It's been exhausting, distressing and simply a terribly hard slog, but for all of that we have, for now, been fortunate.
That probably wouldn't be what someone who had lost their business, or gone close to doing so, would say.
After all, one thing that our COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns has brought about is a shrinking of our world.
For many it's the day-to-day of cheek-to-jowl with others in our household, where kids are at the kitchen table trying to do school work online as the grown-ups try to do the same with their jobs.
It's a case where Mum or Dad have to, because of the job they do - they work in health, or they're a tradie - they still go out into the community each day, but everything is still centred around the confined world of home.
And these are the fortunate ones, who haven't had to close the shop and sit tight as the life-sustaining cash and EFTPOS transactions stop rolling in.
Also, it could be months, even years, before the psychological ramifications of these tremendously pressurised times are told.
For all that dislocation, we here on the Border have at least kept the virus at arm's length.
But the Shepparton outbreak, which still shows no signs of slowing down, does not bode well for our region.
That is not turning our positive into a negative simply for the sake of it; it's just accepting that luck has fallen our way so far.
The Delta strain's relentlessness means this cannot last. We have to prepare ourselves for that day when our borders are breached, as it will happen.
What we can say with equal certainty though is the tremendous uptake of COVID-19 vaccinations across our community will, nevertheless, place us in good stead for tackling that challenge.
That is even more so now with Friday's announcement of an immunisation effort directed at 12- to 15-year-olds.
And so all we can do now is remain vigilant, wear masks, continue to observe social distancing and vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.
The experts say we will have to get used to living with COVID-19, so this is what we must do.
