State and federal health trackers show a clear decline in the daily incidence of new COVID-19 cases. Visiting the COVID sites of the Centers for Disease Control and the Virginia Department of Health will give you all the dry numbers you want to digest.

Development of vaccines gives reason to hope that COVID-19 can be defeated in coming months, although their rollout has been frustrating.

Possibly because the vaccine in the general population began with the very elderly, Mathews County with its high median age has a high per capita number who have been fully vaccinated. Perhaps because it has a hospital and many health care workers, also in the front of the vaccine line, Gloucester County also has a high per capita number who have been fully vaccinated.

Most of the population is still waiting, of course, but as the vaccines are administered, there seems to be a clear line in the reduced daily number of cases. Based on these numbers, we dare to anticipate a better outlook for o...