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Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Today’s column might feel a bit dark and heavy. But that’s how I’m feeling this week.
I am quarantining my way through a COVID infection. Thankfully, the symptoms are mild. But I am awash in a lot of feelings: Sadness, guilt, resignation.
I feel like I’ve done something wrong, even though I did most everything right. In the original COVID wave in March 2020 – before vaccines – I stayed home, masked up and distanced and sanitized, made sacrifices.
When CDC guidelines or state or local or individual business restrictions were posted, I followed them. When vaccines became available for me, I lined up for mine ASAP. Same with the booster. Like many of you, I wore that shield and went out and began living a relatively full life.
When the omicron variant crashed the party right after Thanksgiving, I still trusted the shield … but added a mask back into the mix when going out to the stores or other public places.
So, I feel a sense of sadness that after all of that, COVID got me. I know I didn’t invent COVID in my kitchen and let it loose on the world, but I feel guilty that I may have exposed those close to me when I didn’t know I was infected.
I’m not feeling sorry for myself. Actually, that’s where the sense of resignation comes in. It’s not just that my efforts didn’t prevent me from getting COVID. Rather, it’s the realization that – as it has shown over and over in so many ways – the virus has its own script and we don’t know how or when the story ends.
I used to go into the office every day, and I used to travel to our nine news offices around Michigan regularly. It was not unusual to be in two or three different cities in a week: In the past 22 months I’ve been in an office perhaps 10 times.
In that time, MLive has had scores of personnel moves and personal milestones – hires, retirements, people leaving for new jobs, employees getting married or having children. We’ve written more than 60,000 stories for our readers since COVID started. Yes, thousands ABOUT the pandemic, but mainly the kinds of stories we did before the pandemic: Government doings, high school sports, weather, crime.
And we’ve done almost all of this remotely.
So, as I sit here and write this through what feels like mild cold symptoms, I worry. Not about me. I’ll be fine and, hopefully, get old and die of something less novel and trendy.
I worry about what has changed in the ways we live and work. We are less social, more self-conscious and more apprehensive. Business and commerce are showing they can stay aloft, but I worry about dimming the spirit of what we do from the loss of physical connection. I worry about if my employees are OK when I can’t see them, read the vibe of a room of colleagues, buy a round of drinks after work.
Cases are skyrocketing – MLive’s human resources director, Ande Scherf, also serves other markets in our company around the country. He said employee infections are at an all-time high, and some people are experiencing second infections.
“When you texted me on Saturday about having COVID, I think I responded that you were the 15th person I knew that had COVID at this exact time,” Scherf said during a discussion on MLive’s Behind the Headlines podcast this week. “So, it is worse today than it's ever been.”
We’ve planned several times over the past year for an official return to offices, but omicron has kicked that can down the road – again. Even if we go back to offices in some semblance of how we used to work, it will be a different environment.
“It’s going to be like, ‘Hey – do you have your mask on? Are you vaccinated?’” Scherf said. “I long for some of that human interaction, but I also mourn that it will never be what it was.”
So yes, there are full stadiums at sporting events and concerts. Yes, families are taking vacations. Yes, we are living. But as Scherf says on the podcast, “We’re not thriving.”
I’ll get through this quarantine soon and re-enter life was we know it. I’m sad for what has been lost, but also realize the world changes all the time, whether it is driven by a virus or other circumstances out of our control.
Then, we change, too.
Editor's note: I value your feedback to my columns, story tips and your suggestions on how to improve our coverage. Let me know how MLive helps you, and how we can do better. Please feel free to reach out by emailing me at editor@mlive.com.
John Hiner Executive Editor Vice President of Content Mlive Media Group
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