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It’s been five years and a day since everything shut down for about a year during the covid pandemic. It feels like yesterday and forever ago. I’ve caught covid a couple of times, although I still mask when I can, and in each case I did not get my cardiovascular fitness back for at least a month. I wore a mask at a very crowded indoor venue last week and I was the only person there with one. If it were not for the news that people at the SNL50 concert caught covid, I might have decided to go without. My personal experience has been somewhat muted. I don’t have long covid, my job has always been remote, I didn’t lose anyone close to me and yet I have a deep distrust of people and of situations that will likely never go away. The lack of common sense and common decency that the pandemic exposed was eye opening to say the least. On the bright side, I started hobbies over lockdown and made positive life changes. I love baking and hiking now, after previously having little interest in either.
The Guardian has a new article featuring brief interviews with six people about how their lives have changed since March 13, 2020. It’s a concise, evocative read in which you get a sense of each person’s experience. There’s a sweet story from a retired woodworker in Vermont who started cleaning up felled trees and replacing steps at public trails near his house. There’s a young man whose long covid is so bad he has trouble getting around the house, and there’s an older man who grew closer to his family. I’m going to excerpt the part from a public health expert who gave the quote in the title. This was the interview that resonated the most with me:
I have worked in public health for 10 years now, most of that time spent in applied infectious disease control. While I was finishing my graduate degree I read an email about some “undiagnosed pneumonia” in a Chinese city. I still remember the goosebumps flittering up and down my arms. We had always been taught about “Disease X” and that another pandemic would eventually happen, but here it was.
Studying pandemics in textbooks and through academic journals pales in comparison to living and working through one. I remember receiving calls from friends and family asking about what to do, how to respond, questions about anything from masking to vaccines. I learned to take responsibility for each word I gave in answer.
At the same time, I remember the sense of pride I felt that I was able to go into work each day and help people. I remember the joy at hearing about the results of the vaccine trials and the excitement I felt standing in line at the hospital to receive my first dose.
Being adjacent to such suffering has taken a toll on me that I have yet to fully process. If I have changed as a person, it is perhaps that I feel more cynical. How could so many people die, and yet so many more be so unmoved by such tragedy? It feels as though we have ignored the lessons of yesterday at our own peril.
My anger at the injustice around me has driven me to consider political work and to continue my path towards practicing medicine. There is always work to be done, there is always responsibility to be taken, and I want to be involved. Nicholas, 29, works in public health, New York
Earlier this week I read an article on Yahoo! Life about the differences between mask wearing in the US and in Asian countries. It’s often assumed that people wearing masks in the US are immune compromised, while people do it in other countries to protect others. About ten days after I caught covid last fall I wore a mask at a gynecologist appointment. My voice was still quite raspy. The doctor told me that it had been ten days since I tested positive so I could remove my mask. I said it was a nasty illness and I didn’t want to spread it.
We are of course woefully unprepared for another pandemic, especially under this evil administration. Many people I know are getting vaccinated in reaction to a vaccine denier being appointed head of HHS and due to multiple disease outbreaks around the US. Last Friday I got an MMR booster at CVS. The pharmacist told me that more people are getting immunized now and that we might not be able to get vaccinated in the future. I agreed and mentioned my mom getting one of the first batches of the polio vaccine as a child. One of her classmates was on an iron lung. Since 2020, the US has lost over a million people to covid, millions more are facing long term disability and it’s like we’ve collectively decided to ignore it. I can make a mean baguette now though and I really love hiking.
Photos credit: Getty and Adam Schultz/Avalon
Never forget: Trump denied the pandemic was happening, told us it would go away like ‘magic’ by Easter 2020, refused to mask in public, and advocated quackery instead of science. He is responsible for the deaths of millions of Americans because of his blatant disinformation campaign during the pandemic. He harassed and demonized Anthony Fauci, and to this day Fauci receives threats from Trumpers and vaccine deniers. Protect yourself and your family. If in doubt, mask up. There’s lots out there, not just Covid these days.
Good post. Agree with everything.
AND when Trump got Covid, he had all of the leading-edge treatments, including ones not available to ordinary people. He had steroid injections that make him manic. And then came back to work and ramped up his Covid denial even more.
Something I’ve thought a lot about is how we, as a nation, never take the time to mourn our losses. Over one million people lost to this virus. Innocent children gunned down in school. Mass shootings nonstop. And we never pause. We never mourn. We’ve become so numb to loss and it’s all about “getting back to normal.” We don’t take the time to truly feel anything, so nothing ever changes.
I’m one of the immune-compromised as I am undergoing chemo for cancer and will likely have to be on one form of chemo or another for the rest of my life so I’m a masker when I’m out and about. I had covid in January 2024 — fortunately it was like a bad chest cold and disappeared after a week. I lost all sense of taste and smell for a few days, thank goodness they came back. But I know people who are suffering from long covid and it’s heart-breaking. They’ve gone from healthy and energetic to enfeebled and depressed. One fellow had to give up his law practice and is now basically housebound. To think that a megalomaniac has the power to prevent mandatory vaccines in the US infuriates me — there will be another wave of covid or even a new pandemic virus will appear and millions of lives will be adversely and unnecessarily affected or ended, which will in turn spread to other countries. I’m thankful to live in Canada but the madness going on in the US is now a global problem that will quickly get worse and worse.
