Yesterday was a pretty big day in history, representing what I hope is a fundamental change in the direction of our country – a sea change.

First, the Electoral College formally affirmed Biden’s win as POTUS #46, so…that’s settled. Except for the millions of Trumpers who still deny reality. They’ll just have to learn to live with it.

Second, the production-version Pfizer vaccine was given to the first US citizens. That really should be the beginning of the end for the pandemic, though I don’t think anything will change soon. In fact, it’s likely that our worst pandemic days are coming post-holidays, in January. It’ll be hard to celebrate the vaccine rollout while 2000-3000 people die around us every day. My personal prediction is that the vaccine will begin to have a noticeable effect around midyear 2021. Hang on tight until then.

(Combining items one and two, could we get an order of COVID vaccine to go for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, please? Stat!)

Third, corrupt US Attorney General Billy Barr resigned and a Republican member of Congress renounced his corrupted party, becoming an Independent. The rats are deserting the sinking USS Trump. That’s nice I suppose, but they’re still rats.

These three things – mostly the first two – give me hope for 2021. And that kind of big-picture hope has been hard to come by lately.