly reduced. This has resulted in a steady decrease in nitrogen dioxide, one of the proven contributors of air pollution. What all of this means is that because of this pandemic, one of the most positive things we can all look forward to this year is breathing cleaner air.
Yes, last year was hard on all of us. That said, no one was been hit harder than Indigenous communities, immigrant communities, and people of colour. More then 50 percent of our COVID-19 cases have been people in these communities; and let’s not forget that throughout the whole year, many of these communities have suffered nothing but abuse, aside from COVID-19. Whether it’s from the police—the people who we all have to put our trust in to keep us safe—or medical staff who, at best, treat them like there are not even there. This is unacceptable behaviour and needs to stop.
But, luckily, there is good news: Indigenous communities will be among the first to get the COVID-19 vaccine. This is an important step in helping the rest of the Canadian public fix the fragmented relationship we have sustained with these groups, and, hopefully, will push us forward onto a more healing path.
So, despite how 2020 went, there are many good things that will be coming our way this year. Let’s not count 2021 out just yet.