Stay safe as you can. Don’t let these assholes terrorize your peace. Give ’em hell when it calls for it and do not do evil sh!t, but we give them too much control when we worry about what nutso stunt is next. We can’t predict them. The fascists win by wearing us down with constant noise so we don’t use our collective power. Post covid pandemic, I have never offically had covid. I have survived the deaths of 3 people I adored (unrelated to covid, but made more traumatic by the hospital restrictions during the years of the pandemic). I fought through 2 extremely painful surgeries in a 15 month period. My bread making is still hit or miss (a bread machine helped a lot, but I need to relent and buy a scale). I can make beautiful beadwork if the mood strikes and my overall cooking skills improved (I can make a killer lentil soup). Crocheting and knitting are apparently beyond my comprehension. I learned to love audiobooks. I like vegetables more than I used to and detest the smell of red meat.
Huge dumb section of the population that still insist that Covid never existed even though they themselves got it multiple times and/or a loved one died from it.
I *finally* got Covid in July 2024 and it was the sickest that I have been in a long time and I was vaccinated, so it could have been a whole lot worse. And still don’t have my sense of taste back completely and I get out of breath easier.
God help us all, because our government surely won’t. Get your titers checked, and if you need boosters, get them ASAP!
Just made an appointment for the MMR this afternoon! I haven’t had that shot in about 16 years, and now there are cases of Measles in the state next to mine. Like we’re in the 1950’s again. This is what American greatness looks like. This is Trump’s ‘Golden Age’. Get them while you can, you don’t know when this government will end access to vaccines!
Mr. R has long covid with such lung issues that it seemed like he was heading for copd. He recently began seeing an acupuncturist who knows many healing modalities and she gave him breathing exercises used by singers which have helped a lot! Why doesnt the pulmonary doctor know about this?!
But hoping this might help someone else. He used to have to stop and catch his breath after climbing stairs, but doesn’t need to anymore.
@Celebitchy Thank you for this thoughtful, sobering, and beautifully written post. I was nodding my head vigorously through the whole thing. I’ve been trying so hard to resist cynicism, but it’s been demoralizing to see so clearly that a huge swath of Americans care only about themselves and their immediate inner circle, and not at all about others and about the greater good. Thank you for reminding us that this toxic individualism IS a whack-ass situation, and that we can & should continue rallying against it.
Thanks! This is nice to hear and I appreciate it. It’s hard not to be cynical when you see what’s going on.
Thanks for this — I didn’t realize I could get an MMR booster at CVS! I’m all scheduled for next week. I don’t take it for granted and at this point nobody should.
@Celebitchy thank you. So timely and well said. I will say I truly believe that Covid showed those of us who were willing to see what we and our friends and family are really about. Not to mention what the pandemic revealed about our leaders. God bless Anthony Fauci, Rachel Levine and President Biden and his administration. And Countless front line workers. They all gave us alot.
Occasional reminders like this one about the *ongoing* COVID-19* pandemic are so, so necessary in this age of MAHA irrationalism.
Please everyone, be cautious if you can and mask up if you can, especially if you’re immunocompromised and check your vaccine status regularly and get boosters — be it for flu, Covid, or MMR.
It’s only been five years, and we don’t know anything about long-term effects yet — besides having no good treatment options for Long Covid.
Please remember that it takes e.g. ~ 10 years (and up to 20) between an infection with Epstein Barr and developing MS. Or 5 to 15 years to develop a usually fatal subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) after a measles infection.
So we could still be in for surprises of the unwanted and unnecessary kind…
* The WHO never said that we were done with Covid infections, only that the emergency phase was over.
Last night, the Dutch news was reporting that a man had a potentially VERY contagious disease, they shut down the street where he went to the GP and began quarantining people. Seriously shocking! Thankfully, it wasn’t what they feared:
https://nltimes.nl/2025/03/14/heemskerk-streets-locked-hours-man-tropical-disease-gp-practice
Given I can’t get boosters, people here are laid back over Covid and such, less people are immunizing like in the States, we couldn’t believe this.
Some people have this visceral memory, and clearly sometimes there’s hope.
Thank you for protecting those around you!
Great write up CB. Sigh. No words for how disappointing people were about covid. If only viral filters and increased air filtration were put in place and then they could help for measles, tb, pneumonia and other airborne viruses.
Late, but thanks for this post and special thanks to Nanea for pointing out the pandemic is out of the emergency phase only, still present , still weakening people, and still a major factor in destabilizing our society. If we all masked with respirators for a few weeks we could find so much improvement.