Joseph Sabino Mistick: Big resolutions for a tough year

We can add the usual New Year’s resolutions to the list of things the pandemic has taken off the table this year. We all have made those promises with the turn of the old year into the new year, and they are usually something about breaking bad habits and starting good habits.

Three big ones at the top of many lists are joining a gym, setting aside a little extra money from every pay and traveling more. Last year, the New York Post reported that the average person will break most of their resolutions by Feb. 1.

As we start 2021, quarantines and social distancing and a stalled economy make many of the most common New Year’s resolutions impossible anyway. But that does not mean we are off the hook. Our resolutions just have to be bigger this year, about all of us collectively, not just each of us individually.

Our first resolution must be to hold our leaders accountable for failing to get the coronavirus vaccine into our arms. The “Warp Speed” strategy promised a lot and delivered a lot, until the final mile. As federal officials dawdle and point fingers at the states, the vaccine sits in warehouses, and Americans are dying who would otherwise live.

President Trump was on the right track in March 2020 when he said he would be a wartime president in this fight, and he should have stayed on track. This is a national war, not 50 separate wars. The states have been starved of revenue, and they need federal help now — without the political dance — in order to deliver these shots.

We must resolve never to forget those Americans who continue to help get us through this catastrophe. They stock the shelves and work the registers at our neighborhood grocery stores, they deliver everything we need to our homes, and they drive the buses and pick up our trash and deliver our mail.

Barack Obama took a lot of heat during his reelection campaign in 2012 when he said, “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.” This year, none of us could have made it this far on our own.

And we must resolve to support — morally and materially — the heroes who walk among us. They are nurses, physicians, hospital employees and first responders, and they have taken the brunt of this plague. Every day, they suit up and step into the battle.

We usually measure our lives by the turning of the year, leaving the bad with the old year and expecting a fresh start. On the chalkboard at La Prima Espresso in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, this week’s Italian proverb is “L’anno nuovo cancella il vecchio” — the new year cancels the old.

But even that is different this year, because the troubles of 2020 will carry into the new year, led by a plague that respects no calendar and will get worse for a while. And that leads to our final resolution.

We must use common sense and follow the science. We know this can pass at some point this year, but we must beat this together.