A couple weeks ago, I wrote about quadrennial occurrences, things that happen every four years like Leap Years, elections, and the Olympics. As I thought back to the previous Leap Year, I was reminded of the horrors of 2020.
That’s right, as you read this, we have hit the four-year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic. Friday, March 13, was our last day of school that year as the governor announced a couple days later that we were shutting down to stop the spread, to flatten the curve of the fast-spreading coronavirus that had invaded our country.
As we look back at that time, a lot of things have changed because of it in our world. The pandemic is similar to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in that we often refer to things as pre-9/11 and post-9/11. We now will think about things as when they happened in relation to 2020.
I was always very supportive of what doctors and scientists were saying at that time. After all, what does an English teacher know about viruses as compared to people who endured more years of higher education than I did? And who happened to study the very thing that was imperiling people’s lives?
The bigger threat in 2020 was the politicization of the pandemic. Covid-19 killed a lot of people, but things might have been at least a little different if political leaders on both sides of the aisle had spent more time listening to the people studying the virus and less time trying to gain political favor with the people of the country by playing into either fear of the virus or fear of a loss of freedom.
In retrospect, could things have been done differently? Of course they could have. It’s the same as watching your favorite sports team lose a close game and talking about what they should have done to win. In the heat of the moment, you sometimes have to make decisions that you feel will be in the best interest of your team. In the case of the pandemic, we can surely look back and say we could have perhaps devised some plans to stay in school that spring, just as we did in the fall. But at the time, the idea of exposure to the virus and the potential for harm was overwhelming, and the decisions were made based on guidance from medical people.
What has changed? What do we talk about that is different now than it was in 2019? Education is certainly different. It starts with how far behind many of our kids are in reading and math. Think about any age student, but especially those learning to read and understand basic math, missing two months of school, and then living a disrupted existence for most of the next year. Their learning was so disrupted that, where we might have seen a student a year behind in skills in middle school, we are now seeing plural years. This is through no fault of the teachers who did the best they could with what they were able to do, but it’s hard to help Johnny or Suzie when you don’t see them.
We teach differently in some ways. We give so much more work time in class than we used to. During the spring of 2020 and then the 2020-2021 school year, we had adjusted schedules and days with only some kids in school and others at home. We changed to make learning as accessible as possible. Just like with the elementary example above, we needed to have time to interact with kids, so we extended assignment due dates. Some of that has stuck.
We’ve also seen a change in both our young people and adults. When everyone was staying home, there was more time on phones and playing games and watching shows. Once the real world re-emerged, many people had gotten into such a habit of playing or watching things at their convenience that the idea of being tied to a schedule and not being able to check every notification as it came in became almost untenable.
When I allow kids to retrieve their phones at the end of class, it’s like a feeding frenzy. They act like addicts who are exposed to their vice. It’s at workplaces and out in public, too. I was waiting in a long line at a concession stand recently and couldn’t help but notice that one of the workers was on their phone. Um, hello? I need some popcorn! Tiktok is not as important as a salty treat!
We also know that mental health problems have increased exponentially. I’ve written before about my fear of missing out (FOMO) and how I sometimes become overly concerned with getting sick. That initial dread of what Covid might do to me has lessened somewhat, especially because I’ve been through it, but it has just heightened my aversion to missing things, even work, due to illness.
Others face much more difficult mental struggles than mine. Being stuck with their family for a long time, especially when there might not have been a good setting at home, has changed many people. The comfort level of working from home has made some people leery of returning to a workplace, even if a social setting might be beneficial.
And let’s be honest. Many people who worked from home during quarantine were not expected to do as much work, or it was easier to get away with not doing as much. Now that a higher level of output might be expected, many are struggling to regain a solid work ethic. This loss of desire was not always intentional, but yet another unforeseen result of sheltering in place.
Some things might gradually revert to what they were, and many things have. But we will be forever changed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Here’s hoping it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event and will not become quadrennial.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is anfractuous, which means full of twists and turns, as in, “The pandemic was quite anfractuous, with people never knowing what might come next.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!