On a recent Solo podcast, the topic was how the Covid pandemic affected solos. Having lived through the pandemic as a solo, I was interested to hear how others experienced the pandemic and societal isolation now that we’ve just passed the 5 year anniversary of lockdowns. Peter McGraw, the host said something that stuck with me:
One of the things that’s different about the pandemic than about World War I or World War II is that there’s no V-J Day. There’s no armistice. There’s not a moment in time when the war is over and we can celebrate…As I said at the outset, there never was a postmortem. What did we do right? What did we do wrong? What did we learn from this? There’s never been an apology for any mistakes that were ever made. None of that helps people’s grieving and coping in any real way.
– Peter McGraw, Solo Podcast
I think Peter nailed this. I feel some effects of the pandemic five years later. From talking to others, I’m not the only one.
The lack of an ending exacerbates this. We can all recall how “2 weeks to flatten the curve” extended into another 2 weeks…then 2 months…then 2 years…as cases rose, deaths piled up, and new variants infected people across the world. In my city, we had restrictions for over 3 years and even today, 5 years later, some businesses and government agencies have never returned to pre-Covid normalcy.
Almost any other trial I’ve gone through in my life had a clear end date:
- School graduation.
- Work – quitting, being fired/laid off.
- Abusive stepfather – My mother finally moved away and divorced him.
- Even my wife’s lung cancer and long suffering eventually ended when she died.
It seems to me that the Covid pandemic is over now. But I cannot pinpoint a date when this happened. It was sometime in 2024 I suspect, when vaccines had become routine for many and rejected by an equal (or greater) percentage of the US, lockdowns were no longer ordered nor tolerated, and infections/hospitalization rates stopped being tallied and reported in the headlines everyday.
For some people, it ended earlier, when they got Covid despite following all the “rules” and getting vaccinated. Other people just gave up on avoiding Covid because the social isolation became too much.
It varied by location as well with different states, regions and countries all applying different rules, restrictions and support.
No wonder it feels endless.
It kind of was.