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Most Americans can celebrate Independence Day this year with a new appreciation of what it means to be free.
Roughly half the nation has now been fully vaccinated and participation is higher among older, more vulnerable adults. The several vaccines are exceeding expectations for effectiveness, even against variants of the virus.
More and more of us are returning to at least a semblance of our prior lives.
Consider where we were one year ago. The last time July 4 arrived it was hard to find much to celebrate.
Much of the nation's urban population was in varying degrees of lockdown. The number of newly reported cases spiked to a new daily record in the week before the holiday.
People were dying by the hundreds every day. Soon it would be thousands, reaching a peak of more than 4,000 early in January.