Surprise, It's Our Fifth COVID Anniversary! (Ugh)

Disease, Disruption, and Disinformation

You may not know but today is the five-year anniversary of regular life ending as we knew it. Kids stayed home from school, many adults began working from home, people pulled out sewing machines to make masks for their neighbors, and the world suddenly became much smaller and scarier than it had been only months before. And people got sick and died. 

To me, the signs were obvious in January 2020 that something bad was coming, so my household had masks, wipes, flour, cleaning supplies, and other essentials just in case when the world shut down seemingly overnight. Honestly, every time Trump said “everything is fine” from January to March 2020, I went out to purchase more toilet paper or shelf stable goods. I felt like Chicken Little at the time, but during the pandemic, it meant that I could share with my neighbors and friends when they and the stores ran low on flour, yeast, and tp.

I will admit that at the beginning, it felt good to finally have an excuse not to go anywhere, to bond with my family, and to be quiet. It was still scary because people were sick, but it was doable. We banded together and connected remotely. The longer the pandemic lasted, the harder it was, especially for those with in-person jobs, unstable housing, small children, and/or solitary living conditions.

Over the years, I’ve always wondered why many people immediately became angry at the schools and teachers–so angry that they formed loud, aggressive groups to hound elected officials, teachers, and other parents. It seemed odd that those Open School groups never voiced discontent with the Trump administration’s bungling of the COVID response. However, their support for him despite his lack of leadership made more sense once you realized how many political operatives and candidates founded those groups. It made even more sense when you realized those Open School URLs were purchased simultaneously with Trump April 2020 tweets about opening schools, and there is a clear intersection of the Open School groups (including COVID-denial and anti-mask groups) and Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Networks.

Many progressives joined them because they thought the Open Schoolers intended to work to open schools through advocacy, science, and masking. They were sorely disappointed, as the Open School groups were right-wing echo chambers of disinformation, complaints, and harassment of teachers and other parents. Progressive parents quickly left realizing that open conversation was as unwelcome as science or empathy in the Open School groups. Honestly, it has been funny to watch those groups rebrand themselves as “parents rights groups” despite the fact that they were obviously always extensions of the local Republican party and their screams have been memorialized in School Board videos, but I digress... 

To me, it was obvious that the first Trump Administration was ill-equipped to handle the pandemic, much less work to address the pandemic. They ignored that people were dying, masks helped, and the U.S. needed a real plan and leadership to protect Americans and people around the world.

It never felt like the Trump administration took COVID seriously when they called it a “flu.” So by the time the Biden Administration arrived, there were already a million dead, and mask and vaccine hesitancy were encouraged by the previous administration to such an extent that many American bought the lies wholesale. Nevertheless, I’m eternally thankful to those scientists and leaders that did their work to research, correct misinformation, and develop a vaccine that saved lives. 

Five Year Anniversary: The Gift of Would

The fifth anniversary gift is wood. That won’t transfer very well in a blog, but I will ask you: What would you have done differently during the pandemic? What do you wish we would have learned and implemented post-pandemic?

I will share a very personal “would have done.” I wish we would have spent more time with my parents when we were isolating to try to reduce the spread of COVID. There was so little information about COVID that we isolated our households from each other, which was not healthy for my elderly parents or for my family, particularly since my mother received a dementia diagnosis on March 12, 2020. The isolation was not good for her or my dad. I think her dementia wouldn’t have progressed as fast if we had been able to spend more time together, and kept her connected to us. 

Otherwise, I think we would have done everything pretty much the same: online school, masking, getting the vaccine, and isolating when we had a cold, as one should. Does it mean that my kids learned as much as they would have in person? Yes, because they wouldn’t have been able to learn anything fearing that their classmates’ coughs or sniffles could kill their parents. 

Post-pandemic, I have a list of things that I wish our communities would be doing or have already done, including:

• Improving overcrowded, underfunded schools that end up being the educator, health care, counselor, and mentor to our children.

• Rethinking health care to ensure that those who cannot afford it can still have access to basic preventative and health care so they can keep themselves and their families healthy for work, school, and life.

• Silencing the wheels of disinformation that have infected our country so that half of it doesn't even know the truth anymore.

• Making a plan for the next pandemic or global crisis so that the fear of death does not derail people from living life.

Obviously, there is more I could say, but this seems enough when the world feels like it is on fire and our country is threatening its allies while siding with oligarchs and dictators. Like we did during the COVID pandemic, we will continue to work, learn, and try to make the world a better place. We must live, thrive, and support others, as we did during the COVID pandemic, only now we can do it in person…unless you have a cold, and then please stay home until you are better.