essay on life lessons learned during pandemic

I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

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But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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8 Lessons We Can Learn From the COVID-19 Pandemic

BY KATHY KATELLA May 14, 2021

Rear view of a family standing on a hill in autumn day, symbolizing hope for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic

Note: Information in this article was accurate at the time of original publication. Because information about COVID-19 changes rapidly, we encourage you to visit the websites of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and your state and local government for the latest information.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it—and it may have changed us individually as well, from our morning routines to our life goals and priorities. Many say the world has changed forever. But this coming year, if the vaccines drive down infections and variants are kept at bay, life could return to some form of normal. At that point, what will we glean from the past year? Are there silver linings or lessons learned?

“Humanity's memory is short, and what is not ever-present fades quickly,” says Manisha Juthani, MD , a Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist. The bubonic plague, for example, ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages—resurfacing again and again—but once it was under control, people started to forget about it, she says. “So, I would say one major lesson from a public health or infectious disease perspective is that it’s important to remember and recognize our history. This is a period we must remember.”

We asked our Yale Medicine experts to weigh in on what they think are lessons worth remembering, including those that might help us survive a future virus or nurture a resilience that could help with life in general.

Lesson 1: Masks are useful tools

What happened: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed its masking guidance for those who have been fully vaccinated. But when the pandemic began, it necessitated a global effort to ensure that everyone practiced behaviors to keep themselves healthy and safe—and keep others healthy as well. This included the widespread wearing of masks indoors and outside.

What we’ve learned: Not everyone practiced preventive measures such as mask wearing, maintaining a 6-foot distance, and washing hands frequently. But, Dr. Juthani says, “I do think many people have learned a whole lot about respiratory pathogens and viruses, and how they spread from one person to another, and that sort of old-school common sense—you know, if you don’t feel well—whether it’s COVID-19 or not—you don’t go to the party. You stay home.”

Masks are a case in point. They are a key COVID-19 prevention strategy because they provide a barrier that can keep respiratory droplets from spreading. Mask-wearing became more common across East Asia after the 2003 SARS outbreak in that part of the world. “There are many East Asian cultures where the practice is still that if you have a cold or a runny nose, you put on a mask,” Dr. Juthani says.

She hopes attitudes in the U.S. will shift in that direction after COVID-19. “I have heard from a number of people who are amazed that we've had no flu this year—and they know masks are one of the reasons,” she says. “They’ve told me, ‘When the winter comes around, if I'm going out to the grocery store, I may just put on a mask.’”

Lesson 2: Telehealth might become the new normal

What happened: Doctors and patients who have used telehealth (technology that allows them to conduct medical care remotely), found it can work well for certain appointments, ranging from cardiology check-ups to therapy for a mental health condition. Many patients who needed a medical test have also discovered it may be possible to substitute a home version.

What we’ve learned: While there are still problems for which you need to see a doctor in person, the pandemic introduced a new urgency to what had been a gradual switchover to platforms like Zoom for remote patient visits.

More doctors also encouraged patients to track their blood pressure at home , and to use at-home equipment for such purposes as diagnosing sleep apnea and even testing for colon cancer . Doctors also can fine-tune cochlear implants remotely .

“It happened very quickly,” says Sharon Stoll, DO, a neurologist. One group that has benefitted is patients who live far away, sometimes in other parts of the country—or even the world, she says. “I always like to see my patients at least twice a year. Now, we can see each other in person once a year, and if issues come up, we can schedule a telehealth visit in-between,” Dr. Stoll says. “This way I may hear about an issue before it becomes a problem, because my patients have easier access to me, and I have easier access to them.”

Meanwhile, insurers are becoming more likely to cover telehealth, Dr. Stoll adds. “That is a silver lining that will hopefully continue.”

Lesson 3: Vaccines are powerful tools

What happened: Given the recent positive results from vaccine trials, once again vaccines are proving to be powerful for preventing disease.

What we’ve learned: Vaccines really are worth getting, says Dr. Stoll, who had COVID-19 and experienced lingering symptoms, including chronic headaches . “I have lots of conversations—and sometimes arguments—with people about vaccines,” she says. Some don’t like the idea of side effects. “I had vaccine side effects and I’ve had COVID-19 side effects, and I say nothing compares to the actual illness. Unfortunately, I speak from experience.”

Dr. Juthani hopes the COVID-19 vaccine spotlight will motivate people to keep up with all of their vaccines, including childhood and adult vaccines for such diseases as measles , chicken pox, shingles , and other viruses. She says people have told her they got the flu vaccine this year after skipping it in previous years. (The CDC has reported distributing an exceptionally high number of doses this past season.)

But, she cautions that a vaccine is not a magic bullet—and points out that scientists can’t always produce one that works. “As advanced as science is, there have been multiple failed efforts to develop a vaccine against the HIV virus,” she says. “This time, we were lucky that we were able build on the strengths that we've learned from many other vaccine development strategies to develop multiple vaccines for COVID-19 .”

Lesson 4: Everyone is not treated equally, especially in a pandemic

What happened: COVID-19 magnified disparities that have long been an issue for a variety of people.

What we’ve learned: Racial and ethnic minority groups especially have had disproportionately higher rates of hospitalization for COVID-19 than non-Hispanic white people in every age group, and many other groups faced higher levels of risk or stress. These groups ranged from working mothers who also have primary responsibility for children, to people who have essential jobs, to those who live in rural areas where there is less access to health care.

“One thing that has been recognized is that when people were told to work from home, you needed to have a job that you could do in your house on a computer,” says Dr. Juthani. “Many people who were well off were able do that, but they still needed to have food, which requires grocery store workers and truck drivers. Nursing home residents still needed certified nursing assistants coming to work every day to care for them and to bathe them.”

As far as racial inequities, Dr. Juthani cites President Biden’s appointment of Yale Medicine’s Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS , as inaugural chair of a federal COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. “Hopefully the new focus is a first step,” Dr. Juthani says.

Lesson 5: We need to take mental health seriously

What happened: There was a rise in reported mental health problems that have been described as “a second pandemic,” highlighting mental health as an issue that needs to be addressed.

What we’ve learned: Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh, MD, PhD , a behavioral neurologist and neuropsychiatrist, believes the number of mental health disorders that were on the rise before the pandemic is surging as people grapple with such matters as juggling work and childcare, job loss, isolation, and losing a loved one to COVID-19.

The CDC reports that the percentage of adults who reported symptoms of anxiety of depression in the past 7 days increased from 36.4 to 41.5 % from August 2020 to February 2021. Other reports show that having COVID-19 may contribute, too, with its lingering or long COVID symptoms, which can include “foggy mind,” anxiety , depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder .

“We’re seeing these problems in our clinical setting very, very often,” Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “By virtue of necessity, we can no longer ignore this. We're seeing these folks, and we have to take them seriously.”

Lesson 6: We have the capacity for resilience

What happened: While everyone’s situation is different (and some people have experienced tremendous difficulties), many have seen that it’s possible to be resilient in a crisis.

What we’ve learned: People have practiced self-care in a multitude of ways during the pandemic as they were forced to adjust to new work schedules, change their gym routines, and cut back on socializing. Many started seeking out new strategies to counter the stress.

“I absolutely believe in the concept of resilience, because we have this effective reservoir inherent in all of us—be it the product of evolution, or our ancestors going through catastrophes, including wars, famines, and plagues,” Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “I think inherently, we have the means to deal with crisis. The fact that you and I are speaking right now is the result of our ancestors surviving hardship. I think resilience is part of our psyche. It's part of our DNA, essentially.”

Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh believes that even small changes are highly effective tools for creating resilience. The changes he suggests may sound like the same old advice: exercise more, eat healthy food, cut back on alcohol, start a meditation practice, keep up with friends and family. “But this is evidence-based advice—there has been research behind every one of these measures,” he says.

But we have to also be practical, he notes. “If you feel overwhelmed by doing too many things, you can set a modest goal with one new habit—it could be getting organized around your sleep. Once you’ve succeeded, move on to another one. Then you’re building momentum.”

Lesson 7: Community is essential—and technology is too

What happened: People who were part of a community during the pandemic realized the importance of human connection, and those who didn’t have that kind of support realized they need it.

What we’ve learned: Many of us have become aware of how much we need other people—many have managed to maintain their social connections, even if they had to use technology to keep in touch, Dr. Juthani says. “There's no doubt that it's not enough, but even that type of community has helped people.”

Even people who aren’t necessarily friends or family are important. Dr. Juthani recalled how she encouraged her mail carrier to sign up for the vaccine, soon learning that the woman’s mother and husband hadn’t gotten it either. “They are all vaccinated now,” Dr. Juthani says. “So, even by word of mouth, community is a way to make things happen.”

It’s important to note that some people are naturally introverted and may have enjoyed having more solitude when they were forced to stay at home—and they should feel comfortable with that, Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “I think one has to keep temperamental tendencies like this in mind.”

But loneliness has been found to suppress the immune system and be a precursor to some diseases, he adds. “Even for introverted folks, the smallest circle is preferable to no circle at all,” he says.

Lesson 8: Sometimes you need a dose of humility

What happened: Scientists and nonscientists alike learned that a virus can be more powerful than they are. This was evident in the way knowledge about the virus changed over time in the past year as scientific investigation of it evolved.

What we’ve learned: “As infectious disease doctors, we were resident experts at the beginning of the pandemic because we understand pathogens in general, and based on what we’ve seen in the past, we might say there are certain things that are likely to be true,” Dr. Juthani says. “But we’ve seen that we have to take these pathogens seriously. We know that COVID-19 is not the flu. All these strokes and clots, and the loss of smell and taste that have gone on for months are things that we could have never known or predicted. So, you have to have respect for the unknown and respect science, but also try to give scientists the benefit of the doubt,” she says.

“We have been doing the best we can with the knowledge we have, in the time that we have it,” Dr. Juthani says. “I think most of us have had to have the humility to sometimes say, ‘I don't know. We're learning as we go.’"

Information provided in Yale Medicine articles is for general informational purposes only. No content in the articles should ever be used as a substitute for medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician. Always seek the individual advice of your health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition.

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Wake up with a Smile

9 valuable lessons we’ve learned during the pandemic.

1. Family is nonnegotiable.

For many of us, this year brought with it quality family time that we never expected and, honestly, might never have had otherwise. It’s reminded us just how much family matters. And I don’t just mean blood relatives, I mean chosen family, too.

We were encouraged to take a step out of the craziness of our former lives and deeply invest in those relationships again, whether it was face-to-face or not.

We’ve had the opportunity to not just catch up on life, but to also spend priceless time with our loved ones, asking personal questions, being there for the important moments, leaning on each other for support, and growing together. As a result, we remembered just how much we need each other!

2. Prioritize health and wellness .

When the pandemic first began, the world started paying attention to health, wellness, and hygiene like never before. We realized just how effective our handwashing wasn’t , how much we shouldn’t be touching our faces, and the beauty of both modern and natural medicine. These are all crucial practices and levels of care that will hopefully stick with us in the future.

Not only that, but without the usual benefits of daily activity, in-person workouts, and restaurant dining, a microscope was placed on just how willing we were to maintain our wellness all on our own.

With the pandemic came a myriad of free cooking and workout classes on social media and a realization that, particularly when we’re stuck inside, our bodies really do need nutrients and activity to survive.

3. We can get by on less. Much less.

The road to discovering how little we need was paved with uncertainty. With the overwhelming job loss that came with the pandemic, people had to learn how to pinch pennies, clip coupons, and trim excess like never before.

Even for those who kept their jobs, without indoor dining, salons, gyms, and a wealth of other standard social activities, saving money actually became easier to do. Even though we’ll all be lining the doors when things are back to normal, we realized in the process that we actually can live on a lot less and still be content.

4. Build that nest egg.

In addition to pinching those pennies, we learned the endless value of having a rainy day fund – or more appropriately, an emergency fund. An emergency fund is one that is set aside for the most essential of needs, including rent, medical expenses, childcare, and food.

As we’ve all heard over and over again, these are unprecedented times. The nature of unprecedented times is that we don’t see them coming, so we don’t plan for them.

If this year has taught us anything, it’s the importance of setting aside a little extra money and leaving it there until the day comes when we might need it.

5. Slow down.

We’ve realized that not only is it OK to slow down, but it’s actually essential.

When the pandemic hit, it was as if the whole world was running on overdrive and then, all at once, it crashed. We allowed it to get this way because we have a tendency to align our worth with our busyness. But luckily, this past year has shown us just how unbalanced that meter is.

There are a few key points to remember moving forward. First of all, self-care is not self-indulgent; it’s one way that we keep ourselves healthy, both physically and mentally. Second, slowing down is what helps us truly live in the present and find contentment in our circumstances.

6. We should be talking about mental health.

One of the best silver linings of this year is that we learned just how valuable mental health is. Studies show that ever since the pandemic hit, close to 40 percent of Americans now suffer from anxiety and depression. The causes are endless: financial stress, difficult home lives, boredom, loss, fear, and, perhaps the heaviest of all, loneliness.

These universal mental health issues truly are a “second wave” of this global crisis, and the greatest benefit has been the light shed on their gravity.

People are being more vocal than ever about the importance of honesty and vulnerability when it comes to our mental health, just like we would a physical ailment. By doing so, we can get the love and support we need.

7. Our thoughts on people have changed.

The more closed off we’ve had to become socially and the more we’ve noticed the deep need around us, the more we’ve realized whom we consider to be truly essential.

In our own lives, we’ve learned which friends we want close to us in times of trouble – and maybe even some relationships we’ve been needing freedom from.

In our communities, we’ve finally realized the overwhelming value of our essential workers: in health care, education, food service, and the most underappreciated segments of our workforce. May we never forget how brave and resilient they have been for all of us these past 12 months.

8. Becoming comfortable with uncertainty.

“The one thing that’s certain about this current crisis is the massive amount of uncertainty,” Paul Knopp, U.S. Chair and CEO of KPMG LLP, told Accounting Today . “In order to succeed, you must execute on the activities and behaviors that are within your control.”

