Election Week

My predictions and hopes about the election came true:

1. We didn't know accurate results for days. Actually, we still don't have complete results, but we know enough to know overall how things turned out. (Except poor Georgia - two more months of campaign ads leading up to a runoff vote in January, and the whole country's attention turned to them!) But despite weeks and months of preparation about "don't expect results right away," the news stations started sharing live results on election night, and then everyone got bent out of shape when the initial numbers started changing as mail-in ballots were slowly counted over the subsequent days.
2. A lot of people were unhappy with the outcome (or still are, as the sitting president's most fervent fans don't believe it's over yet, and the president has yet to concede or say anything at all, really). But, far more people were elated with the outcome, which brings me to...
3. People were in the streets cheering, when the race was called on Saturday! All over the US, as well as around the world - England set off fireworks, Germany rang bells, France lit the Eiffel Tower! (As one meme said, you have to be pretty bad at your job if people all over the world dance in the streets when you're fired...) I actually drove around my area to see if there were any local celebrations, but couldn't find any - they seemed to be concentrated more in the cities, though I did hear of people honking horns and such. And... now they're recommending that everyone who was out celebrating this weekend get tested for COVID and quarantine for 14 days as a precaution.

On top of the good news of the weekend, it was announced this morning that one of the vaccine candidates was found to be 90% effective (as opposed to 60% like they'd been estimating). There are still some steps before it can be approved for emergency use authorization, but once that happens, front line workers will be given priority access. Dr. Fauci says the US may not be back to normal until 2022, but I think even that is pretty optimistic...