The end of the apocalypse?

I love a good end-of-the-world story.

Let me clarify that … I love a good fictional end-of-theworld story. Yep, you give me a giant meteor headed for Earth (“Armageddon”) or an alien invasion (“Independence Day”) or a global climate shift (“The Day After Tomorrow”) or a unstoppable horde of zombies (“Night of the Living Dead”) or even the Rapture (“This is the End”) and I am there!

But you know what’s the scariest end-of-the-world scenario? The deadly virus outbreak. It’s right there in the name of that one movie (“Outbreak”). A couple of my alltime favorite books deal with deadly viruses, Stephen King’s “The Stand” and Michael Chriton’s “The Andromeda Strain.”

I’ve often wondered how I’d fare in a zombie apocalypse, driving through the wasteland in my truck with chainsaws for headlights, cutting a swath of destruction through the hordes of the undead. Truth is, I’d probably make it a few days, go looking for the last Twinkie on Earth and end up getting my brains eaten.

It turns out the apocalypse isn’t that exciting.

I have now spent more than two years keeping tabs on the COVID-19 pandemic (Happy freakin’ Cooronaversary), watching and reporting the news… how many cases? How many in Arkansas? How many in Crittenden County?

How many deaths? Where’s the vaccine? Where’s my stimulus check? Should I get the vaccine? Where’s my second stimulus check? Masks off? Masks back on? It has

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been kind of exhausing… and that is just reporting it.

I can’t even begin to imagine what it has been for doctors and nurses and police officer and teachers and all the other front line or essential workers who have been in the thick of it since the beginning.

I’ll admit, I did not take COVID-19 as seriously as I should have in the beginning. I made the same jokes a lot of you probably did about all the people hoarding toilet paper. At first, I told anyone who asked that I didn’t think it would have a very big impact on me and my family. I said it would all blow over.

Instead, it blew up.

Since then, my wife and my daughter have both had COVID-19. Fortunately, they both had mild cases (although my wife still has a lingering cough three months later).

More than 14,000 Crittenden County residents have now tested positive for COVID-19 and 216 have died. It has been tough. People have lost their jobs, their loved ones and more.

Yeah, I said it would “all blow over,” and now we might actually be getting to the “blowing over” part, but let’s not pretend that it’s actually over. Sure, Spring Break is here.

Summer is right around the corner, new cases are way down but they’re still talking about variants and spikes and waves. The coronavirus is not through with us.

So, as sick as we all are of COVID-19, let’s still use common sense here.

Let’s wait until the apocalypse is actually over to celebrate, OK?

Sunday marked the official first day of Spring, and the local flora have responded in kind, including the bright blooms on this redbud tree outside West Memphis City Hall.

Photo courtesy of the City of West Memphis