We have definitely learned flexibility this year. From working and schooling from home, to rerouting our careers, to finding new ways to stay connected, to moving back in with our parents, our flexibility has been award-winning and record-breaking.

A benefit of this growing pain is that it’s made us more comfortable with uncertainty. There’s so much about the future that we can’t possibly know or predict right now, so ultimately all we can do is be OK with it – and choose to find the wonder and joy in our present circumstances.

9. We are deeply resilient.

We are capable of so much more than we ever knew. This year has been rife with chaos, unrest, injustice, loss, and pain – but we’ve survived. We’re still standing. Even in the darkest time, we’ve been able to look outside ourselves and pull through for those in need in remarkable ways. It’s helped us realize the stuff we’re made of .

More than that, we’ve done it together. We’ve all been in isolation together, and we’ve survived together. It’s reminded us that at the end of the day, we are all just human beings, and we need each other.

And now we know with certainty that we can handle anything!

After the levels of stress we’ve lived through this past year, the best we can do is make sure it wasn’t for nothing. We can search for the good, continue to grow, and allow our circumstances to change us for the better. Only then will we continue to come out on the other side stronger, more resilient, more compassionate, and more hopeful than ever!

Share this story to remind others how much they’ve grown this year.

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15 Lessons the Coronavirus Pandemic Has Taught Us

What we've learned over the past 12 months could pay off for years to come.

sights from the pandemic people wearing masks a boy visiting his grandmother through a nursing home window a zoom meeting and a six foot distancing sign

For the past year, our country has been mired in not one deep crisis but three: a pandemic , an economic meltdown and one of the most fraught political transitions in our history. Interwoven in all three have been challenging issues of racial disparity and fairness. Dealing with all of this has dominated much of our energy, attention and, for many Americans, even our emotions.

But spring is nearly here, and we are, by and large, moving past the worst moments as a nation — which makes it a good time to take a deep breath and assess the changes that have occurred. While no one would be displeased if we could magically erase this whole pandemic experience, it's been the crucible of our lives for a year, and we have much to learn from it — and even much to gain.

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AARP asked dozens of experts to go beyond the headlines and to share the deeper lessons of the past year that have had a particular impact on older Americans. More importantly, we asked them to share how we can use these learnings to make life better for us as we recover and move forward. Here is what they told us.

Lesson 1: Family Matters More Than We Realized

"The indelible image of the older person living alone and having to struggle — we need to change that. You're going to see more older people home-sharing within families and cohousing across communities to avoid future situations of tragedy."

—Marc Freedman, CEO and president of Encore.org and author of How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations

Norman Rockwell would have needed miles of canvas to portray the American family this past year. You can imagine the titles: The Family That Zooms Together. Generations Under One Roof. Grandkids Outside My Window. The Shared Office . “Beneath the warts and complexities of all that went wrong, we rediscovered the interdependence of generations and how much we need each other,” Freedman says. Among the lessons:

Adult kids are OK. A Pew Research Center survey last summer found that 52 percent of the American population between ages 18 and 29 were living with parents, a figure unmatched since the Great Depression. From February to July 2020, 2.6 million young adults moved back with one or both parents. That's a lot of shared Netflix accounts. It's also a culture shift, says Karen Fingerman, director of the Texas Aging & Longevity Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “After the family dinners together, grandparents filling in for childcare, and the wise economic sense, it's going to be acceptable for adult family members to co-reside,” Fingerman says. “At least for a while.”

What We've Learned From the Pandemic

• Lesson 1: Family Matters • Lesson 2: Medical Breakthroughs • Lesson 3: Self-Care Matters • Lesson 4: Be Financially Prepared • Lesson 5: Age Is Just a Number • Lesson 6: Getting Online for Good • Lesson 7: Working Anywhere • Lesson 8: Restoring Trust • Lesson 9: Gathering Carefully • Lesson 10: Isolation's Health Toll • Lesson 11: Getting Outside • Lesson 12: Wealth Disparities’ Toll • Lesson 13: Preparing for the Future • Lesson 14: Tapping Telemedicine • Lesson 15: Cities Are Changing

Spouses and partners are critical to well-being . “The ones who've done exceptionally well are couples in long-term relationships who felt renewed intimacy and reconnection to each other,” says social psychologist Richard Slatcher, who runs the Close Relationships Laboratory at the University of Georgia.

Difficult caregiving can morph into good-for-all home-sharing. To get older Americans out of nursing homes and into a loved one's home — a priority that has gained in importance and urgency due to the pandemic — will take more than just a willing child or grandchild. New resources could help, like expanding Medicaid programs to pay family caregivers, such as an adult child, or initiatives like the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, a Medicare-backed benefit currently helping 50,000 “community dwelling” seniors with medical services, home care and transportation.

"A positive piece this year has been the pause to reflect on how we can help people stay in their homes as they age, which is what everyone wants,” says Nancy LeaMond, AARP's chief advocacy and engagement officer. “If you're taking care of a parent, grandparent, aging partner or yourself, you see more than ever the need for community and government support, of having technology to communicate with your doctor and of getting paid leave for family caregivers. The pandemic has forced us to think about all these things, and that's very positive.”

Family may be the best medicine of all . “Now we know if you can't hug your 18-month-old granddaughter in person, you can read to her on FaceTime,” says Jane Isay, author of several books about family relationships. “You can send your adult kids snail mail. You can share your life's wisdom even from a distance. These coping skills may be the greatest gifts of COVID” — to an older generation that deeply and rightly fears isolation.

a healthcare technician unfrosts vials of a covid vaccine in a lab

Lesson 2: We Have Unleashed a Revolution in Medicine

" One of the biggest lessons we've learned from COVID is that the scientific community working together can do some pretty amazing things."

—John Cooke, M.D., medical director of the RNA Therapeutics Program at Houston Methodist Hospital's DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center

In the past it's taken four to 20 years to create conventional vaccines. For the new messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, it was a record-setting 11 months. The process may have changed forever the way drugs are developed.

"Breakthroughs” come after years of research . Supporting the development of the COVID-19 vaccines was more than a decade of research into mRNA vaccines, which teach human cells how to make a protein that triggers a specific immune response. The research had already overcome many challenging hurdles, such as making sure that mRNA wouldn't provoke inflammation in the body, says Lynne E. Maquat, director of the University of Rochester's Center for RNA Biology: From Genome to Therapeutics.

Vaccines may one day treat heart disease and more. In the near future, mRNA technology could lead to better flu vaccines that could be updated quickly as flu viruses mutate with the season, Maquat says, or the development of a “universal” flu shot that might be effective for several years. Drug developers are looking at vaccines for rabies, Zika virus and HIV. “I expect to see the approval of more mRNA-based vaccines in the next several years,” says mRNA researcher Norbert Pardi, a research assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

"We could use mRNA for diseases and conditions that can't be treated with drugs,” Cooke explains.

It may also target our biggest killers . Future mRNA therapies could help regenerate muscle in failing hearts and target the unique genetics of individual cancers with personalized cancer vaccines. “Every case of cancer is unique, with its own genetics,” Cooke says. “Doctors will be able to sequence your tumor and use it to make a vaccine that awakens your immune system to fight it.” Such mRNA vaccines will also prepare us for future pandemics, Maquat says.

In the meantime, use the vaccines we have available. Don't skip recommended conventional vaccines now available to older adults for the flu, pneumonia, shingles and more, Pardi says. The flu vaccine alone, which 1 in 3 older adults skipped in the winter 2019 season, saves up to tens of thousands of lives a year and lowers your risk for hospitalization with the flu by 28 percent and for needing a ventilator to breathe by 46 percent.

Lesson 3: Self Care Is Not Self-Indulgence

"Not only does self-care have positive outcomes for you, but it also sets an example to younger generations as something to establish and maintain for your entire life."

—Richelle Concepcion, clinical psychologist and president of the Asian American Psychological Association

As the virus upended life last spring, America became hibernation nation. Canned, dry and instant soup sales have risen 37 percent since last April. Premium chocolate sales grew by 21 percent in the first six months of the pandemic. The athleisure market that includes sweatpants and yoga wear saw its 2020 U.S. revenue push past an estimated $105 billion.

With 7 in 10 American workers doing their jobs from home, “COVID turned the focus, for all ages, on the small, simple pleasures that soothe and give us meaning,” says Isabel Gillies, author of Cozy: The Art of Arranging Yourself in the World.

Why care about self-care? Pampering is vital to well-being — for yourself and for those around you. Activities that once felt indulgent became essential to our health and equilibrium, and that self-care mindset is likely to endure. Whether it is permission to take long bubble baths, tinkering in the backyard “she shed,” enjoying herbal tea or seeing noon come while still in your robe, “being good to yourself offers a necessary reprieve from whatever horrors threaten us from out there,” Gillies says. Being good to yourself is good for others, too. A recent European survey found that 77 percent of British respondents 75 and younger consider it important to take their health into their own hands in order not to burden the health care system.

Nostalgia TV, daytime PJs. It's OK to use comfort as a crutch. Comfort will help us ease back to life. Some companies are already hawking pajamas you can wear in public. Old-fashioned drive-ins and virtual cast reunions for shows like Taxi, Seinfeld and Happy Days will likely continue as long as the craving is there. (More than half the consumers in a 2020 survey reported finding comfort in revisiting TV and music from their childhood.) Even the iconic “Got Milk?” ads are back, after dairy sales started to show some big upticks.

So, cut yourself some slack. Learn a new skill; adopt a pet; limit your news diet; ask for help if you need it. You've lived long enough to see the value of prioritizing number one. “Not only does self-care have positive outcomes for you,” Concepcion says, “but it also sets an example to younger generations as something to establish and maintain for your entire life."

Lesson 4: Have a Stash Ready for the Next Crisis

"The need to augment our retirement savings system to help people put away emergency savings is crucial."

—J. Mark Iwry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former senior adviser to the U.S. secretary of the Treasury

Before the pandemic, nearly 4 in 10 households did not have the cash on hand to cover an unexpected $400 expense, according to a Federal Reserve report. Then the economic downturn hit. By last October, 52 percent of workers were reporting reduced hours, lower pay, a layoff or other hits to their employment situation. A third had taken a loan or early withdrawal from a retirement plan , or intended to. “Alarm bells were already ringing, but many workers were caught off guard without emergency savings,” says Catherine Collinson, CEO and president of the Transamerica Institute. “The pandemic has laid bare so many weaknesses in our safety net."

Companies can help . One solution could be a workplace innovation that's just beginning to catch on: an employee-sponsored rainy-day savings account funded with payroll deductions. By creating a dedicated pot of savings, the thinking goes, workers are less likely to tap retirement accounts in an emergency. “It's much better from a behavioral standpoint to separate short-term savings from long-term savings,” Iwry says. (AARP has been working to make these accounts easier to create and use and is already offering them to its employees.)

Funding that emergency savings account with automatic payroll deductions is a key to the program's success. “Sometimes you think you don't have the money to save, but if a little is put away for you each pay period, you don't feel the pinch,” Iwry notes.

We're off to a good start . Thanks to quarantines and forced frugality, Americans’ savings rate — the average percentage of people's income left over after taxes and personal spending — skyrocketed last spring, peaking at an unprecedented 33.7 percent. On the decline since then, most recently at 13.7 percent, it's still above the single-digit rates characterizing much of the past 35 years. Where it will ultimately settle is unclear; currently, it's in league with high-saving countries Mexico and Sweden. The real model of thriftiness: China, where, according to the latest available figures, the household savings rate averaged at least 30 percent for 14 years straight.

Lesson 5: The Adage ‘Age Is Just a Number’ Has New Meaning

"This isn't just about the pandemic. Your health is directly related to lifestyle — nutrition, physical activity, a healthy weight and restorative sleep."

—Jacob Mirsky, M.D., primary care physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Revere HealthCare Center and an instructor at Harvard Medical School

Just a few months ago, researchers at Scotland's University of Glasgow asked a big question: If you're healthy, how much does older age matter for risk of death from COVID? The health records of 470,034 women and men revealed some intriguing answers.

Age accounted for a higher risk, but comorbidities (essentially, having two or more health issues simultaneously) mattered much more. Specifically, risk for a fatal infection was four times higher for healthy people 75 and older than for all participants younger than 65. But if you compared all those 75 and older — including those with chronic health condition s like high blood pressure, obesity or lung problems — that shoved the grim odds up thirteenfold.

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Live healthfully, live long . More insights from the study: A healthy 75-year-old was one-third as likely to die from the coronavirus as a 65-year-old with multiple chronic health issues. The bottom line: Age affects your risk of severe illness with COVID, but you should be far more focused on avoiding chronic health conditions. “Coronavirus highlighted yet another reason it's so important to attend to health factors like poor diet and lack of exercise that cause so much preventable illness and death,” says Massachusetts General's Mirsky. “Lifestyle changes can improve your overall health, which will likely directly reduce your risk of developing severe COVID or dying of COVID."

Exercise remains critical . In May 2020 a British study of 387,109 adults in their 40s through 60s found a 38 percent higher risk for severe COVID in people who avoided physical activity. “Mobility should be considered one of the vital signs of health,” concludes exercise psychologist David Marquez, a professor in the department of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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a remote controlled delivery robot on a sidewalk amongst pedestrians

Lesson 6: We Befriended Technology, and There's No Going Back

"Folks who have tried online banking will stay with it. It won't mean they won't go back to branches, but they might go back for a different purpose."

—Theodora Lau, founder of financial technology consulting firm Unconventional Ventures

Of course, the world has long been going digital . But before the pandemic, standard operating procedure for most older Americans was to buy apples at the grocery, try the shoes on first before buying, have your doctor measure your blood pressure and see that hot new movie at the theater.

Arguably the biggest long-term societal effect of the pandemic will be a grand flipping of the switch that makes the digital solution the first choice of many Americans for handling life's tasks. We still may cling to a few IRL (in real life) experiences, but it is increasingly apparent that easy-to-use modern virtual tools are the new default.

