So here we are, poised between life and death behavior, choosing to spread COVID or stop spreading it. This hellish predicament we find ourselves in – at the time of this writing – with 344,030 U.S. deaths and 19,852,645 U.S. confirmed cases, makes this choice stark. As we prime ourselves to usher in the Near Year and its promise, we can either accept the numbers as true, and act responsibly to bring this pandemic under control, or we can continue to feed our inner child and its rebellion against adult supervision. It’s a choice between door 1 or door 2, simply put. 2021 can be shaped by grown-up conduct or more self-destructive infantilism. The science is clear, the math compelling, the substantive reality indisputable, and the predictable result incontrovertible.

For those that choose not to alter their behavior, you are playing with fire regardless of what your cause is. And the rest of us are jeopardized by your pyromania. Whether you're defying Big Brother, choosing God over government or inalienable rights over collective will, you are the causative agent of the spread of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus's origin, its nature, and the environmental conditions under which it can survive is relevant to our understanding, but we are the vector of continual spread. We can continue to burn ourselves into painful nonexistence economically, institutionally, and collectively as a people and nation. We survive the virus or the virus will survive us. What we do in 2021 is the deciding factor. 

Contemplate this truth, this New Year eve: Counterpoint to the selfish connotation affixed to it’s all about you, in the collective sense it is. And you cannot insulate yourself from that collective cause and effect. It will touch all of us in one way or another.

— Carl Hitchens