Thoughts on Our Fifth Pandemiversary

The masks I carry with me everywhere, even though I rarely wear them these days.

 

Five years ago today, the world changed with one press conference. The World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 health crisis was officially a pandemic. I was traveling at the time. I cut my trip short and rented a car to drive home instead of flying. And everything changed.

Or did it?

I've been writing these pandemiversary posts since 2021. I often use it as a chance to reflect on how this experience has changed myself and others--and whether any of us have learned anything through our collective trauma.

For the first year or so, I was cautiously optimistic that we might learn some lessons. In the last year, though, that stance has been harder to maintain. It's not that I ever thought Star Trek was around the corner, but I thought we might be planting some seeds toward something better to come. I was genuinely shocked that we got temporary protections (COVID checks, extended unemployment benefits, student loan pause, etc.). I wondered if that might be a hint of a fairer, more just society to come.

But in the last year we've seen the recrudescent return of Trumpism and MAGA. Not that it ever really left, but still ... all this to reduce the price of eggs, which now cost more than ever? It's even stupider and more harmful than last time with even more mass deportations, realigning US foreign policy for the worse, etc. There's the whole despicable DOGE debacle in which the world's richest person bought a President so he could cut aid to the world's poorest people and then destroy the federal civil service and is now threatening even massively popular and successful programs like social security and medicare. We see ever more blatant racism, misogyny, transphobia, and a general meanness and selfishness that pervade our national discourse and cause real harm.... I could continue. Things are bad. 

On a personal note, I got COVID again in June 2024, which I took as a reminder that the pandemic isn't really done with us.

One theory I've been contemplating recently: the pandemic deeply messed with all of us, but we don't want to deal with it, so we've all gone a little bonkers. Hence, ... all of this.

But there are signs of hope. At least in my social media echo chambers, I see a widespread distain for billionaires and the inequality they deliberately maintain. There's a real and pervasive sense that the vast majority of people are getting a raw deal. 

In December 2024, a healthcare CEO was murdered on the street in New York City. Reactions varied, but nobody had to think much to answer, "Why?" in a country where healthcare companies cause so much needless suffering. And in some circles, the alleged murderer has become a folk hero. Do I condone his actions? No. I would rather just have CEOs pay their taxes and institute ethical business models. 

But do these reactions maybe point us toward a deep, visceral resentment among the public? I think so. And I think we need to deal with this feeling. I detest any simplistic answer to anything as complicated as a US Presidential election, but at least part of what happened in the last election was that Trumpism did address this feeling, albeit in a harmful, delusional, self-destructive way.

I hope we can deal with legitimate economic anger in a constructive way, by building a fairer society of the type we glimpsed during the height of the pandemic, when we saw that the government could help people while one of the largest protest movements in history took place. I hope we can learn from all this. A fairer, more just society is within our reach.

Will things have to get even worse before that happens? What will it take to realize our potential? What has to happen to create a global order that's not controlled by greedy, weak, short-sighted old men clinging to power at all costs? 

I wish I knew. But I think there are lessons to learn should we have the courage and wisdom to learn them. And the more I reflect on the past five years, the more I've come to suspect that dealing with the collective trauma of the pandemic could be the first step.

PS: I was planning to take part in education lobby day at the state legislature in Nashville today, but alas, I'm not feeling well (probably food poisoning or stomach flu). So, I'm heeding a lesson I've learned in the last five years: you have to take it easy and stay home when you're sick.