"If nothing else, COVID has shown us how resilient and adaptable humans are as a society when forced to change,” says Joseph Huang, CEO of StartX, a nonprofit that helps tech companies get off the ground. “We've been forced to learn new technologies that, in many cases, have been the only safe way to continue to live our lives and stay connected to our loved ones during the pandemic.”

The tech boom wasn't just video calls and streaming TV. Popular food delivery apps more than doubled their earnings last year. Weddings and memorial services were held over videoconferences (yes, we'll go back to in-person ones but probably with cameras and live feeds now to include remote participants). In the financial sector, PayPal reported that its fastest-growing user group was people over 50; Chase said about half of its new online users were 50-plus. In telehealth, more doctors conducted routine exams via webcam than ever before — and, in response, insurance coverage expanded for these remote appointments. “It quickly became the only way to operate at scale in today's world,” Huang says, “both for us as patients and for the doctors and nurses who treat us. Telemedicine will turn out to be a better and more effective experience in many cases, even after COVID ends."

Tech is for all . To financial technology expert Lau, the tech adoption rate by older people is no surprise. She never believed the myth that older people lack such knowledge. “There's a difference between knowing how to use something versus preferring to use it,” Lau says. “Sometimes we know how, but we prefer face-to-face interaction.” And now those preferences are shifting.

man at his home computer on a telemedicine call

Lesson 7: Work Is Anywhere Now — a Shift That Bodes Well for Older Americans

"One of the major impacts of the new working-from-home focus is that more jobs are becoming non-location-specific."

—Carol Fishman Cohen, cofounder of iRelaunch, which works with employers to create mid-career return-to-work programs for older workers

Necessity is the mother of reinvention : Forced to work remotely since the onset of the pandemic, millions of workers — and their managers — have learned they could be just as productive as they were at the office, thanks to videoconferencing, high-speed internet and other technologies. “This has opened a lot of corporate eyes,” says Steven Allen, professor of economics at North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management. Twitter, outdoor-goods retailer REI and insurer Lincoln Financial Group are a few of the companies that have announced plans to shift toward more remote work on a permanent basis.

Face-lift your Face-Time . Yes, many workers are tied to a location: We will always need nurses, police, roofers, machine operators, farmers and countless other workers to show up. But if you are among the people who are now able to work remotely, you may be able to live in a less expensive area than where your employer is based — or work right away from the home you were planning to retire to later on, Cohen says. As remote hiring takes hold, how you project yourself on-screen becomes more of a factor. “This puts more pressure on you to make sure you show up well in a virtual setting,” Cohen notes. And don't assume being comfortable with Zoom is a feather in your cap; mentioning it is akin to listing “proficient in Microsoft Word” on your résumé.

Self-employed workers have suffered during the pandemic — nearly two-thirds report being hurt financially, according to the “State of Independence in America 2020” report from MBO Partners — but remote work could fuel their comeback. Before the pandemic, notes Steve King, partner at Emergent Research, businesses with a high percentage of remote workers used a high percentage of independent contractors. “Now that companies are used to workers not being as strongly attached physically to a workplace, they'll be more amenable to hiring independent workers,” he says.

Travel less, stay longer . Tired of sitting in traffic to and from work? Can't stand flying across country for a single meeting? Ridding yourself of these hassles with an internet connection and Zoom calls may be the incentive you need to work longer. People often quit jobs because of little frustrations, Allen says. But now, he adds, “the things that wear you down may be going by the wayside."

Ageism remains a threat . Older workers — who before the coronavirus enjoyed lower unemployment rates than mid-career workers — have been hit especially hard by the pandemic. In December, 45.5 percent of unemployed workers 55 and older had been out of work for 27 weeks or more, compared with 35.1 percent of younger job seekers. Some employers, according to reports this fall, are replacing laid-off older workers with younger, lower-cost ones, instead of recalling those older employees. Psychological studies, Allen says, indicate that older workers have better communication and interpersonal skills — both of which are critical for successful remote work. But whether those strengths can offset age discrimination in the workplace is unknown.

Lesson 8: Our Trust in One Another Has Frayed, but It Can Be Slowly Restored

"Truth matters, but it requires messaging and patience.”

—Historian John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza

Even before our views perforated along lines dotted by pandemic politics, race, class and whether Bill Gates is trying to save us or track us, we were losing faith in society. In 1997, 64 percent of Americans put a “very great or good deal of trust” in the political competence of their fellow citizens; today only a third of us feel that way. A 2019 Pew survey found that the majority of Americans say most people can't be trusted. It's even tougher to trust in the future. Only 13 percent of millennials say America is the greatest country in the world, compared with 45 percent of members of the silent generation. No wonder that by June of last year, “national pride” was lower than at any point since Gallup began measuring. To trust again:

As life returns, look beyond your familiar pod. “Distrust breeds distrust, but hope isn't lost for finding common ground, especially for older people,” says Encore.org's Freedman. “Even in the era of ‘OK, boomer’ and ‘OK, millennial’ — memes that dismiss entire generations with an eye roll — divides are bridgeable with what Freedman calls “proximity and purpose.” Rebuilding trust together, across generations, under shared priorities and common humanity.” He points to pandemic efforts like Good Neighbors from the home-sharing platform Nesterly, which pairs older and younger people to provide cross-generational support, and UCLA's Generation Xchange, which connects Gen X mentors with children in grades K-3 in South Los Angeles, where educational achievement is notoriously poor. “Engaging with people for a common goal makes you trust them,” he says.

Be patient but verify facts. History also provides a guide. In the wake of the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed between 50 million and 100 million people, trust in authority withered after local and national government officials played down the disease's threats in order to maintain wartime morale. Historian Barry points out that the head of the Army's’ division of communicable diseases was so worried about the collective failure of trust that he warned that “civilization could easily disappear ... from the face of the earth.” It didn't then, and it won't now, Barry says.

Verify facts and then decide. Check reliable, balanced news sources (such as Reuters and the Associated Press) and unbiased fact-checking sites (such as PolitiFact) before clamping down on an opinion.

Perhaps most important, be open to changing conditions and viewpoints. “As we see vaccines and therapeutic drugs slowly gain widespread success in fighting this virus, I think we'll start to overcome some of our siloed ways of thinking and find relief — together as one — that this public health menace is ending,” Barry adds. “We have to put our faith in other people to get through this together.”

aerial photo of people in a grassy park staying within social distancing circles painted on the grass

Lesson 9: The Crowds Will Return, but We'll Gather Carefully

"Masks and sanitizers will be part of the norm for years, the way airport and transportation security measures are still in place from 9/11."

— Christopher McKnight Nichols, associate professor of history at Oregon State University and founder of the Citizenship and Crisis Initiative

The COVID-19 pandemic won't end with bells tolling or a ticker-tape parade . Instead, we'll slowly, cautiously ease back to familiar activities. For all our fears of the coronavirus, many of us can't wait to resume a public life: When 1,000 people 65 and older were asked which pursuits they were most eager to start anew post-pandemic, 78 percent said going out to dinner, 76 percent picked getting together with family and friends, 71 percent chose travel, and 30 percent cited going to the movies.

Seeing art , attending concerts, cheering in a stadium — even going to class reunions we might have once dreaded — we'll do them again. But how will we return to feeling comfortable in groups of tens, hundreds and thousands? And will these gatherings be different? How we come together:

Don't expect the same old, same old . Just as the rationing, isolation and economic crisis caused by World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic “led to a kind of awakening of how we assembled,” Nichols says, expect COVID to shake up the nature and personality of our public spaces. Back in the 1920s, it was the rise of jazz clubs, organized athletics, fraternal organizations and the golden age of the movie cinema. As the pandemic subsides, we'll probably see more temperature-controlled outdoor event and dining spaces, more pedestrian and bicycling options, more city parks and more hybrid events that give you the option to attend virtually.

Retrain your brain . Psychologists say the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy can help people at any age regain the certainty and confidence they need to venture into the public space post-pandemic. “Visualizing good outcomes and repeating a stated goal can help overcome whatever obstacles are holding you back,” says Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University, who suggests making an “if-then plan” to reacclimate to public life. If eating indoors at a restaurant is too agitating, even if you've been vaccinated, then try a table outside first. If a bucket-list family vacation to Italy feels too daunting, then book a stateside trip together first. “There's always an alternative if something stands in the way of you fulfilling your wish,” she says. “Eventually, you'll get there.”

Lesson 10: Loneliness Hurts Health More Than We Thought

"What we've learned from COVID is that isolation is everyone's problem. It doesn't just happen to older adults; it happens to us all."

— Julianne Holt-Lunstad, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University

How deadly is the condition of loneliness? During the first five months of the pandemic, nursing home lockdowns intended to safeguard older and vulnerable adults with dementia contributed to the deaths of an additional 13,200 people compared with previous years, according to a shocking Washington Post investigation published last September. “People with dementia are dying,” the article notes, “not just from the virus but from the very strategy of isolation that's supposed to protect them.”

Isolation may be the new normal . Fifty-six percent of adults age 50-plus said they felt isolated in June 2020, double the number who felt lonely in 2018, a University of Michigan poll found. Rates of psychological distress rose for all adults as the pandemic deepened — increasing sixfold for young adults and quadrupling for those ages 30 to 54, according to a Johns Hopkins University survey published in JAMA in June. And it's hard to tell whether the workplace culture many of us relied on for social support will fully return anytime soon.

Those 50-plus have a leg up. “Older adults with higher levels of empathy, compassion, decisiveness and self-reflection score lowest for loneliness,” says Dilip Jeste, M.D., director of the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the University of California, San Diego. “Research shows that many older adults have handled COVID psychologically better than younger adults. With age comes experience and wisdom. You've lived through difficult times before and survived.”

Help yourself by helping others. Jeste says that when older adults share their wisdom with younger people, everyone benefits. “Young people are reassured about the future,” he adds. “Older adults feel even more confident. They're role models. Their contributions matter."

a couple poses for a photograph at a scenic overlook at yosemite national park in california

Lesson 11: When Your World Gets Small, Nature Lets Us Live Large

"For older people in particular, nature provided a way to shake off the weight and hardships associated with stay-at-home orders, of social isolation and of the stress of being the most vulnerable population in the pandemic."

— Kathleen Wolf, a research social scientist in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington

One silver lining to COVID-19's dark cloud : Clouds themselves became more familiar to all of us. So did birds, trees, bees, shooting stars and window gardens. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans have a new appreciation for nature because of the pandemic, according to one survey that also found three-quarters of respondents reported a boost in their mood while spending time outside.

By nearly every measure, the planet got more love during COVI D. And wouldn't it be nice if that continued going forward? The ins and outs on our new outdoor life:

Move somewhere greener (or at least move around more outside). How you access nature is up to you, but consider the options. Nearly a third of Americans were considering moving to less populated areas, according to a Harris Poll taken last year during the pandemic. Walking, running and hiking became national pastimes. One day last September, Boston's BlueBikes bike-share system saw its highest-ever single-day ridership, with 14,400 trips recorded. Stargazers and bird-watchers helped push binocular sales up 22 percent.

Once known mainly as a retirement activity, pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in America, with almost 3.5 million U.S. players of all ages participating in the contact-free outdoor net game designed for players of any athletic ability. The return of the pandemic “victory garden” reflects research that finds 79 percent of patients feel more relaxed and calm after spending time in a garden.

Make the city less gritty . The University of Washington's Wolf thinks that our collective nature kick will go beyond a run on backyard petunias. Her research brief on the benefits of nearby nature in cities for older adults suggests we may rethink the design of neighborhood environments to facilitate older people's outdoor activities. That means more places to sit, more green spaces associated with the health status of older people, safer routes and paths, and more allotment for community gardens. “It's impossible to overestimate the value these outdoor spaces have on reducing stressful life events, improving working memory and adding meaning and happiness in older people's lives,” Wolf says.

If you can't get out, bring nature in . Even video and sounds of nature can provide health gains to those shut indoors, says Marc Berman of the University of Chicago's Environmental Neuroscience Lab. “Listening to recordings of crickets chirping or waves crashing improved how our subjects performed on cognitive tests,” he says.

Above all, the environment is in your hands, so take action to protect it . “We've seen a lot of older folks stepping up their activity in trail conservation, stream cleaning, being forest guides and things like that this year, which indicates a shift in how that age group interacts with nature,” says Cornell University gerontologist Karl Pillemer.

"There's an old saw that older people care less than younger people about the environment. But given this year's nature boom, I'm expecting that to change. As the generation that gave birth to the environmental movement enters retirement, we're likely to see a wave of interest in conservation among those 60 and up."

Lesson 12: You Can Hope for Stability — but Best Be Prepared for the Opposite

"COVID-19, perhaps more than any other disaster, demonstrated that we need to continue ensuring response plans are flexible and scalable. You can't predict exactly what a disaster will bring, but if you know what tools you have in your tool kit, you can pull out the right one you need when you need it."

— Linda Mastandrea, director of the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

The pandemic was among the toughest slap-in-the-face moments in recent history to remind us that everything — everything — in our lives can change in a moment. While older Americans may have a deep-seated desire for stability and security after all it took to get to an advanced age, we certainly cannot bank on it. Which is why the word of the year, and perhaps the coming century, is “resilience.” Not just at the individual level but at every social tier, from family to community to the nation as a whole.

Banish fear . “We don't have to live in fear” of some looming disaster, says former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden, now president and CEO of global public health initiative Resolve to Save Lives. “By strengthening our defenses and investing in preparedness, we can live easier knowing that communities have what they need to better respond in moments of crisis."

Preparation must start at the top . For government, that means a new commitment to plans that allow, not so much for stockpiles but for the ability to ramp up production of crucial equipment when needed. “We need increased, sustained, predictable base funding for public health security defense programs that prevent, detect and respond to outbreaks such as COVID-19 or pandemic influenza,” Frieden says.

Being creative and even entrepreneurial helps , says Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Earth Institute. Warehouses full of masks could have helped us initially, he says, but stockpiles of equipment aren't the answer on their own. In a free market there is pressure to sell off surpluses, so he suggests we reimagine our manufacturing capacities for times of emergency. When whiskey distillers stepped up to make hand sanitizer, and auto manufacturers switched gears to build ventilators, we saw “glimmers of solutions,” Schlegelmilch says, the sort of responses we may need to tee up in the future.

