Story by Holt Templeton, Image Credit: National Cancer Institute and Mallika Sunder

While 2021 was certainly better than the string of crises that was the year 2020, last year was by no means good. If 2020 brought the initial wound on society, then 2021 saw the formation of a scab. Continuing this analogy, one can say that the scab is none other than the COVID vaccine, though this scab is somewhat peculiar. Namely, scabs generally cover an entire wound, while this scab has, in all honesty, done little to stop the bleeding. Drawn-out analogies aside, despite the vaccination being widely available, there were more deaths due to COVID in 2021 than there were in 2020. In other words, COVID is not going away any time soon. While I’m in no place to make predictions regarding our future with the virus, I will pose a few questions.

As a graduating senior in 2022, the idea that I will not have a pandemic-free college experience is a point of disappointment. Looking back, the idea of prancing about in public with no mask or care for social distancing now seems like a far-gone fantasy, and in prior years, this fantasy applied to my vision of college. Nowadays, for my fellow matriculating college students, that fantasy seems exactly that: a fantasy. What will the college campus look like going forward? Will massive gatherings of students be banned? For students like myself attending private universities, we may see some of that due to the college’s ability to outright require vaccinations. As for public universities, will they ever be able to do such a thing? Will it ever be possible to require that ten, twenty, thirty, or even forty thousand students be vaccinated?

On that note, what will become of vaccine hesitancy? With the advent of the COVID vaccine’s widespread availability, the antivaxx movement has truly been having its finest hour. Vaccine mandates are no novel concept, yet attempts to institute such mandates for the COVID vaccine have been largely unsuccessful. With COVID cases not abating, it seems more and more likely that the virus will be declared endemic. Will the COVID vaccine then be similar to the seasonal flu vaccine? Will such vaccine requirements be more favorably looked upon in the future, then?

As young folks graduating high school, our future is very much uncertain. However, graduating in the 2020’s offers a new point of uncertainty in the form of COVID-19. If the past two years are any indication, there is no telling what 2022 may bring.