Daughter Allie came home from Lawrence this past weekend and while I didn’t keep track, I suspect we put more miles on her car in one day than she has in the past year. We drove to Lindsborg to visit one of our favorite shops, which had reopened a few days earlier, and then stopped a couple of stores down for lunch before we returned to Salina. That night we attended a movie at the Salina Arts Cinema before having dinner at a downtown restaurant.

We both felt a bit nervous about being around other people. It’s been awhile, after all. But I’ve had my coronavirus vaccine and Allie and I were both careful. We continued to wear masks, despite a feeling that we are much closer to freedom from COVID-19 than we were several months ago. We also visited places we knew would not have crowds. We shared the movie house with four other spectators.

Put another way — we didn’t want to get crazy before we’re sure the pandemic that has claimed more than 525,000 Americans and upended the lives of countless others is under control.

Graphic designer Bill Beckmeyer’s cartoon elsewhere on this page puts it perfectly.

A week ago, with the approval of county health officials, Ellsworth County commissioners lifted a mask mandate that has been in effect for months.

The I-R’s twice-monthly COVID-19 information page on A3 contains the information that 1,900 local residents have been vaccinated. Kansas ranks 46th among the states where coronavirus is spreading the fastest on a per-person basis. That’s good news.

But it’s far from being the whole story.

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control said this week that much of America’s recent progress against COVID-19 has been erased as new infections jump nationwide.

“What we’ve seen over the last week or so is a steady rise of cases,” Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told CNN.

“I know that travel is up, and I just worry that we will see the surges that we saw over the summer and over the winter again.”

We hope our friends and family members will continue to wear masks to protect others and themselves. And wash their hands often and practice social distancing, especially in crowds.

These all have been proven effective in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Isn’t that what we all want?