Focus on health care . Prime among the areas that need to be addressed, crisis management consultant Luiz Hargreaves says, are overwhelmed health care systems. “They were living a disaster before the pandemic. When the pandemic came, it was a catastrophe.” But Hargreaves hopes we will use this wake-up call to produce new solutions, rather than to return to old ways. “Extraordinary times,” he says, “call for extraordinary measures."

Lesson 13: Wealth Inequality Is Growing, and It Affects Us All

"It's outrageous that somebody could work full-time and not even be able to pay rent, let alone food and clothing. There's a recognition that there's a problem on both the left and right. "

— Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist, Columbia University professor and author of The Price of Inequality

"The data is pretty dramatic,” says Stiglitz, one of America's most-esteemed economists. Government economists estimate that unemployment rates in this pandemic are less than 5 percent for the highest earners but as high as 20 percent for the lowest-paid ones. “People at the bottom have disproportionately experienced the disease, and those at the bottom have lost jobs in enormous disproportion, too."

As white-collar professionals work from home and stay socially distant, frontline workers in government, transportation and health care — as well as retail, dining and other service sectors — face far greater health risks and unemployment. “We try to minimize interactions as we try to protect ourselves,” he says, “yet we realize that minimizing those interactions is also taking away jobs.” The disparate effects of the pandemic are particularly evident along racial lines, points out Jean Accius, AARP senior vice president for global thought leadership. “Job losses have hit communities of color disproportionately,” he says. And there's a health gap, too, with people of color — who have a greater likelihood than white Americans to be frontline workers — experiencing higher rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalizations and mortality, and lower rates of vaccinations. “What we're seeing is a double whammy for communities of color,” Accius says. “It is hitting them in their wallets. And it's hitting them with regard to their health."

Those economic and health crises, along with protests over racial injustice over the past year, says Accius, “have really sparked major conversations around what do we need to do in order to advance equity in this country."

A rising gap between rich and poor in any society, Stiglitz argues, increases economic instability, reduces opportunities and results in less investment in public goods such as education and public transportation. But the country appears primed to make some changes that could help narrow the wealth gap, he says. Among them are President Biden's proposals to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, increase the earned income tax credit for low-income workers and provide paid sick leave. Stiglitz also proposes raising taxes on gains from sales of stocks and other securities not held in retirement accounts. “The notion that people who work for a living shouldn't pay higher taxes than those who speculate for a living seems not to be a hard idea to get across,” Stiglitz says.

"Many people continue to say, ‘It's time for us to get back to normal,'” Accius says. “Well, going back to normal means that we're in a society where those that have the least continue to be impacted the most — a society where older adults are marginalized and communities of color are devalued. We have to be honest with what we are going through as a collective nation. And then we have to be bold and courageous, to really build a society where race and other social demographic factors do not determine your ability to live a longer, healthier and more productive life.”

Who Owns America's Wealth?

For some, hard times bring opportunity.

Want a positive reminder of the American way? When the going got tough this past summer, many people responded by planning a new business. In the second half of 2020, there was a 40 percent jump over the prior year's figures in applications to form businesses highly likely to hire employees, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Significantly, no such spike occurred during the Great Recession, points out Alexander Bartik, assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “That's cause for some optimism — that there are people who are trying to start new things,” he says. One possible reason this time is different: Unlike during that recession, the stock market and home values have held on, and those sources of personal wealth are often what people draw upon to fund small-business start-ups.

High-propensity* Business Applications in the U.S.

*Businesses likely to have employees

the number of applications to form businesses likely to hire employees greatly increased during the pandemic

Lesson 14: The Benefits of Telemedicine Have Become Indisputable

"The processes we developed to avoid face-to-face care have transformed the way we approach diabetes care management.”

— John P. Martin, M.D., codirector of Diabetes Complete Care for Kaiser Permanente Southern California

If there was ever any truth to the stereotype of the older person whose life revolved around a constant calendar of in-person doctor appointments, it's certainly been tossed out the window this past year due to the strains of the pandemic on our health care system. The timing was fortuitous in one way: Telemedicine was ready for prime time and has proved to be a godsend, particularly for those with chronic health conditions.

Say goodbye to routine doctor visits . Patients who sign up for remote blood sugar monitoring at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California use Bluetooth-enabled meters to transmit results via a smartphone app directly to their health records. “ Remote monitoring allows us to recognize early when there should be adjustments to treatment,” Martin says.

We need to push for more access . The pandemic underlines the need for more home-based medical help with chronic conditions. But that takes both willingness and a lot of gear, such as Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure monitors and, on the doctor side, systems to store and analyze the data. “People need access to the equipment, and health care systems have to be ready to handle all that data,” says Mirsky of Massachusetts General Hospital.

Group doctor visits may be a way forward . Mirsky is conducting virtual group visits and remote monitoring of blood sugar for his patients with type 2 diabetes. “Instead of having a few minutes with each person to talk about important issues — like blood sugar testing, diet and exercise — we get an hour or more to go over it,” he says. “At every meeting somebody in the group has a great tip I've never heard of, like a new YouTube exercise channel or fitness app. There's group support, too. I see group visits like this continuing into the future, becoming part of routine chronic disease care for all patients who want it."

Bottom line: The doctor is in (your house) . Managing chronic health conditions like diabetes “can't just be about getting in your car and driving to your doctor's office,” Martin says. Taking care of your health conditions yourself is the path forward.

Lesson 15: Our Cities Won't Ever Be the Same

"This is obviously a very big watershed moment in how we live, how we organize our cities and our communities. There are going to be long-lasting changes."

— Chris Jones, chief planner at Regional Plan Association, a New York–based urban planning organization

"When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown,” Petula Clark sang in her 1964 chart-topping ode to city life. Well, things change. Suddenly, crowds are the enemy, public buses and subways a health risk, packed office towers out of favor, and a roomy suburban home seems just where you want to be. But don't write off downtowns just yet.

The office and business district will look different. Many workers have little interest in returning to a 9-to-5 life. For those who do make the commute, they may find cubicles replaced with more flexible work spaces focused on common areas, with ample outdoor seating space for meetings and working lunches. And some now-empty offices will likely be converted into apartments and condos, making downtowns more vibrant. “Now you have an opportunity to remake a central business district into an actual neighborhood,” says Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and a cofounder of CityLab, an online publication about urbanism.

Public spaces will serve more of the public. Those areas set up for outdoor restaurant dining — some of those will likely remain. Streets and parking lots have been turned into plazas and promenades. Many cities have already opened miles of bike lanes; in 2020, Americans bought bikes, including electric bikes, in record numbers. “This idea of social space, where you can get outside and enjoy that active public realm, is going to become increasingly important,” says Lynn Richards, the president and CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism, which champions walkable cities.

Contributors to this report: Sari Harrar, David Hochman, Ronda Kaysen, Lexi Pandell, Jessica Ravitz and Ellen Stark

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3 lessons about what really matters in life, learned in the pandemic

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The last year has been like no other.

Since March 2020, every person on the planet has had their life shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic in some way. In the midst of the hardship and challenges, there’s been the sense among many people that this period has helped us evaluate our lives and focus on what’s truly important.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ve learned something from this moment.

In response to the pandemic, StoryCorps — a nonprofit dedicated to recording the largest collection of human stories and winner of the 2015 TED Prize — created StoryCorps Connect , a new tool to bring together loved ones via video conferencing and record the audio of their conversations.

Below are excerpts from a handful of the thousands of interviews recorded in recent months through StoryCorps Connect.

Lesson #1: The pandemic has helped us find deeper meaning in our work

Two mail carriers see the value in every delivery they make

Before getting a job as a mail carrier in Palm Beach, Florida, Evette Jourdain was going through a hard time — she’d lost her father, her brother and then her home. Finding reliable work helped tremendously, but then came COVID-19.

As Jourdain talked to her coworker , fellow postal worker Craig Boddie, she shared how she was feeling. “My anxiety levels are always on 10,” she says. “I pray on my way to work, I pray on my lunch break, I pray when I’m at the box. What keeps me going is just the fact that I need to keep going.”

Boddie agreed. His wife has autoimmune disease, and as he puts it, “Every day I wake up and wonder, ‘Is this the day that COVID-19 is gonna come home with me?’”

But he also knows that his work is more important than ever, and he thinks about how each package he carries contains something to keep people afloat in some way. “We’re like a lifeline — getting these people their medicines, their supplies.”

A health care provider gains inspiration from a classic novel

Josh Belser and Sam Dow are good friends who grew up in Tampa, Florida, and who now both work in healthcare 400 miles apart — Belser as a nurse in Syracuse, New York, and Dow as a health technician in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

And with COVID-19, they’ve both found themselves on the frontlines. “My floor was one of the first that was converted to strictly dealing with COVID patients. Our jobs changed like overnight,” says Dow in their StoryCorps conversation. “There was no dress rehearsal — the numbers started to go up and it was show time.”

So how did they get through? Dow tells his friend he found some inspiration in Albert Camus’s classic novel The Plague . “It’s about an epidemic, and the main character was a doctor,” he explains. “And he says the way to get through something like this is to be a decent person. Somebody asks him, ‘What makes a decent person?’ He says, ‘I don’t know but, for me, it’s just doing my job the best way I can.’”

Dow says he’s tried to do exactly that. “Hopefully I made a difference in people’s lives.”

Lesson #2: Family rhythms have shifted, but our ties are as important as ever

A grandmother takes strength from her ancestors

Like so many other people, COVID-19 took Jackie Stockton by surprise. One day, she was at her church in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, celebrating her 90th birthday — and the next thing she knew, she was in the hospital. What’s more, she was part of a community cluster, and five members of the church eventually died from the virus, including Stockton’s best friend as well as her son-in-law.

Stockton spoke to her daughter , Alice Stockton-Rossini, about these losses. She says, “I remember 9/11 as though it just happened, but then it was over. This will never, ever be over.”

As a way to cope, she finds herself thinking of her great-grandmother. “She lost half of her children. She lived through the worst kind of hell,” she recalls. “She was an amazing woman, and so was her husband. They just did the things they needed to do. And they survived.”

The pandemic brings together a mother and daughter

In 2005, attorney Chalana McFarland of Atlanta, Georgia, was convicted of mortgage fraud and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The judge hoped this harsh sentence would deter others from similar crimes, but it had severe consequences for McFarland’s 4-year-old daughter, Nia Cosby.

In 2020, with the onset of COVID-19, McFarland was transferred to home confinement. Upon being released, the first person she saw was her now college-age daughter. In a candid conversation during their first weekend together in 15 years, Nia describes their reunion as “one of the best moments of my life.”

McFarland agrees. “When I left, you were driving a Barbie car, and now you’re flexin’ in the Honda Accord,” she says. “We’ve had a relationship over the years, but it’s like pieces of a puzzle that we’re just now putting together. I can’t wait for you to discover how much alike we really are, because you haven’t really gotten to know who I am. But I see so much of me in you. Out of all the things that I’ve done in my life, you are the absolute one thing that I got right.”

A canceled reunion highlights the power of family stories

The Quander family has a long history in the US. Its matriarch, Nancy Carter, was one of 123 enslaved people owned by George Washington, and she was freed in his will. She later married Charles Quander, and in 1926, their descendents held the first Quander family reunion.

It took place every year since 1926 — until now.

“This one would have been the 95th reunion,” Rohulamin Quander, 76, tells his 18-year-old cousin , Alicia Argrett.

In lieu of gathering in person, Argrett asks him: “What would you like to pass on to me?” His reply: “That you are the keeper of the stories.”

Argrett appreciates his call to take this responsibility seriously. “As we’ve seen this year, you never know when your last [family reunion] could be,” she says. “I think it’s important to capture those opportunities while you still have them in your grasp. And I’m going to do what I can on my end to keep the spirit of the family alive.”

Lesson #3: Small gestures have a huge impact on our well-being

This pandemic led to the best date of her life — a staircase apart

As the director of microbiology at a hospital in Rochester, New York, Roberto Vargas’s job is to diagnose infectious disease. With his lab running constant COVID-19 tests, he needed to isolate himself from his wife, Susan Vargas, and their four children.

Initially, he stayed in a hotel but found it too lonely. So he moved into the family’s basement, stipulating that no one else was to go beyond the top of the stairs. One night, as the Vargases recall in their conversation, a coworker brought them all a home-cooked meal. “You sat at the bottom of the stairs in a rocking chair, and I was at the top. It was the first time we had been able to connect in so long,” says Susan.

This simple moment, she says, helped get her through the months of the pandemic, and it will forever be what she remembers most from this time: “As crazy as it sounds, it’s the best date I’ve ever had with you in my life.”

Mother and son reflect on a special, shared memory

In 2015, nine-year-old William Chambers went to work with his mother. Not to an office, but to a senior center near Boston, Massachusetts, where Ceceley Chambers works as an interfaith chaplain providing spiritual counsel to those with memory loss. Ceceley knew the seniors would enjoy spending time with a young person.

What she didn’t expect was for William to sit down at a table with a woman cradling a baby doll she thought was real, and talk to her as easily as if she were his friend. “You just jumped into her world,” she recalls.

As Ceceley continues her work during the pandemic, both she and William have been thinking about that moment a lot. Although the structure of her days hasn’t changed, she’s seeing much more fear in those she’s counseling. William says he has been working hard to cultivate empathy for whatever mood she comes home with. Thinking of that woman with the doll and the other patients helps him.

He adds, “They made me think you should enjoy life as much as you can, ‘cause it doesn’t happen forever.”

Want to record an interview with a loved one — nearby or far away — about their experiences during the pandemic? Here’s how to get started . You can also explore more StoryCorps stories here .

Watch StoryCorps founder Dave Isay’s TED Prize Talk here:

About the author

Kate Torgovnick May is a journalist and writer based in Los Angeles. A former storyteller at TED, she has worked with the ambitious thinkers of the TED Prize and Audacious Project, helping them share their stories in video and text. She's also the author of the narrative nonfiction book, CHEER!: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders, and has written for the television series NCIS and Hellcats. Read more about her work at KateTorgovnickMay.com.

