Last year I made a video about 2020 being the beginning of a new decade or the end of an old decade. According to a YouGov survey from last year: 64% of Americans believe 2020 is a new decade, 17% believe 2021 is a new decade, and 19% don’t know. That video came out three months before the coronavirus became a U.S. problem—and I still needed a haircut.

I mentioned in that video that some people believe we are re-living the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Decades better known as the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and World War II. We are not yet re-living those decades. We are re-living the years before those decades. When the 1918 Spanish Flu killed more soldiers than all the soldiers who died fighting in World War I.

If the Spanish Flu offers any guidance about a post-pandemic future, it took the world five years to recover. Five years. Not the six months that everyone expects everything to return to normal, as if the coronavirus never existed. That’s not happening. We are one year into a five-year recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s not a popular message today.

I’ve gotten push back for comparing today’s pandemic with yesteryear’s pandemic. I’m told that today we have modern medicine, new vaccines, and idiots who don’t wear masks. Guess what? A hundred years ago they too had modern medicine, new vaccines, and idiots who don’t wear masks. The difference between then and now is that today’s idiots are not shot or taken to court by the police.

As for today’s new vaccines, they won’t protect you from getting infected and spreading the infection to others. The vaccines only reduce the severity of the symptoms you may experience while being sick. It will still take two to three years to vaccinate over 300 million people in the United States.

Keep in mind that the coronavirus was not the pandemic that experts were waiting to happen. A pandemic with a 50% or higher morality, that is, people dropping dead in the streets, could still come along.

Something to think about in 2021.