The COVID-19 pandemic: Five years later

Five years ago today, the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. By then it was pretty obvious what was headed our way. After all, it was hard not to doom scroll during the first couple months of 2020 as Covid-19 spread from Wuhan to the rest of China and shortly thereafter Europe and the rest of the planet. The data we were seeing on reputable news sites and health sites were already frightening. Obviously that only continued to get worse for a while. 

My life at the very start of 2020 was really no different from the previous year aside from the increasingly grim news from across the Pacific Ocean. I attended events held by a couple local organizations I belong to (including my county's Democratic Party meetings each month), went out once a week with my wife for a meal together, taught my classes and attended or led committee meetings where I work, did the usual grocery shopping, and otherwise tried to carve out some time to walk along some of the riverfront trails (which typically have plenty of visitors walking, jogging, skateboarding, or biking). After a wonderful Christmas visit at my parents', I and my sisters were planning our next get-together. I was in the process of collecting some validation data on a cognitive measure of interest to me, and was preparing a presentation for an upcoming conference in Las Vegas. On the surface, especially early on, my life went on as normal - or at least normal for the time. 

The first inkling that things were going to go south was in January when the first Covid-19 case was discovered in the US that had no connection to international travel. At that point, it was only a matter of time. And of course cases quickly began to spread - first in heavily populated coastal cities like New York. My little corner of Arkansas would follow several weeks later. In the meantime, folks continued to try to act normal for as long as possible. Trump, in his first stint as "President", would botch the government's reaction to the emerging pandemic from the get-go. His vanity would not allow for admitting we had Covid-19 cases, and he certainly was against testing for the virus as that would tank his precious stock market. Folks in my area at first just treated coverage of Covid-19 as overblown. So stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and so on were typically packed. At the end of February, my elder daughter and I went bowling to celebrate Leap Day. It was a surreal scene. The bowling alley we typically went to was crowded. My daughter and I decided to just pay for two games and leave, in spite of the discount we were offered for a full night. I doubt either of us ever regretted that decision. At my mom's urging, I began to shop and pick up as many supplies as I could to last at least a few weeks out. So during the latter half of February I was stocking up on household supplies, non-perishable foods, pet supplies, and so on. Since hoarding is antisocial, our choice was not to hoard but to have enough extra just in case. I am glad we did. 

Folks in my region slept-walked their way through those first two months of 2020. Things began to move fast once March hit. More cases were cropping up, and they were closer to my state and to my city. I would not call our city isolated by any stretch, but it is just out of the way enough to buy time in the case of a pandemic. We do have an airport, but it only has a limited number of flights. Eventually, the virus would come for us. And so the panic buying started. In late February, I could find pretty much anything I wanted and needed at the stores. By the time the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, the hoarding began in earnest, and finding the things I was still in the process of procuring became more of a hassle. Shelves increasingly emptied out. There was a growing concern that there could be infected among us with no good way to know. And there was still a lot of conjecture about how the virus spread, so having a supply of gloves and masks (if you could find them) made sense. Thankfully I had bought my cleaning products early enough on that it wasn't that big of a deal for my household. And thankfully, we had purchased quite a bit of essential items such as toilet paper and paper towels to last us through (by my estimate) early April of that year. There was no way of knowing, of course, if those stocks would be replenished at the stores by then. Depending on the severity of the pandemic, there were some concerns about whether there would still be people staffing essential jobs that kept the trappings of civilization (e.g., electricity, running water, etc.). Thankfully, we never saw a worst-case scenario of the sort you might see in works of fiction (Station Eleven) or film (Contagion). The reality was bad enough. The moment the first case of Covid-19 hit the local mall (the same day I got my first and last haircut of the year), a lot of businesses closed up - some temporarily and some for good.

My work life changed drastically. Given my job, I always had fairly flexible hours, but I was always on campus every day. My office was a second home to me. During that critical couple weeks in early to mid-March I'd occasionally find myself walking past one of the library's conference rooms where I could see our university's administration having very spirited discussions about what to do. Even without being able to hear a word, a cursory reading of facial expressions and body language made it obvious that this was an emergency. My last in-person class meetings occurred that week. I told my students I did not know what would happen, but that I hoped we'd be able to continue to meet in person. I also told them to be prepared for a switch to an online format. That's what happened in very short order. The next week, we would be told that we had a limited window to go to our offices to retrieve any supplies we deemed necessary to function at home, and that we were to inform the university's police department if we were to go into any campus building, so that any custodial staff could disinfect afterwards. And like that, my time in relative isolation started. There was also the matter of the conference I was supposed to attend in Las Vegas. For a while, from what I understand, Vegas was still as open for business as usual. But it increasingly came to resemble a ghost town as the month wore on. The organizer of the conference intended at first to hold the event as planned. He had a change of mind once it became obvious that everything was shutting down. I got my conference fees refunded along with my hotel room. I had waited longer than I wanted to purchase air tickets, and although I was bracing for the possibility of flying, I decided that I would wait until the very last minute that time. I am glad I did. Eventually we'd have our first virtual conference, and that was a regular occurrence for a couple years. We now meet in person each spring as we did pre-pandemic.