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Our most valuable lessons from 2 pandemic years

Andee Tagle

It's been two years since the world as we knew it was forever changed by the coronavirus pandemic .

We know you probably don't need that reminder, and there are probably a lot of people out there who don't want one.

This essay first appeared in NPR's Life Kit newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter so you don't miss the next one, plus weekly tips that can help make life a little easier.

But if you're reading this, it means you've been through a lot:

Through unemployment and essential work; lockdowns and empty grocery store shelves and social distancing or even isolation; Zoom rooms and tiger kings and sourdough starters and all the sweatpants ; mask mandates and police brutality; a presidential election and an insurrection ; vaccines and boosters and masks off and on and off and on again .

It's been a revolving door of fear and fatigue and anger and uncertainty and suffering and loss . But we've also experienced a surprising amount of joy , and kindness, and new discovery, and delight , even.

Mental Health

Feeling blah take a joy break.

All of this to say: it feels all but impossible to qualify two years of pandemic living in any one way, but one thing is certain: we're still here – and we're changed.

The Life Kit team looked back on some of the most valuable lessons from the last two years that can help you look forward. Here are moments that helped change our mindsets and kept us moving through the past two years:

How to let more joy into your life

Producer Janet W. Lee grew to appreciate the small things:

While recent years have made it harder for me to look at the world with a more positive outlook, poet Ross Gay taught me to let more joy into my life . Gay is the author of The Book of Delights , where he shares the practice of calling out the delights in his everyday. This practice of taking a second to say the smell of coffee is lovely or to smile at the sound of my cat purring has brightened up my life.

Laziness does not exist

Managing producer Meghan Keane thanks Dumptruck for finding worth beyond productivity:

Dumptruck the chinchilla Devon Price hide caption

Dumptruck the chinchilla

Before the pandemic, I was all about hustle culture: get to work early, leave late, ignore any signs that I might need to slow down. But then a chinchilla named Dumptruck changed everything. We interviewed social psychologist (and owner of Dumptruck) Devon Price about his book Laziness Does Not Exist . Price says he never questions Dumptruck's worth because he lies around all day, but we're extra hard on ourselves when we aren't being productive. He says what we often see as laziness is actually a signal from our bodies to rest – we all still have worth when we are simply breathing on the couch.

Time is the building block of life

Producer Clare Marie Schneider learned the value of time:

Four Thousand Weeks author Oliver Burkeman says he's in recovery from productivity. Now, he thinks of time as a precious resource – the building block of our lives. When we interviewed him, he said, "The sum total of all the things you paid attention to will have been your life." To me, this way of looking at time leaves a little more room to embrace taking out the trash, over and over again, and to move towards what feels most exciting in life.

Finding passion outside of work

Producer Audrey Nguyen shifted her energy to find what she loves outside of her work:

A Field Guide for Fledgling Birders

I've struggled with pouring too much of myself into my work, and not leaving enough gas in the tank for my life outside of the 9-to-5. One of the most useful lessons I learned came from our interview with sociology professor Erin Cech , author of The Trouble With Passion: How Searching For Fulfillment At Work Fosters Inequality . She recommends finding ways to "diversify your meaning-making portfolio." Taking a step back and figuring out how to make room for passion outside of work has been really helpful for my mental health. I've been birding , and I'm currently taking a pottery class with my partner at our local community college!

Find your "resilience circle"

Visual and digital editor Beck Harlan built community in a time of isolation:

The last two years have felt particularly uncertain. That makes it hard to plan, hard to dream and hard to cope. Author Elizabeth White faced some uncertainty of her own during the Great Recession, and she has a piece of advice: don't go it alone. White found support in a "resilience circle" – essentially, "a few people that I could tell the truth to." Having those folks who'll be a sounding board and a cheer squad in your corner, can get you through a lot. It doesn't matter how you connect — Whatsapp, Marco Polo, postcards, a weekly walk — just that you DO.

From all of us to you: we're grateful for the time you've spent with us today and throughout the pandemic. We're still here.

If you liked this excerpt from NPR's Life Kit, consider subscribing to our newsletter to get new tips every week.

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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Ongoing lessons from a long pandemic

What COVID-19 has taught—and continues to teach—us two years in.

FOR ALMOST TWO YEARS, the coronavirus has battered the world, with millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of cases. This winter’s omicron variant surge is just the latest example of the pandemic’s unpredictable trajectory. It has resulted in personal tragedy for many. It has left survivors with long-COVID-19 symptoms, and it has overwhelmed health care systems and caused burnout among health workers. It has changed our behavior, acquainting people with mask wearing and social distancing. It has changed the way we work, forcing the fortunate to work remotely and resulting in furloughs or layoffs or constant risk of exposure for the less fortunate. And it has been an impetus to scientific innovation, with effective vaccines created and distributed at a historic pace.

The world is a different place from what it was two years ago, and we are still learning to live with all the sorrow and change the pandemic has brought. At the same time, COVID-19 has taught us a lot. Through the global crisis, we have reevaluated aspects of our societies and examined what is working—and what isn’t.

Here HKS faculty members and other experts examine lessons learned during the pandemic.

Matthew Baum and John Della Volpe: National suffering and solidarity
Hannah Riley Bowles: Understanding the “Shecession”
David Eaves: Lessons from digital government
Debra Iles: Executive education will never be the same
Anders Jensen: A time to rethink tax systems
Asim Khwaja: Prioritizing process to prepare for the next shock
Dan Levy: Thinking outside—and inside—the Zoom box

National suffering and solidarity

Matthew baum and john della volpe.

It is difficult to conceive of anything good borne of COVID-19. As of this writing, in the United States, more than 700,000 are dead; 5 million have fallen worldwide. Millions of us grieve the untimely loss of a family member, a loved one, or a friend. And while our team of researchers from the Covid States Project has charted the extreme stress, anxiety, and depression so many Americans are facing, we also have found reason for optimism.

Partnership between the public and private sectors has spurred tremendous innovation in vaccine development and distribution logistics, which will likely prove enormously beneficial in the future, both with routine vaccines and with future pandemics. COVID-19 has also provided a rare real-time window into the workings of science, which while not universally helpful, provides valuable education for many people. Life-saving developments like these are probably why the public’s trust in science has largely remained intact while trust in other institutions has fallen since we began tracking such measures in April 2020. In a recent wave of more than 21,000 interviews across 50 states and the District of Columbia, we found that 92% of American adults trust doctors and hospitals, nearly 90% trust scientists and researchers, 78% trust the CDC, 74% trust pharmaceutical companies, and 68% trust Dr. Anthony Fauci on how best to deal with the coronavirus. Although overall levels of confidence in the scientific community remain very strong in general, evidence suggests that trust has eroded somewhat over the past 18 months and bears watching.

“While our country and many communities feel as divided as they have ever been in our lifetimes, the bonds of family (whether nuclear or chosen) are stronger.”

Matt baum and john della volpe.

Additionally, the coronavirus has provided oxygen for many of us to reevaluate priorities and life choices, including family, work, and career. The racial reckoning that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020 would most likely not have been as profound if tens of millions of American families had not been locked down, watching the gruesome news coverage, and pressured by often younger family members to confront and discuss systemic racism and the sins of America’s past that led to the murder and civil unrest.

Today, millions of Americans, especially Millennials and Generation Z, are reconsidering what it means to be happy and live a fulfilling and purposeful life. The effects of their decisions are now recognized by economists and businesses in need of labor, but the values leading to workforce changes have been developing for more than a decade, only to be supercharged during the pandemic. While our country and many communities feel as divided as they have ever been in our lifetimes, the bonds of family (whether nuclear or chosen) are stronger.

More than 18 months ago, Amanda Gorman offered comfort to a nation that was unaware of the inordinate loss soon headed its way. She said, in part:

We ignite not in the light, but in lack thereof, For it is in loss that we truly learn to love. In this chaos, we will discover clarity. In suffering, we must find solidarity.

As science leads us to a brighter 2022, let’s hope that through our national suffering we can once again discover what’s important, not just for ourselves but for the nation.

Matthew Baum , the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications, and John Della Volpe , director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, are among the team involved with the Covid States Project, a multi-university collaboration of researchers in a range of fields, who have examined behaviors and outcomes across the United States since March 2020.

Understanding the “Shecession”

Hannah riley bowles .

Q: How is the intersection of race and gender at play for working mothers during the COVID-19 recovery phase?

The most detailed data we have is from a survey conducted by Women and Public Policy Program Fellow Alicia Modestino, which consisted of a national panel of 2,500 working parents between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day (May 10 to June 21) of 2020. These data, collected at the onset of the pandemic, indicated that women accounted for more than half of unemployed workers (consonant with other economic studies), with Black and Hispanic women suffering outsize job losses at 9.5% and 8.3%, respectively. This gender disparity in labor market outcomes, often dubbed the “She-cession,” reflected the disproportionate toll on female workers, who were more likely to hold in-person jobs in affected industries such as hospitality, childcare, and health care.

A distinctive strength of this survey was that it collected information on whether childcare conflicts directly contributed to job losses. In contrast, other studies could only infer why women with children were displaced from the labor market. Modestino and colleagues found that 26% of unemployed mothers reported a lack of childcare as the reason for losing their jobs, compared with 14% of unemployed fathers. Their time-use data confirm that COVID-19 made work-life balance disproportionately difficult for women, with significant increases in time spent on schoolwork and playing with children as well as cooking and cleaning. In comparison, men reported only small increases in basic household chores. Women of color were more likely to have those experiences. For example, the survey showed that 23% of Black women—versus 15% of non-Black women—reported that their hours were reduced due to a lack of childcare.

Thanks to a gift to WAPPP from the Jessica Hoffman Brennan Gender Inequality and COVID-19 Pandemic Recovery Research Fund for research on the effects of the pandemic on women’s labor-market participation, Modestino and I are launching a study to explore working mothers’ experiences during the COVID-19 recovery phase from an intersectional perspective, disaggregating data by race, income, education, and other demographics. We also seek to investigate the role of negotiations in “shock resilience”—namely, how negotiating with partners, employers, coworkers, immediate and extended family members, friends, and others who make up formal and informal support systems can help women manage family and paid labor.

“With the closure of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, household dynamics became a significant factor in determining labor outcomes for women.”

Hannah riley bowles.

Q: How has the shock to childcare during COVID-19 varied among women with different household dynamics?

With the closure of schools during the pandemic, household dynamics became a significant factor in determining labor outcomes for women. In Modestino’s survey, women were more likely to report losses in work status if they were single, divorced, separated, or widowed (22% for not married versus 15% for married). Women living in households with annual incomes below $75,000 were also significantly more likely to report that difficulties with childcare had had an adverse effect on their labor-market participation. This effect was more acute for women with small children and those holding in-person jobs.

Q: Working mothers have been hit hard. How can policy support them?

The Modestino survey data suggest that access to paid family leave, remote-work arrangements, and childcare subsidies were the most important policies in enabling women to remain fully employed. Equally or even more important was the support of managers and coworkers—suggesting that formal policies and practices need to be backed up by family-friendly work cultures.

Access to backup childcare was another important factor that varied across communities, with lower-income families more likely to rely on family support networks. However, although 24% of working parents reported having access to paid family leave, only 4% had used it during the pandemic. Even worse, working parents who identify as Black or Hispanic are less likely to work in jobs that offer paid sick time and medical leave or to have COVID-19 policies available to them such as backup childcare subsidies and working from home.

Again, looking forward, we seek to understand what critical factors enable working mothers to recover from the pandemic, including formal and informal supports for managing work and family.

Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management Hannah Riley Bowles is a codirector of the Center for Public Leadership and the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP). Her research focuses on gender, negotiation, career advancement, and work-family conflict.

Lessons from digital government

David eaves.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital service groups and digital government experts around the world started to codify what a good digital crisis response could look like. These efforts have resulted in documents such as the California Digital Crisis Standard , developed by the state’s COVID-19 response team. Another example comes from Ontario, where the digital service group leveraged previous work in Alberta to quickly deploy a COVID-19 self-assessment in days, helping lower call volumes to government help desks and reducing stress for citizens.

The broad takeaway is that in a crisis, tried-and-true practices become even more critical to executing digital service delivery. The experiences of California and Ontario tell us that:

Working in the open enables learning In a national emergency, working in the open allows multiple service providers—within the same governing system or outside it—to learn from one another, accelerating development timelines and surfacing creative solutions. The California Digital Crisis Standard was made possible by work that was shared, while the story of Alberta and Ontario demonstrates that leveraging others’ work can radically reduce the cost and time to deploy government services.
There is always time for user testing While some may view user testing as a time-consuming luxury that has no place in rapid crisis response, the experiences of California and Ontario highlight the importance of prioritizing user needs. If anything, user testing is more important in a crisis, because the consequences are more serious if services do not work for users.
Clear communication is essential Both examples underscore the importance of communicating simply and clearly with users of digital services. Doing so can reduce panic and confusion while creating trust between users and the government agencies managing the services.

Looking Ahead The experiences of California and Ontario don’t hold all the answers for an effective digital crisis response. No two crises are the same, and some degree of improvisation will always be necessary. But taking time to develop a framework for response—to understand how normal working processes might change or stay the same—helps mitigate the pressure teams face while handling any crisis. More important, the work that California and Ontario appeared to do “on the fly” was really the result of years of capacity building, changing policies, and acquiring the right talent to change how government works. The crisis just made the value of those new ways of working more apparent.

Digital service groups need to think proactively about how crises affect the development and deployment of digital technologies in the public realm and build a standard that draws on the elements of impactful crisis responses like those in California and Ontario.

Lecturer in Public Policy David Eaves, with coeditor Lauren Lombardo MPP 2021, produced a policy brief titled “2020 State of Digital Transformation,” with lessons from digital government service units that responded quickly and effectively to the pandemic. The excerpt above is an adaptation of material from this brief.

