Rebirth or Regret?

      This spring brings rebirth in more ways than one. Yes, there are the daffodils and forsythia and other spring flowers, and the buds on the trees and the longer days and the warmer weather.

     But this year we are also coming out of the self-isolation brought on by Covid-19. Most of us have received our first vaccine, many our second. But hold on . . . not so fast.

     Despite the rollout of vaccines, the CDC is still reporting more than 60,000 new cases a day. Deaths are down below a thousand a day, for the first time since November, but the number of hospitalizations has leveled off. Some 40,000 Americans are currently in the hospital with Covid.

     Many states are lifting restrictions, which might explain why the majority are now showing increasing numbers of new cases. For example, Gov. Tom Wolf of my own state of Pennsylvania is increasing capacity for gyms and indoor dining to 75% -- despite the fact that case numbers for Pennsylvania, recently as low as 2,500 a day, are now back up above 4,000 a day.

     That's bad. But some states are worse. Michigan has gone from 1,200 cases a day to 6,000 cases a day. New York from 4,000 to 8,000 a day. New Jersey from 3,000 to 4,500.

     Still, we trust with vaccination comes the end of Covid. Over a hundred million Americans -- or a third of the population -- have received at least one shot. Some 60 million are fully vaccinated. And so some of us are making plans . . . not, we hope, prematurely.

     Carol Cassara at A Healing Spirit asks: How are you reintegrating back into the post-Covid world? Is it Katie-bar-the-door? Or are you watchfully taking baby steps? In her post After Shelter in Place she offers her approach to travel, masks, indoor dining and other issues that will be facing us for the next few months and beyond.

      For her part, Rebecca Olkowski at BabyBoomster reports in Tiptoe Through the Tulips that she took a stroll through Descanso Gardens in Los Angeles to see some amazing spring flowers. She had to make a reservation, required for crowd control, and wear a mask, but she brought home some beautiful photos of the springtime displays -- and according to her smartphone, got in her steps as well!

     On the other side of the country Laurie Stone breathes a sigh of relief, realizing that Connecticut has survived another winter of storms, freezing cold, icicles, power outages and slippery roads. Like many of us, she thinks of spring as the real start of the year. There are so many Wonderful Things About Spring she writes . . .  but also one thing happening outside her window that makes her a little nervous.

     Down in Florida, Jennifer of Untold and Begin offers My Ongoing Story of New Things. That includes her first Covid shot and an appointment for her second. But more ambitiously she has started her own Etsy shop to sell Vision Board supplies. And if you don't know what a Vision Board is, you'd better hightail it over to Untold and Begin and find out what you're missing!

     Meryl Baer of Beach Boomer Bulletin agrees that change is in the air as we welcome spring. For one thing, she says, "I shed a couple of pounds as light-weight clothing replaces weighty materials." Step over to Spring Unfolds to see how she has begun to venture out to see where she is going.

     Finally, I urge you to check out Rita Robison''s warning about Coronavirus scams on The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide. It hit home for us, since we've been getting calls, purportedly from Amazon, saying we'd bought a $1,500 Apple computer,. It said to press 1 if this was not correct. And since it wasn't correct we were tempted to press 1. But, luckily, we didn't. Instead, we checked our Amazon account separately. Guess what. There was no such purchase on the account. Who knows what would have happened if we'd pressed 1?

     As Robison points out, scammers are inventing new schemes to take advantage of our Coronavirus anxiety. For some good advice on how to handle them, press over to her post How to Avoid Coronavirus Scams.

     Be careful. Be well. Get your shots. Wear your mask. We want no regrets. We want rebirth.