All of this sounds so clinical in the way I have described the pandemic. But it took a toll. I would ultimately lose about two years of time with my parents. They were already quite elderly then, so I understood their choice to shut themselves off from practically all human contact. I lost quality time I could have spent with my parents, sisters, niece, and remaining living nephew. I lost out on interacting with people I had come to count on as my friends. Yeah, we started doing more with Zoom, but it wasn't quite the same. A close personal friend passed away from a heart attack the following January in the midst of a spike in Covid-19 cases (the Delta variant was the big thing at the time), and there never really was a proper memorial for her. One might think that having immediate family inside the same home all the time could bring us all closer together, but I think the opposite happened instead. There were just more opportunities to get on each other's last nerve. I did not get to see my elder daughter graduate in 2020 because there was no graduation ceremony. And no, a yard sign to acknowledge her graduation was not the same. I am reasonably certain that I did not cope all that well. Then again, how many of us really did cope all that well? There's some psychological damage that will be part of the personal makeup of many of us - me included - for a lifetime. Almost all of us in my household have had at least one case of Covid-19 in the intervening years. Thankfully, our cases ended up being relatively mild. We've all gone through multiple vaccines for Covid since those became available. 

Mundane things that we might take for granted became much more of a challenge for a while. Keep in mind that all of us suddenly became much more reliant on a good internet connection, so what happens when you're in the midst of a pandemic and your cable goes out? My ISP had technicians come to our residence for a while, but the technicians would stay outdoors and try their best to guide us through the process of getting an internet router replaced or a cable box looked at. Thankfully, plumbers were more willing to enter homes. A lot of routine medical visits were replaced with telehealth, which can come in handy. I ended up delaying some more specialized medical appointments due to concerns about getting sick or simply due to lack of personnel. Going anywhere was very stressful for a while. Once there was enough data to suggest that outdoor activities were relatively safe, I felt more at ease going to some of my favorite trails. Since I was in charge of grocery shopping, I felt a good deal of anxiety any time I stepped into a store. At first, delivery of groceries was not much of an option where I lived and that meant entering grocery stores. That would worry me each time - more out of concern that I might get someone else at home sick. My eldest adult child had some of the same worries - first when coming home from dorms, and then later  when going to and from work in a warehouse. Speaking of groceries, I quickly came to terms with the fact that there would be less variety and although the empty shelves of March 2020 would become a thing of the past eventually, there are still weeks where I will encounter empty shelves or spaces. That has, alas, become the new normal. 

Getting back into the habit of socializing, of going to events, dining out, and so on took some time. I'd say that by 2024 I had become much more willing to participate in many of the activities that I had taken for granted up until the pandemic hit. It'll never be the same. Some businesses I frequented no longer exist. Some of my friends in the community have passed away or moved on. I used to love seeing the latest theatrical productions at my local university. The Theatre major where I work was recently deleted and so those opportunities are going to dwindle, as the students with the time and skills needed will simply no longer be there. At least I got to see some student directed one-acts last year. 

It's important to take stock of what we've lost. Some of us have lost more than others, but we've all experienced some loss since the pandemic took hold. And the truth is that Covid-19 is not done with us. So far we seem to be avoiding the Black Death scenario and are getting more of a 1918 Flu scenario, but we do have a potential bird flu pandemic in the making as I write this. If there is any good news, it's that we learned how to connect somewhat during a time when being out and about would be potentially deadly. We learned that with enough money, pharmaceutical companies will move mountains to develop an effective vaccine for a pandemic-causing virus. That, too, is tempered with bad news. The response to sensible public health policies during a pandemic (physical distancing, masking, etc.) became badly politicized, making our ability to react responsibly to the next pandemic much more difficult than it should be. Any public health official will think twice before suggesting even mild forms of mitigating the spread of a deadly virus lest they receive death threats from extremists. That worries me not only as I age and my immunity weakens, but also worries me for what we are leaving for those who will exist after us. That worry is not going to go away.