Executive education will never be the same

Only six weeks after we shuttered our offices due to the onset of COVID-19, in April 2020, HKS Executive Education brought together participants for our first pivoted online program in April 2020. Six weeks after that, we hosted our first free faculty-led webinar, which focused on helping our global community respond to the repercussions of the health crisis.

Before the pandemic, we had a few online programs. In general, though, our faculty and participants preferred being together in person and on campus. We stuck with that model because we knew it worked. We needed a crisis to embrace online learning.

And as was true for many during the pandemic, we learned a few things—fast. It turns out that online executive education can be excellent. Everyone is in the front row. The cost of travel has evaporated. Classroom diversity is enhanced. Different learning styles are welcomed, and extended program lengths allow people to test what they are learning in their jobs in real time. Deeply interactive discussions between faculty members and learners, a cornerstone of our in-person programs, came alive online.

“It turns out online executive education can be excellent. Everyone is in the front row.”

We also learned, through a difficult year, about the resilience of the Kennedy School team. The HKS faculty pulled together, building momentum and encouraging one another to move forward and revamp the curriculum for remote learning. The members of our staff rallied, expanding their skills to enable each program participant to be truly present in this new virtual world. Together, the faculty and the staff managed polls and chats, posted new video and audio materials, curated virtual study groups, and reviewed participants’ progress at every step.

Outside the classroom, we learned that many were eager to discover through our free webinars how COVID-19 was reshaping leadership, economics, and trade. We expanded what we thought was just a short-term offering to an ongoing series of faculty members sharing the latest research on racial justice, social justice, climate change, crisis, and new scholarship across the HKS spectrum. We’ve always known that the best leaders never stop learning, and thousands in our community showed up for this important content while they were facing some of the most extreme public challenges we’ve seen in decades.

Our mission has always been to bring HKS ideas and research to the broadest possible audience of senior-level leaders who are looking to apply new approaches to their work in real-time. Based on what we’ve learned this year, online learning’s expanded place in our programs is here to stay. Today we offer more than 60 online program sessions every year. And even when COVID-19 is behind us, we expect to stay 40% online.

Debra Iles is the senior associate dean for executive education at Harvard Kennedy School.

A time to rethink tax systems

Anders jensen.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to think about tax policy in an evidence-based way. It has put a lot of pressure on government budgets for unemployment benefits and other public goods, which means that the government must collect more taxes to provide them. But at the same time, the tax base has eroded owing to the various forms of lockdown that were necessary to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Tax policies for the post-pandemic recovery period will thus require governments to be resourceful and to look at underutilized policy tools. To that end, the COVID-19 recovery phase may present a strong opportunity for a deeper overhaul of tax systems to improve efficiency and—perhaps even more important—equity.

Anders Jensen is an assistant professor of public policy who studies tax policy with a particular focus on countries’ capacity to tax.

Prioritizing process to prepare for the next shock

Asim khwaja.

The pandemic led to massive losses in many countries—of life, of livelihoods, and more. The biggest lesson that I believe we can learn from these years of loss is that process matters. Shocks happen, and there is only so much a society can do to prepare for the worst kinds of shocks, such as COVID-19—one of the most devastating our world has experienced.

What this specific shock revealed to me is that we didn’t have processes in place to navigate it in a way that wasn’t reactionary or destructive. We didn’t have measurement systems to figure out the extent of the problem, and we didn’t have ways to adjudicate the effectiveness of our policy responses to the problem. We were lacking the evidence we desperately needed as we designed costly policies, assuming that they would lead to a benefit instead of a huge cost. In some places around the world, policymakers overdid it, and in others, policies such as lockdowns to limit the spread of the virus, proved successful. These instances of failure or success derived more from reactionary decisions than from any evidence-based process. We could only depend on the loudest voices and a panicked desire to do something quickly in our policy responses.

“What this specific shock revealed to me is that we didn’t have processes in place to navigate the shock in a way that wasn’t reactionary or destructive.”

I hope that we have now learned how critical it is to have effective response processes in place before the challenges that we will inevitably face in the future. Doing so will allow us to have a more thoughtful, evidence-driven, and conceptually valid response, as opposed to an immediate and desperate reaction.

Asim Khwaja is the director of the Center for International Development and the Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development.

Thinking outside—and inside—the Zoom box

Dan levy .

Q: How prepared was HKS for online learning when COVID-19 hit in March 2020?

Prior to COVID-19, the Kennedy School was already doing online learning, but it was mainly driven by a small number of faculty members and staff who strongly believed in its power to both expand reach and improve teaching and learning. There were many interesting initiatives in executive education. And there were pioneer faculty members, including Marshall Ganz and Matt Andrews. Teddy Svoronos, Pinar Dogan, I, and others were doing it as part of a blended learning approach. Then, a couple of years before the pandemic, a group of us started working on the Public Leadership Credential, which is the School’s flagship online learning initiative.

When we were forced by the pandemic to move to online learning, we were very fortunate to be able to leverage those previous efforts, and I think the School was better prepared for online learning because of them. That doesn’t mean it was easy to do, but it does mean that we had in-house expertise to help bring everyone into online teaching and learning.

Many of us had experience with asynchronous learning, whereby learners engage with online material but are not interacting live with teachers. So even some of us who had some experience had to adjust quickly to live online teaching. I think it’s fair to say that there were growing pains. It was not easy at first, and I commend the spirit of the faculty and staff members. They looked for ways to innovate and make things work for students and were very resourceful and creative. That, to me, is one of the silver linings of the pandemic: the unleashing of creativity and resourcefulness that those involved in teaching and learning were able to bring to the enterprise.

“The pandemic has taught us to think more carefully about how to design successful learning experiences and programs for our students. We need to be better at putting ourselves in their shoes.”

Q: You wrote a book about teaching with Zoom. How did that come about?

We went to online learning at the Kennedy School in March of 2020. By mid-May, I was seeing faculty members, both here and outside the School, use Zoom in creative ways. I started documenting those examples because I wanted to learn what they were doing—and I ended up putting together a book. I felt that people needed a one-stop place to learn how to teach effectively with Zoom, since that’s the platform most people were using. I hope the book is helpful, not only to colleagues at the Kennedy School and at Harvard but more broadly.

Q: What can we take from Zoom to the physical classroom?

Some aspects of teaching in the classroom are better—such as the magic that happens when people can engage in person. But it became clear to me that there are also some things we can do better online. Now that we’re transitioning back to in-person teaching, we can think about how to incorporate some of those advantages. The use of chat during live instruction on Zoom is an incredibly powerful tool for finding out quickly what’s on our students’ minds. As we return to classrooms, where we don’t have chat, we should think about alternative ways to get the same benefits. Another plus with teaching on Zoom is the breakout rooms, where you can put learners in groups. We’ve always done group work in classrooms, but on Zoom we experimented with having the groups use collaborative tools to document their work. Being able to better leverage group work for post-group discussions is something I hope we can bring into the physical classroom.

Q: What’s one lesson from teaching fully online during COVID-19 that you think we should not forget?

The pandemic has taught us to think more carefully about how to design successful learning experiences and programs for our students. We need to be better at putting ourselves in their shoes. That is a simple principle that should always guide teaching and learning, and it was especially evident over the past two years.

Dan Levy is a senior lecturer in public policy. He is the faculty director of the Public Leadership Credential , Harvard Kennedy School’s flagship online learning initiative, and the author of Teaching Effectively with Zoom: A Practical Guide to Engage Your Students and Help Them Learn .

The White House is seen as a backdrop as people visit the 'In America: Remember' public art installation near the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The installation commemorates all the Americans who have died due to COVID-19. Image by Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Inline images by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, Andrei Pungovschi/Bloomberg /Getty Images, and Liu Guanguan/China News Service/Getty Images

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Ten Lessons from Our Pandemic Year

The one-year anniversary of the start of the pandemic is a somber time of reflection on the lives lost, the illness and suffering experienced, and disruption and separation inflicted by COVID-19. It is also a time to celebrate the contributions of front-line workers and public health scholars and practitioners. And while there is still much to learn about COVID-19, we can seize the opportunity to assess what the pandemic has taught us.

Columbia Mailman School faculty shared their thoughts on lessons learned over the past year, from virus co-morbidities to what the pandemic revealed about the health of our country. These lessons are crucial as the world works to inch its way toward ending the current pandemic while taking steps to prevent the next one. This knowledge may also help policymakers address other health crises, from systemic racism to climate change.

“Today, with the largest immunization effort in the history of the world underway, we are guardedly optimistic. There are significant challenges ahead, to be sure, but we have in our sight an end to the pandemic. We will take with us many lessons, both tragic and inspiring,” said Dean Linda P. Fried .

Ten Lessons

The pandemic exposed and worsened underlying inequalities in our healthcare system and society at large, as seen with higher rates of COVID-19 infection and death in communities of color. The crisis also deepened the economic divide. “It is ironic that the United States, the richest country in the world, has been the most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic shined a light on our fractured health system, the fragility of the public health structures, and the deep health and economic disparities that plague our country. This requires a serious reckoning, not only to figure out what happened and why, but most importantly to put in place urgent remedies. Not doing this would be a betrayal of all those who suffered and those who lost their lives to this pandemic.” – Wafaa El-Sadr “We have seen the very people who have helped us survive the pandemic, the essential workers, bear a disproportionate burden of illness and death, due to racist housing policy and the disproportionate placement of toxic facilities in their neighborhoods.” – Terry McGovern

The pandemic revealed the consequences of underinvestment in public health prevention. Slow and incomplete public health mandates led to ERs overcrowding and unnecessary deaths. “For this pandemic and the next, we need to recognize the indisputable value of early public health interventions in preventing deaths and sparing us the need to overwork the immense courage of our hospital providers.” – Charles Branas “Funding for public health represents less than 3 percent of the nation’s total medical bill. This underinvestment contributed to a tragic shortage of public health workers to engage in needed pandemic activities, such as diagnostic testing and contact tracing. We need to commit to a massive investment in the nation’s public health workforce and infrastructure.” – Michael Sparer “With COVID-19, all 6,090 hospitals became battlegrounds. Given that pandemic preparedness has not been part of routine healthcare delivery, nor has there been an incentive to build a better infrastructure, there must be specific federal funding allocated that is sustained in perpetuity to ensure bio-preparedness… Americans must invest in long-term solutions, build back better, invest in preparedness, and sustain the gains. Regardless of the cost, this investment will pay massive dividends during the next pandemic.” – Craig Spencer and Syra Madad (from their letter in The Lancet )

The pandemic was the result of a fragmented and politicized public health response in a hyperconnected nation and globe, and an absence of leadership at the top. It exposed the consequences of wealthy countries that prioritized national, not global health, and how increased global inequalities could undermine the effort to suppress the virus. “As countries as poor as Thailand, as rich as Australia, and as large as China completely contained transmission within their borders, it showed how failed leadership within a divided nation means inevitable failure.” – Peter Muennig “If we look around the world, many, if not most, countries have failed to contain the spread of COVID-19. There are a myriad of reasons, but science denial, a lack of cooperation, and the absence of an evidence-based, well-communicated response mark the countries most impacted.” – Jeffrey Shaman

The pandemic demonstrated the damage wrought by poor communication and misinformation. Falsehoods about vaccine safety and the origins of the virus were pervasive, and the latter fueled discrimination against Asian-Americans.

“Misinformation led to widespread confusion about risk reduction behaviors during a time when the public’s cooperation in adhering to these behaviors was critical. A major lesson learned has been the critical importance of good, clear two-way communication with the public, and the importance of improving health literacy so that the public can better navigate the sea of misinformation that especially permeates on social media.” – Sandra Albrecht “In a pandemic, public officials need to effectively communicate what is happening, and why, and the public needs to trust that it should follow the scientific and political guidance they are hearing. The Trump Administration not only failed to effectively communicate, it also politicized the response so that wearing (or not wearing) a mask became a political statement rather than a simple act of infection prevention. Going forward, we need to work not only on better communication but on rebuilding trust in our public health and governmental institutions.” – Michael Sparer

The pandemic showed that pandemics can inflict long-term damage on physical and mental health, some of which may not yet be fully understood. People with “long haul” syndrome from COVID-19 can suffer from persistent and debilitating symptoms like dizziness, forgetfulness, headaches, and fatigue.

“In some people, we can implicate organ damage involving the lungs, the heart, and the nervous system. In others, we don't see obvious organ damage. A viral syndrome may precede the onset of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). We speculate that COVID-19 may trigger ME/CFS and are exploring this through immunological, metabolomic, proteomic and genetic studies of people with ME/CFS and COVID-19.” – Ian Lipkin

“Approximately 10-20 percent suffer enduring health- especially mental health effects after recovery, and the secondary consequences of lockdowns appear likely to substantially increase or exacerbate mental disorders.” – Ezra Susser

The pandemic showed that science can develop effective testing, infectious disease modeling, and vaccines at incredible speed, although testing in the U.S. was unnecessarily delayed. Technology also allowed millions to work from home and receive remote medical care, although unequal access to the internet and remote work has increased inequalities. Masks, a low-tech, non-pharmaceutical intervention, are helping prevent the spread of COVID and other infectious diseases like the flu, although it took us too long to understand their importance.

“Before COVID, vaccines took at least five years to develop but in less than one year from the start of this pandemic, people were receiving injections of one of three authorized, highly protective vaccines. This truly spectacular achievement reflects what science and hard work can accomplish.” – Jessica Justman

“Science and technology can be used to good effect, but without clear leadership, messaging and public health policy, the benefits of these tools are lost.” – Jeffrey Shaman

The pandemic showed how hard-hit communities can be resilient. Through collective mobilization and mutual aid, local communities rallied to help those in need, such as through food banks and community refrigerators. Mass protests following the killing of George Floyd have raised public consciousness around structural racism.

