After months of seeing COVID-19 cases spiking, Americans are seeing a rare sight: a dramatic decrease in cases. Overall, there has been a 74.9% decline in the seven-day moving average since the highest seven-day average of 249,360 on January 11, 2021. It has been a while since we saw any type of decline, and this can be a good sign that life will get better.

But it won’t go back to normal overnight.

With breaks for spring and Easter coming up, people could see this decline as an invitation to jump right back to normal. People just can’t let their guard down. The reason COVID-19 cases have gone down is because we continue to social distance.

There are many factors that contribute to the drop in cases, one being the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. According to the CDC, About 55.2 million doses have been administered in the United States; the total includes about 39.7 million people who have received one or more doses of a vaccine and about 15 million who’ve received two doses.

A second contributor to the drop in cases is the public health measures enacted by local governments. The mask mandates and requiring social distancing are doing what they are designed to do. People can now see what all these sacrifices have been for. “The U.S. seven-day rolling average for new confirmed coronavirus cases dropped below 100,000 for the first time since November,” according to Johns Hopkins University. It is difficult for everyone to abide by the orders, but they are working.

The CDC is warning states not to loosen restrictions just yet; cases could spike again if people rush into reopening.

Remember how the first quarantine was? Cities looked like ghost towns. We were nowhere near a vaccine. Spring breaks turned into permanent breaks.

Now we’re seeing the effects of good behavior and the effects of the amazing work of scientists who created the vaccines. It’s a step forward and it shows what we have been doing is effective.

It has never been more crucial to take COV

ID-19 seriously, especially with the new variants popping up all over the world. The new variants of the virus seem to be more infectious than the original and if not taken seriously, could lead to more deaths.

The attitude toward the virus has shifted so much in the past few months in a good direction. People went from thinking, ‘this will blow over eventually,’ to ‘this will go away if we take the public health measures seriously.’

If reopenings continue to move at their current pace and if people continue to be courteous, the hope for the future will last.

So don’t throw a party over spring break. Many college campuses, including Seattle Pacific University, have implemented health measures to keep students safe. But they’re no good if people stop taking the virus seriously.