The Pandemic of 2020

It’s a virus, I was heard to repeat often, like the flu. We don’t pay this much attention to all the people passing around the flu and dying. Tens of thousands of people die of the flu every year. Why the heck are we paying so much attention to this? It’s not like people are getting something new and horrible like some skin eating disease or their organs melting, or bleeding from every pore of their bodies. That, that I would understand. But a respiratory infection? If we get this excited for a respiratory illness, how are we ever going to live normally again? The flu happens every year. Are we going to change our whole way of being now because of viruses? We were doing fine just as we were, I was heard to comment more than once.

Until, one day, I met a dear friend and her husband in a parking lot. Her husband was a lawyer with offices in China, the Philippines and Japan. We got to talking (six feet apart), and I was fussing, as I was wont to do: this is so ridiculous given the extreme lack of attention we give the flu every year and what’s going to happen in the future? Are we going to stop living every flu season? Her husband shut me down immediately. His contact in China had asked him what story we were being told and upon hearing the response, he said, we were being fed an extremely watered down version of their new reality. That, in fact, hundreds of thousands had succumbed to the disease. That crematoriums that had once operated only three times a week were working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And the bodies were still piling up.

Well, that sobered me up quite a bit. I didn’t see that information anywhere and since I am not one to gossip or pass along knowledge that I cannot verify, I said nothing to anyone except my immediate family.

We followed the various new mandates. I got my sewing machine from the attic and started making cotton face masks. I only left the house once a week to buy groceries and bring goodies to my mom who lived about 45 minutes away in a neighboring state, (no hugs or kisses, maintaining a distance of six feet). And every day I watched the number of infected and dead grow, although I refused to watch the news or scroll social media with morbid interest, as most of my friends and family were doing. I would read various online newspapers from around the world in the morning and in the evening, but that was it. My husband worked on various garden projects – thank goodness it was spring, I thought at the time. I did a lot of baking – so I also did a lot of running. I took free online classes. I read. I wrote. I waited.

The first death that touched me was early on. My best friend’s brother died of Covid-19 some three weeks into the country taking the virus more seriously; no one had any idea where he got it. He was in a small town in the middle of nowhere. A few weeks later, my mom called to say her cousin’s daughter was in the ICU, in a medically-induced coma. Covid-19. A couple of months after that, a former student’s entire family of four came down with it despite all her many precautions (as an immunocompromised survivor of two bouts of cancer). Only her husband survived. And so it went…

And now, it’s spring again. It was so lovely to go outside today. All those pictures I saw of which I was deeply skeptical during the Pandemic of 2020, well, it turns out they were right. When the virus known as humanity was confined to home, it’s host, the earth, actually found it’s health improved. Waterways ran with clearer water than they had in decades. Air pollution dropped to levels unseen since before the Industrial Revolution. It appears the damage to the ozone layer could not be reversed, but it stopped worsening. The polar ice caps seemed to slow their melting. Species that were thought to be going extinct had a renaissance. To me, the sky above seems bluer…but it may just be a new appreciation for something once taken for granted.

The social world, of course, is very different as well. I can’t believe it’s only been 15 months since I first heard of Covid-19. Everyone is required to wear a mask nowadays; it’s the law. And if you are sick, you cannot go to public places. Unlike in the pre-Pandemic days, when jobs encouraged you to work sick, now people who cannot work from home are forbidden to work sick and work places are fined by the government if they fire workers for not working sick. Businesses are not required to pay indefinite sick leave, but they have to offer some. The government supplements that as well. There are now volunteer groups – and some government-sponsored groups – that you can call who will deliver food and medicine if you live alone and cannot get out due to illness.

Many businesses closed their offices permanently because they discovered they could work with equal efficiency and less chance for spreading disease with workers at home. Almost all of New York’s skyscrapers are empty now. Offices that do exist all have very spacious layouts – including the DMV and other government facilities. All hospitals and many large corporations are government-owned. They couldn’t survive without government loans and they couldn’t pay the loans back. Or at least, they haven’t yet. Cruises are a thing of the past. Too many sanitary and social distancing issues. Very few airlines remain, but the ones that do are all spacious, which is a positive outcome, I think. Unfortunately, all travel is domestic only – and even that just opened up again last month. Most countries continue to maintain closed borders except for business and government travel. And cargo, of course.

Restaurants are few and far between. Industrial kitchens had to be expanded to maintain the new, post-Pandemic distancing laws. Most still live off take-out and delivery since serving is impossible…although there are some restaurants that have introduced the use of robots to serve. I am dying to go to one, but there are none where we live, yet.

We are allowed to take a daily walk or run. Those of us whose first name starts with D and birth year ends with seven are allowed to run between the hours of 7 and 8 am, Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays in my town. With the new restrictions, my husband and I can never walk together anymore, but at least we can get out. And we do video workouts together at home. None of the gyms were able to reopen after the Pandemic. They were seen as too dangerous to public health. (Those with pools are open for swimming, but you have to register for the limited slots.) So, too, all the massive indoor arenas. Many were repurposed as hospitals; others were simply shuttered. Smaller venues and movie theaters had the option to reopen if they renovated their layouts to maintain a distance of six feet between each chair. But what would be the point? No one is permitted to do theater anymore. You have to get too close to a fellow actor. And you can’t make a movie if you can’t get within six feet of someone. Movie theater attendance was dying before the Pandemic anyway. Streaming was preferred. Unfortunately, all the tv dramas and reality shows are repeats now. No new shows can tape except news programs or comedy shows that keep guests six feet away from the host and each other. There has been a growth in musical performances online with singers singing from their homes. Some theatrical performances have tried that as well, but they leave something to be desired. So, basically, everyone binge watches all the programs created before the Pandemic of 2020.

Team sports are a thing of the past. Tennis, biking, ping pong and swimming are on the rise. Running, of course. The Olympics have been terminated indefinitely. So, too, the World Cup, the European Cup, and all the other championships of team sports. All schools are virtual now. Teachers are honing their virtual teaching skills and lessons are all online for grades K-university. Many more parents are homeschooling. It is a shame though: Social skills were already dying before the Pandemic; they will fast become a thing of the past, I suspect.

Elections were cancelled last fall, of course. No one could leave their homes and online voting was deemed precarious; and, ultimately, they seemed unnecessary in such trying times. We have a tele-government now. Everyone tunes in avidly every day at noon to hear the updates about this season’s flu (worse than last year’s Covid-19), new mandates, new laws. The former Constitution was clearly unable to support the new reality, and was nullified some eight months into the Pandemic. Not clear when or if we will have a new one any time soon. Few are all that concerned with it around here.

Our shopping day is Tuesday. In order to discourage hoarding and to ensure there is enough for everyone on their given shopping day, purchases are limited to two items per family. There are fewer markets and they don’t have near the variety they once did, but at least there is food. There was a period during the worst days of the Pandemic when there was not enough. There weren’t enough people producing around the world or in the US; there weren’t enough people to transport; there weren’t enough people willing or able to show up to work to stock shelves and sell... There were too many sick or dying. It was a dark period. There was some rioting and looting, but not much. People were as afraid of getting Covid-19 as they were of not having enough to feed themselves and their families. Consequently, many died alone in their homes of starvation. When federal law forbade crossing state borders, I was no longer able to help my mother. When she stopped answering her phone, a part of me died.