“Communities that bore the brunt of the pandemic came together to help one another by sharing food and essential supplies, checking on vulnerable neighbors, cheering on front-line workers, rallying for open streets, booking vaccination appointments, and more.” – Diana Hernandez

The pandemic demonstrated how school closures, job loss, and isolation strain mental and physical health. On the plus side, businesses and schools found ways to reinvent themselves. “There will be a need to considerably expand mental health resources to address not the mental health consequences of the pandemic, but also as a way to address the physical health consequences too.” – Sandra Albrecht “COVID-19 has changed the way we orient our students to the problems of structural racism in the United States and its impact on health. Student organizations such as CIPHER and MENTOR have worked with community-based organizations to provide assistance here in Washington Heights and Harlem and have learned first-hand how the pandemic has hurt these communities and how much these organizations have served as the first line of defense against its impact.” – Robert Fulliove

“Many cities rapidly moved large numbers of homeless people from congregate shelters to vacant good-quality hotels, demonstrating that homelessness is not an intractable problem and that ending homelessness depends primarily on the political will to do so.” – Ezra Susser

The pandemic wreaked havoc on cities, with revenue lost to public transit, entertainment, and tourism. Cities too adapted, designating open streets for pedestrians and cyclists and allowing for the proliferation of outdoor dining. Absent automotive traffic, cities saw sharp drops in air pollution. “Throughout history, plagues have been transformative for civilization. They have shaped the way that we organize ourselves and live our lives, almost always for the better. One of the many examples is the installation of sewage and sanitation systems following global urban cholera outbreaks that brought life expectancy down to 30 in most cities.” – Peter Muennig

COVID-19 showed that a global pandemic can happen and inflict serious loss of life, even in the world’s richest countries. It also showed that a pandemic can happen again. “The proverb says that ‘forewarned is forearmed,’ and all experts on emerging infectious diseases and pandemics have strongly advocated more effective global surveillance and early warning systems as the first step. Some of the main lessons of this pandemic are that early warning is not enough; political will and leadership, clear and consistent communications based on the best (and often evolving) scientific evidence, and the rapid implementation of public health measures may make the difference between a runaway pandemic and a manageable outbreak.” – Stephen Morse (from his article in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness )

10 COVID-19 lessons that will change the post-pandemic future

COVID-19 lessons: Together we can help stop the spread of COVID-19 poster – lessons from the pandemic

COVID-19 lessons: What happens next? Image: Michael Marais/Unsplash

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We have reached the end of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with more problems on the horizon.
Covid-19 lessons can be drawn from the previous two years about how to handle future and long-standing challenges.
Early assumptions about future trends should be made with caution as uncertainty and unpredictability are still present.
Leadership has proven important across the board.

Whatever happens next in this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, we have reached the “end of the beginning.” We paused to reflect on Ipsos’ experience over the last couple of years, with the thought that it might provide lessons for the future, addressing long-standing challenges like ageing populations, a fragile planet and growing inequalities.

So, what are these lessons?

COVID-19 Lesson #1: People proved adaptable

By the end of March 2020, more than 100 countries were in a full or partial lockdown. Two years on, life has continued, but often in an altered state. The resilience and optimistic economic performance seen in many countries come with limits, though, as many admitted to picking and choosing post-lockdown rules to follow . There were also hot takes on what the “new normal” would look like. Commentators predicted that some behaviour would stick, such as accelerated online shopping, even though there were more reports of increased difficulties making online purchases than a year ago, suggesting the path to the new normal is likely more incremental than suggested.

COVID-19 Lesson #2: Mental health is as important as physical health

Through one global public health crisis, another was revealed, as many say their personal health situation worsened, experiencing mental health challenges for the first time. Levels of reported anxiety are higher than ever, with women hit hardest and young people more likely to “ languish .” Now, 79% of people worldwide say their mental health is as important as their physical health . As investment in mental health services is only a fraction of overall health spending, a more serious conversation to address this crisis is due.

Mental health is one of the top health problems

COVID-19 Lesson #3: Consumer desires are unpredictable

After initial panic buying, observers noted that the void caused by social restrictions was being filled with premium brand experiences. Enduring consumer habits are yet to become clearer, but for now, there is still uncertainty and inequality: unemployment and inflation among people’s top priorities. If we are about to go through a period of restricted purchasing power, brands may need to adjust and consider that consumer behaviour changes during a crisis, with some of those changes only later becoming permanent.

Respondents reflect on consumption habits

COVID-19 Lesson #4: Inequalities are widening

The pandemic, rather than erasing old problems, added new ones and exacerbated existing inequalities across age, gender, ethnicities and geography. One survey indicated that people believe the pandemic has been worse for older people than for younger people and research shows that the burden of childcare is falling on women disproportionately, consequently widening other aspects of the gender gap. More positively, there has been a narrowing of the “digital divide,” with older people’s increasing technology adoption to keep in touch with friends and family. Such digital acceleration and increasing home working acceptance will likely have lasting implications, including a potential reorientation of how our cities, suburbs and surrounding areas all interact.

COVID-19 Lesson #5: The “empty planet” scenario is now more likely

The pandemic has modified birth rates but not with the tongue-in-cheek expectation of a boom. Instead, looming uncertainty caused many to delay having children, accelerating pre-existing population decline. The empty planet scenario , or 'population bust,' expected by 2050, may come sooner. Brands and governments will need more nuanced approaches to older generations who simultaneously have more spending power and rely more on public services. Companies may also need to restructure their workforce to plug gaps created by ageing and non-replenishing manpower.

COVID-19 Lesson #6: We're getting more insular

Previous surveys have continuously shown huge disparities in outlook by country, including close neighbours, pointing to cultural considerations, differing legal systems and government points of view combining and varying people’s experiences. There is also evidence of “ de-globalisation ,” with many retreating to familiar territories and less dependence on foreign countries sought for goods and materials. Borders have become less porous during the pandemic, and there is apparent reluctance for their reopening.

Have you read?

Majority of consumers willing to pay more for goods which use scarce natural resources - ipsos survey, ending hunger and poverty are the top priorities for global public: forum, ipsos poll, confidence in covid-19 vaccines continues to rise, ipsos-forum poll shows, covid-19 lesson #7: maintaining public trust is difficult.

Doctors have become the world’s most trusted profession , while scientists took second place. Politicians and advertising executives, however, remain at the bottom of the league table in terms of public trust. “Behaving responsibly” is the key driver of such sentiment, with a greater tendency to challenge authority than before. During the pandemic, governments had a special challenge, as they've needed to quickly make decisions that impacted thousands of lives and livelihoods with limited, shifting data. The ability to set new rules and guidelines requires the trust of the public which can wear thin over the course of a multi-year crisis.

COVID-19 Lesson #8: Expectations of the state have changed

As the COVID-19 crisis unfolded, people turned to governments to protect the economy and society and mobilise a healthcare response, including vaccine rollout. While they demonstrated their power, their limitations also became apparent, needing the help of international pharmaceutical companies, which have since enjoyed a boost to their image. There is some evidence for support of further strengthening of state intervention but whether that will continue once the pandemic ends or will carry to other crises like climate change is yet to be seen.

COVID-19 Lesson #9: Fear and risk are being redefined

Concerns about personal health and safety and financial and health worries created a crisis where people felt a loss of control with perceptions that governing institutions also did not have a good grasp on the pandemic. Fear and inconvenience still present serious hurdles in different areas of life, international travel being a prime example. This feeling extends across borders with more than two in three people in the US, Russia, Brazil and Germany stating : “I feel things in my country are out of control right now.” As the pandemic has moved and changed, people around the world have needed to adapt to constantly shifting contexts and weigh what risks they are and are not comfortable taking on.

COVID-19 Lesson #10: A sustainable future requires leadership

Despite initial lower emissions at the start of the pandemic, climate concern has not diminished and there is near-consensus an environmental disaster is likely without drastic changes. The same leadership sought from the pandemic is sought in the fight against climate change, giving governments and businesses a clear mandate to act . However, according to the research, people are far from aware of how their lifestyles should adapt to save the planet, which could mean this environmental feat is the biggest leadership challenge to come.

Environmental disaster is feared by 83% of people

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Your Say: What lessons have you learned during the pandemic?

At the Farmers Market in Little Italy on April 4, 2020, Stephen Clark from J.R. Organics

We asked: What have you learned about yourself, your family and your community after one year of the pandemic?

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Anger lingers, along with hope for future

I have learned from this pandemic the sad results of an overly contagious disease. Each night our news has the latest totals of illnesses and deaths. These totals flash me back to the days of the Vietnam War when the numbers of dead and wounded soldiers were announced. It sickened us each dinner hour. The horror is even greater now, for our numbers are staggering.

I learned that personal contact and socialization play a bigger part in all our lives than I ever understood. As a lucky senior with a loving supportive husband, not alone in isolation, and encouraging, friendly neighbors, friends and family, I’ve suffered. The distancing, the lack of activities in groups, all dimmed my spirit. As an upbeat, laughing sort, surprisingly I was hit in spite of being blessed.

I think of family — our grandkids struggling with school, their adolescence stifling in confinement, missing senior school year activities, experiencing college online. They have lost learning opportunities and personal growth from interactions with others. Their lives have forever changed. Sadly, this happened at the beginning of their life’s journey. Their loss is infinitely greater than mine. So, too, those without loving support and jobs have suffered immeasurably.

My sadness is lifting with the promise of tomorrow, thanks to vaccinations. Concerns are letting up due to a stable federal-state response to this disease. Anger lingers over the past president’s uncaring, negligent response. But I am hopeful for our future. We are a resilient people.

Sharon Smith, La Mesa

Next week: After the vaccine

What is the first thing you did or will do after being fully vaccinated and feeling safe to live the way you did before the pandemic hit? Please email your 500-word essay to us at [email protected] by Wednesday and we may publish it in the newspaper and online. Please include your name, community and a phone number we won’t publish. More on today’s Your Say topic at sandiegouniontribune.com/lessons.

Crisis may floor us but we can rise again

What have I learned about myself, my family and my community after one year of the pandemic?

I have learned a huge amount about myself. I come from a sports background and that results in a cannot-be-defeated attitude. I love tennis and when the pandemic struck, our leaders thought it would be beneficial to lock tennis courts so no one could play tennis. I found places to play, thanks to my wonderful tennis partners, and I continued to play at beautiful places like a private court in Rancho Bernardo and courts near Sunset Cliffs, which gave me the opportunity to discover the beautiful cliffs again even though I’ve lived here 64 years of my 65 on Earth. Because of this never-say-die attitude I was able to stay in contact with my son’s beautiful family after tennis on Saturdays. I guess the saying is, where there is a will, there is a way, or from one of our greatest poets, “All limitations are self-imposed.”

I love my family; however, we are just returning to the point where I feel I can call any one of my siblings to safely visit and hug them all much more often than I have during the past year. My wife, Kim, my shorty Jack Russell Terrier Stella and I have not missed a beat at home; in fact, we may be closer as a result of the pandemic.

As for my community, I honestly feel we have been dealt a huge straight right that has knocked us down for the count. With the resilience I know we have, though, all our businesses and high school sports will bounce back to deliver blows of our own until we become the victors in the last round of this most important fight of our lives.

Jim Valenzuela, Poway

The value of a loving pet became apparent

What I have learned after one year of the pandemic is a lot about cats.

We acquired a cat in our household last July. I have learned a lot about how humans can relate to cats that I was not aware of growing up with these lovely animals. I also learned that you can connect with such an animal at a level I never thought possible or perhaps never really explored.

This cat, during this pandemic, has served as our therapist, yoga instructor, meditation guide and fellow afternoon nap enthusiast. I know there are other animals that have served as pets to help people with the stress of the pandemic. I would expect people in my community to have had a similar experience with their pets and the bonds they have made with them.

David Terry, Lakeside

We have all shared an historic experience

This past year I’ve learned that I took many things for granted and expected that life wouldn’t change that much in my day-to-day routine. I think most of us did.

I was really looking forward to seeing The Rolling Stones at SDCCU Stadium last May, but the concert was canceled and now the stadium has been demolished. Weekends I would have spent looking forward to seeing the latest Hollywood blockbuster like “Top Gun: Maverick” or “No Time to Die” became weekends learning about the infamous rivalry of big cat enthusiasts Joe Exotic and Carol Baskin on Netflix.

Going out to a restaurant on a Friday night to start off the weekend became downloading the DoorDash app and bringing that food home. Those nights out became nights in. I’ve learned that as much as it’s nice to stay home in my pajamas, I really miss going out to social events and seeing people’s smiling faces.

I always look forward to seeing my family during the holidays and months when I can take time off of work, but this year, like many of us, I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas on Zoom. I learned, and knew all along, that I have a strong family. We have come together well during a global pandemic. My mom even asked if she needed to mail me toilet paper. As fun as it was seeing everyone on my computer screen, in 2021 I will not take for granted that something as terrible as this pandemic couldn’t happen again, and I will make it a priority to see my family as soon as I can.

I’ve learned the community of San Diego comes together very well during a crisis. We’re all human, and no one wants to see their business or the livelihood they worked so hard for destroyed. I saw organizations, restaurants and animal shelters come together to feed families and the pets of those who lost their jobs.

People were shopping local more to support locally owned businesses. When we started to have to wear masks in public, I saw that people were nicer to each other, but now I see mask fatigue and people just wanting to get on with their lives. I hope as the year goes on and we slowly get back to normal with vaccines getting out into the community that we maintain that positive energy and remain a strong, friendly community.

We don’t always know what’s going on in the lives of those we pass every day at the store, but we have all gone through something unprecedented in our generation together and should never forget how it made us feel.

Megan DePalo, Oceanside

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst

After a year of the coronavirus pandemic, I learned that I had better be prepared for the worst at any time. After seeing lines of people at the grocery stores, loading up with groceries and toilet paper overflowing from their carts, I realized that many people are out for themselves without a care for anyone else. I didn’t understand the reason why so many people stocked up on toilet paper, as the coronavirus was not going to cause a bad case of diarrhea for those infected. Going to stores to find empty shelves where toilet paper once was only made me shake my head in wonder. Hoarding took place at every level and made me think of countries where things like that are familiar.

