Americans are no strangers to times that 'try men's souls,' to borrow a phrase from Thomas Paine. By mid-1945, we had been at war for three-and-a-half years, enduring the draft, mounting numbers of casualties, and rationing, with no end in sight. Many Americans were weary, not unlike our feelings now, after half a year of privations and anguish related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That sense of anxiety got me thinking about how WWII was suddenly—and to many, unexpectedly—resolved. August 6th will mark one of the United States' most important anniversaries, memorable not only for what happened on that date in 1945 but for what did not happen.

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Like most institutions in American society, academia has been badly shaken by Covid-19. Many universities in the Northeast abruptly closed as the pandemic accelerated. Students were sent home, which in some cases involved returning to the other side of the globe. Faculty and staff at many institutions were offered emergency training workshops on everything from supporting student mental health to how to use video-conferencing platforms.

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There is widespread anticipation of vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infections so life can "get back to normal." Some three dozen vaccines, made with a variety of technology platforms, or approaches (naked RNA, weakened or killed viruses, hybrid viruses, subunit vaccines, etc.), are now in clinical trials. Many of these vaccine development programs have been assisted by a White House crash program, "Operation Warp Speed," which was launched in May. At the announcement, President Trump said the goal would be to have 300 million doses of a vaccine available by the end of this year. Optimism abounds. According to a June survey of 50 health-care executives and investors, nearly all expected a vaccine would eventually be approved in the U.S., and more than half expected approval to occur late this year or in the first quarter of 2021.

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In spite of the surging number of new cases of COVID-19 in many U.S. hot spots, worrisome increases in the percentage of positive tests, and scores of intensive-care units at or near capacity, some (mostly conservative) pundits and politicians seem not to "get it." They parrot talking points that seem intended to divert attention from serious issues by burying their audience with arcane and irrelevant statistics.

For a while, as the body count climbed, some conservative commentators insisted there is "a big difference between dying from the virus and dying with the virus." Then they shifted to quibbling over the discrepancies between when a death occurred and when it was reported.

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As the nation emerges in fits and starts from the lockdowns spurred by the first wave of COVID-19 illnesses, we're beginning to appreciate the full impact of the pandemic, how tenacious it is, and that the sickness and death directly caused by the virus are only part of the picture.

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