One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. 

On March 23, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced that all adults would be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine starting March 29. This comes three months after the FDA provided emergency approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It’s the beginning of the end of arguably the worst year our generation has faced.  

The United States has now reached over half a million deaths caused by COVID-19. With Texas representing about an eleventh of that number, it is an incalculable amount of grief.

More Americans dead from COVID-19 than American soldiers killed in both World Wars and the Vietnam War combined. More than 180 times the number of deaths on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s like the Titanic sinking every day for a year.  

For an entire year, all we have known is grief. We have stayed inside, worn masks, sanitized our hands and hoped that we would get out of all of this eventually. It has been an entire year of online schooling, Speedway being empty and plans being put on hold.

But things are changing.

The news that all UT students are now eligible for the vaccine has unleashed more hope and excitement than we’ve seen since this all started. 

We can now, cautiously, plan for the future. We can get excited for in-person classes, game days and everything in between.

Our college experience has a chance of returning to “normal” in the new school year, and we hope everyone will actively play a part in making that happen by getting the vaccine. 

In this forum, nursing sophomore Huy Le takes us through his experience getting the vaccine and tells us everything he learned in the process.

As always, if you have any thoughts on this topic or any other, please feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].