Obvious to me, at least. Let's list the 10 people (or groups) who made a mark over the year of the pandemic. You may have temporarily forgotten some of these people and the passage of time has changed our current perspective on some. But they are the pandemic-related stars of the past year.
In no particular order, although the first pick is obvious:
Front-line healthcare workers. This includes people who work at hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, regular medical offices, pharmacies and more. They were the most at-risk to contract the virus and most in contact with people terrified of the virus. For day after day after week after month. Legitimately heroic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci. The medical star of the pandemic has been an advisor to every president since Ronald Reagan, but I didn't know him until 2020. Did you?
People who made masks. In the first few months of the pandemic, there was a serious shortage of masks. That's where volunteers stepped in. Church groups. Service clubs. School volunteers. Anyone who made masks for people outside their families is worthy of this list. We haven't forgotten your contribution when we needed it.
Nathan Apodaca. He's the Idaho man in the viral video who drank Ocean Spray's Cran-Raspberry juice while riding his long skateboard to the song "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac. Really not much to do with COVID, except he brought joy in September, when pandemic fatigue was real.
Your high school friend who claimed in early March that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu and who now thinks the vaccine is a government conspiracy. Enough said.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The early media star of the pandemic, along with Dr. Fauci. His calming, reasoned daily media sessions were enough to make us forget that New York was the center of the pandemic. It was good TV when we needed it.
Rudy Gobert. The Utah Jazz center tested positive for the coronavirus March 11, making it seem real. Frighteningly so. Within five days, all major professional and college sports leagues stopped, lockdown orders began and we realized this was no joke. Tom Hanks tested positive the same day, but Hanks gets enough credit for other things. Rudy Gobert made us realize this was a real threat.
Delivery drivers. We knew that package-delivery services – UPS, Fed Ex, USPS, etc. – were important. But who knew how much we'd rely on food delivery? Grocery delivery? Prescription delivery? While many of us were waiting at home, they brought us hair clippers, books, clothes, ingredients for new recipes. Everything.
Eric Yuan. We had video-calling services before COVID-19, but nothing as easy to use and widely used as Zoom, of which Yuan is the creator and CEO. Had you heard of Zoom before March? Me neither. Do you use it now? Me, too.
Joe Exotic. Remember when the "Tiger King" series came out on Netflix in April, a few weeks into the first lockdown? If there ever was the perfect time for a crazy true-crime series, that was it. It was true and it was crazy. Joe in prison now, but we're still not sure about Carole Baskin.
There are plenty of other candidates, restricted by space: Hourly-wage workers who kept going; children, parents and teachers dealing with distance learning; millions of people who lost their jobs, but kept contributing. The vaccines are rolling out (of course everyone involved in that is worthy of mention) and hopefully, we will see a return to normalcy by the end of the summer.
It's been a bad year, as we approach 500,000 American deaths and countless other lives knocked askew. But the Top 10 at least brought some light into our lives.
Or in the case of the ubiquitous know-it-all high school friend, some darkness.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
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