Editorial: This pandemic tunnel is long, but light is flickering

If there’s one thing that frustrates Pittsburghers — and just about anyone who drives in and out of the city — it’s the tunnels.

A tunnel is nothing more than a road that goes through an obstacle instead of around it. Despite the fact they are nothing new, they seem to complicate what might be an otherwise simple drive. Why does traffic seem to come to a terrified crawl as it enters the mouth of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel when people just need to maintain speed and stay in their lanes?

So when Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert Dr. Amesh Adalja said the covid-19 vaccines are “lights at the end of the tunnel,” that can sound good.

Then he told the Tribune-Review’s Paul Guggenheimer, “Remember, we’re still in the tunnel and it takes a while to turn a vaccine into a vaccination. So, for the general public, the average risk person, it’s not likely to be until mid-2021 where they have access to this vaccine.”

And that reminds us we aren’t near the tunnel’s exit. We are still midway through, white-knuckling the steering wheel while others are just as nervous about what is happening around us.

The thing we should keep in mind is that every day, we get a little closer to that light.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted a positive review of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, one of the three front- runners in a worldwide push to find a solution to the pandemic. The federal regulator says the vaccine is 95% protective against the disease.

Also Tuesday, UPMC announced it expects to have the Pfizer vaccine distributed to all of its front-line workers by the end of January.

That’s a bright light.

But here in the tunnel, things are pretty dark as Pennsylvania deaths top 11,542. There are 835 covid deaths between Allegheny and Westmoreland counties alone.

We have to keep driving forward, eyes on that light, but paying careful attention to staying safe.

“This is not a reason to stop thinking that we’re in a pandemic or stop behaving as if we’re in a pandemic,” Adalja said. “We don’t want to get a false sense of security before we even have a vaccination program in place.”

The most important thing to remember about tunnels is they end. No matter how bad the rush hour jam might be, if everyone stays aware and follows the rules, you come out the other side to everything getting back to normal.