COVID-19 infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths are dropping. Three vaccines are being administered in increasingly efficient, albeit still imperfect, ways.

So why are so many people hitting a wall now? I don’t mean health care workers or front-line workers or first responders; these heroic warriors have been hitting walls and then throwing themselves once more unto the breach, dear friends, for going on 13 months now.

I mean people who have managed to avoid the coronavirus, or survive bouts with it: the majority of Americans who have been fighting the social and economic effects of the pandemic rather than the virus itself.

Last week’s anniversary — it was March 11, 2020, that the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic — is a big part of the problem.

That was pretty much the last time I saw my editor or any of my colleagues in person.

Yet, for so many of us, in so many ways, every day has been exactly the same again.

Here is my screen, my keyboard, my phone, my window; there are my husband and children with their screens, keyboards, phones and windows. Here are our walks, our trips to the grocery and hardware stores, and the endless laundry, food prep and cleaning demands of a house suddenly perpetually full of four adults and a teen who never go anywhere much.

Occasionally we take different walks, even short jaunts to another part of town or, on two occasions, the state.

Honestly, the only thing that really changes on an actual daily basis is which family member has some sort of a meltdown or other.

“What’s wrong with him/her?” someone will ask, even though we all know the answer. We live in Los Angeles County, which has not been out of some form of shutdown in a year. We have three children who absolutely should not be living much of their days within earshot of their parents and vice versa. Our older daughter has lost more than a year of her college experience, and our younger one, at an age where she should be going to the movies and roaming the mall, has lost half her middle school years already. Our son graduated into a world in which there were literally no jobs in his chosen field; living at home after graduation was his worst nightmare.

We’ve set our sights on so many “it will be better by then” dates that we’re afraid to get excited by the prospect that by summer most adults in this country could be fully vaccinated. We are elated but also sorely afraid. What will the world be like when we finally fully venture out into it? What will we be like?

While I long for the day when I can move fully out into the world in ways without fear, I hope I can do it at a pace that allows me to feel deeply the pleasures of life in the 21st century. I hope I never again take for granted the ability to go to the movies, a museum, my child’s school, a mall, a play, a sporting event, a concert. I hope I appreciate the sight of other people being able to do the same.

I hope I remember that we have all had various versions of a truly difficult year, that some have experienced more pain and deprivation than others, but few have emerged unscathed. I hope I remember this even when COVID-19 recedes to non-pandemic levels, when the airports, restaurants and stores are full again.

So here’s to hanging on for however many weeks or months it takes. If my washer and dryer can survive, so can I.

Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times.