With bare shelves and some money in my pocket, things became disheartening. I decided I needed to eat less so that my stomach could shrink and I wouldn’t be as hungry. It worked. I lost more than 20 pounds, and I am now feeling better when I have to bend down to pick something up. I no longer just keep eating because it’s there and it tastes good. I eat half a sandwich and get up to do something and I’ve been drinking more liquids. Even if some of those liquids are beer, I’m still down over 20 pounds and continue to lose a little more as the days pass.

It is nice that businesses are starting to open and things are slowly getting back to the way they were, and I hope this pandemic has taught everybody some good lessons.

Allen Stanko, Alpine

Glad this challenging time may soon end

Regarding the one-year lockdown anniversary: The last year has been without a doubt one of the most trying and difficult of my life. I work in senior long-term care, and I have seen fear and illness and loneliness and death. I have seen healthy people become deathly ill and pass away without family to comfort.

I have seen people trying to express love through glass windows with masks on. The loneliness and isolation is as detrimental as the virus. Holidays and birthdays pass in this odd world.

And I have seen courage and strength and resiliency. I feel I have been scarred on my heart but have learned patience and trust.

I am glad the vaccines are here and maybe we can turn the corner and hug each other again.

Angela Reynolds, Boulevard

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Things I Learned During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Antoinette Pecaski

There are things to learn even in the most challenging of times, and sometimes it’s what we learn in those everyday moments of life that gives us a renewed perspective.

I learned to appreciate the big things. Like toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap. I nearly fell on my knees and wept when I spotted a lone bag of bread flour on the grocery shelf.

I learned that woman does not live by bread alone. On my first foray to the grocery store I prepped like I was going out for a night on the town. Eye shadow, mascara, eyeliner, foundation, blush and, of course, lipstick. I looked in the mirror and said, “Where have you been?” No one in the store could see my efforts. But, it felt so “normal,” even if it did look like I was robbing the place.

I learned to appreciate the really, really big things. The sight of my grandchildren’s faces on Facetime, the sound of my grown children’s voices on the phone, the warmth and support of my husband’s presence, the sound of my friends’ voices on the phone. My heart would swell with affection, my spirit parched with the need for friendship, for companionship, for a sense of normalcy.

When we could finally bubble, I learned to share my Italian heritage with my grandchildren (and appreciate it more myself). “Look,” I said as I gave them each some homemade dough. As their little hands kneaded and shaped the dough, I told them about the small mountain village where I was born. “Nana taught me this when I was a little girl, and her mother taught her and her mother taught her, going back many generations in our family.”

As we shaped the dough into pasta and gnocchi and lasagna noodles, I told them, “You know, they had to prepare their own food back then. There were no Sobeys’ or Pizza Huts.” I winked at them, “and that’s how RaRa caught DinDin.” But, I didn’t tell them that when we got married, I said to DinDin, “You do realize that there are lots of Sobeys’ and Pizza Huts!”

I learned to upgrade my computer skills. “You know,” I said to my son on the phone, “I’ve learned to do all kinds of stuff online: order groceries, pay my bills, order our new printer, and (my chest nearly bursting with pride), I actually programmed our new printer to our computer!” I didn’t tell him about the naughty words that assisted the process.

“That’s great Mom. Welcome to 2004.”

“Hey, listen,” I said, “I did all my university papers on that old rusty Remington Rand typewriter in the basement. You probably don’t even know what Whiteout is!"

I learned to channel my pioneer spirit. At the beginning of the pandemic, when we were afraid to venture out even to the grocery store, I learned to be resourceful. We needed hamburger buns. “No problem, I’ll make them.” Of course, they turned out like Frisbees and even the grandchildren wouldn’t eat them. And they eat everything!

I researched how to make your own hand sanitizer, homemade soap and lavender oil. I thought it prudent to be prepared for anything.

I cut my husband’s hair. He is a brave man. I viewed YouTube videos, bought barber scissors, and then kept my fingers crossed (obviously not literally). I’m happy to say he still has two ears and neither of them is pointy…although I did stab myself a few times.

And I learned to find solace and hope in nature. When my Dogwood tree bloomed in May after almost dying the previous year (it had to be transplanted), I was overjoyed, and saw it as a sign of hope.

When I spotted a small green weed with its small white and yellow flowers, defying its bed of gravel, I took its picture. Its tenacity to survive, to thrive and to flourish despite its adversity was overwhelming. Now, its picture is memorialized on my fridge, a constant reminder of what hope and courage look like.

And, when the pandemic is over, and we are free again, I think we will all have learned, that there are no little things in life. We will look at the world, like my little green plant, with renewed vigor and courage and a better understanding of this gift of living.

— Antoinette Pecaski

Antoinette (Toni) Pecaski is a writer of humorous essays from Ontario, Canada. She seeks to find the humor in our everyday lives and believes humor helps us to connect with each other. She takes the advice of Mark Twain to heart: “Humor without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of laughter.” She is currently working on her book, My Mother Gave Me Booze for Breakfast.

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Hot stuff in the kitchen.

Seven short essays about life during the pandemic

The boston book festival's at home community writing project invites area residents to describe their experiences during this unprecedented time..

My alarm sounds at 8:15 a.m. I open my eyes and take a deep breath. I wiggle my toes and move my legs. I do this religiously every morning. Today, marks day 74 of staying at home.

My mornings are filled with reading biblical scripture, meditation, breathing in the scents of a hanging eucalyptus branch in the shower, and making tea before I log into my computer to work. After an hour-and-a-half Zoom meeting, I decided to take a long walk to the post office and grab a fresh bouquet of burnt orange ranunculus flowers. I embrace the warm sun beaming on my face. I feel joy. I feel at peace.

I enter my apartment and excessively wash my hands and face. I pour a glass of iced kombucha. I sit at my table and look at the text message on my phone. My coworker writes that she is thinking of me during this difficult time. She must be referring to the Amy Cooper incident. I learn shortly that she is not.

I Google Minneapolis and see his name: George Floyd. And just like that a simple and beautiful day transitions into a day of sorrow.

Nakia Hill, Boston

It was a wobbly, yet solemn little procession: three masked mourners and a canine. Beginning in Kenmore Square, at David and Sue Horner’s condo, it proceeded up Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

S. Sue Horner died on Good Friday, April 10, in the Year of the Virus. Sue did not die of the virus but her parting was hemmed by it: no gatherings to mark the passing of this splendid human being.

David devised a send-off nevertheless. On April 23rd, accompanied by his daughter and son-in-law, he set out for Old South Church. David led, bearing the urn. His daughter came next, holding her phone aloft, speaker on, through which her brother in Illinois played the bagpipes for the length of the procession, its soaring thrum infusing the Mall. Her husband came last with Melon, their golden retriever.

I unlocked the empty church and led the procession into the columbarium. David drew the urn from its velvet cover, revealing a golden vessel inset with incandescent tiles. We lifted the urn into the niche, prayed, recited Psalm 23, and shared some words.

It was far too small for the luminous “Dr. Sue”, but what we could manage in the Year of the Virus.

Nancy S. Taylor, Boston

On April 26, 2020, our household was a bustling home for four people. Our two sons, ages 18 and 22, have a lot of energy. We are among the lucky ones. I can work remotely. Our food and shelter are not at risk.

As I write this a week later, it is much quieter here.

On April 27, our older son, an EMT, transported a COVID-19 patient to the ER. He left home to protect my delicate health and became ill with the virus a week later.

On April 29, my husband’s 95-year-old father had a stroke. My husband left immediately to be with his 90-year-old mother near New York City and is now preparing for his father’s discharge from the hospital. Rehab people will come to the house; going to a facility would be too dangerous.

My husband just called me to describe today’s hospital visit. The doctors had warned that although his father had regained the ability to speak, he could only repeat what was said to him.

“It’s me,” said my husband.

“It’s me,” said my father-in-law.

“I love you,” said my husband.

“I love you,” said my father-in-law.

“Sooooooooo much,” said my father-in-law.

Lucia Thompson, Wayland

Would racism exist if we were blind?

I felt his eyes bore into me as I walked through the grocery store. At first, I thought nothing of it. With the angst in the air attributable to COVID, I understood the anxiety-provoking nature of feeling as though your 6-foot bubble had burst. So, I ignored him and maintained my distance. But he persisted, glaring at my face, squinting to see who I was underneath the mask. This time I looked back, when he yelled, in my mother tongue, for me to go back to my country.

In shock, I just laughed. How could he tell what I was under my mask? Or see anything through the sunglasses he was wearing inside? It baffled me. I laughed at the irony that he would use my own language against me, that he knew enough to guess where I was from in some version of culturally competent racism. I laughed because dealing with the truth behind that comment generated a sadness in me that was too much to handle. If not now, then when will we be together?

So I ask again, would racism exist if we were blind?

Faizah Shareef, Boston

My Family is “Out” There

But I am “in” here. Life is different now “in” Assisted Living since the deadly COVID-19 arrived. Now the staff, employees, and all 100 residents have our temperatures taken daily. Everyone else, including my family, is “out” there. People like the hairdresser are really missed — with long straight hair and masks, we don’t even recognize ourselves.

Since mid-March we are in quarantine “in” our rooms with meals served. Activities are practically non-existent. We can sit on the back patio 6 feet apart, wearing masks, do exercises there, chat, and walk nearby. Nothing inside. Hopefully June will improve.

My family is “out” there — somewhere! Most are working from home (or Montana). Hopefully an August wedding will happen, but unfortunately, I may still be “in” here.

From my window I wave to my son “out” there. Recently, when my daughter visited, I opened the window “in” my second-floor room and could see and hear her perfectly “out” there. Next time she will bring a chair so we can have an “in” and “out” conversation all day, or until we run out of words.

Barbara Anderson, Raynham

My boyfriend Marcial lives in Boston, and I live in New York City. We had been doing the long-distance thing pretty successfully until coronavirus hit. In mid-March, I was furloughed from my temp job, Marcial began working remotely, and New York started shutting down. I went to Boston to stay with Marcial.

We are opposites in many ways, but we share a love of food. The kitchen has been the center of quarantine life —and also quarantine problems.

Marcial and I have gone from eating out and cooking/grocery shopping for each other during our periodic visits to cooking/grocery shopping with each other all the time. We’ve argued over things like the proper way to make rice and what greens to buy for salad. Our habits are deeply rooted in our upbringing and individual cultures (Filipino immigrant and American-born Chinese, hence the strong rice opinions).

On top of the mundane issues, we’ve also dealt with a flooded kitchen (resulting in cockroaches) and a mandoline accident leading to an ER visit. Marcial and I have spent quarantine navigating how to handle the unexpected and how to integrate our lifestyles. We’ve been eating well along the way.

Melissa Lee, Waltham

It’s 3 a.m. and my dog Rikki just gave me a worried look. Up again?

“I can’t sleep,” I say. I flick the light, pick up “Non-Zero Probabilities.” But the words lay pinned to the page like swatted flies. I watch new “Killing Eve” episodes, play old Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats songs. Still night.

We are — what? — 12 agitated weeks into lockdown, and now this. The thing that got me was Chauvin’s sunglasses. Perched nonchalantly on his head, undisturbed, as if he were at a backyard BBQ. Or anywhere other than kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, on his life. And Floyd was a father, as we all now know, having seen his daughter Gianna on Stephen Jackson’s shoulders saying “Daddy changed the world.”

Precious child. I pray, safeguard her.

Rikki has her own bed. But she won’t leave me. A Goddess of Protection. She does that thing dogs do, hovers increasingly closely the more agitated I get. “I’m losing it,” I say. I know. And like those weighted gravity blankets meant to encourage sleep, she drapes her 70 pounds over me, covering my restless heart with safety.

As if daybreak, or a prayer, could bring peace today.

Kirstan Barnett, Watertown

Until June 30, send your essay (200 words or less) about life during COVID-19 via bostonbookfest.org . Some essays will be published on the festival’s blog and some will appear in The Boston Globe.

One Student's Perspective on Life During a Pandemic

Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
Ethics Resources
Ethics Spotlight
COVID-19: Ethics, Health and Moving Forward

person sitting at table with open laptop, notebook and pen image link to story

The pandemic and resulting shelter-in-place restrictions are affecting everyone in different ways. Tiana Nguyen, shares both the pros and cons of her experience as a student at Santa Clara University.

person sitting at table with open laptop, notebook and pen

Tiana Nguyen ‘21 is a Hackworth Fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. She is majoring in Computer Science, and is the vice president of Santa Clara University’s Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) chapter .

The world has slowed down, but stress has begun to ramp up.

In the beginning of quarantine, as the world slowed down, I could finally take some time to relax, watch some shows, learn to be a better cook and baker, and be more active in my extracurriculars. I have a lot of things to be thankful for. I especially appreciate that I’m able to live in a comfortable house and have gotten the opportunity to spend more time with my family. This has actually been the first time in years in which we’re all able to even eat meals together every single day. Even when my brother and I were young, my parents would be at work and sometimes come home late, so we didn’t always eat meals together. In the beginning of the quarantine I remember my family talking about how nice it was to finally have meals together, and my brother joking, “it only took a pandemic to bring us all together,” which I laughed about at the time (but it’s the truth).

Soon enough, we’ll all be back to going to different places and we’ll be separated once again. So I’m thankful for my living situation right now. As for my friends, even though we’re apart, I do still feel like I can be in touch with them through video chat—maybe sometimes even more in touch than before. I think a lot of people just have a little more time for others right now.

Although there are still a lot of things to be thankful for, stress has slowly taken over, and work has been overwhelming. I’ve always been a person who usually enjoys going to classes, taking on more work than I have to, and being active in general. But lately I’ve felt swamped with the amount of work given, to the point that my days have blurred into online assignments, Zoom classes, and countless meetings, with a touch of baking sweets and aimless searching on Youtube.

The pass/no pass option for classes continues to stare at me, but I look past it every time to use this quarter as an opportunity to boost my grades. I've tried to make sense of this type of overwhelming feeling that I’ve never really felt before. Is it because I’m working harder and putting in more effort into my schoolwork with all the spare time I now have? Is it because I’m not having as much interaction with other people as I do at school? Or is it because my classes this quarter are just supposed to be this much harder? I honestly don’t know; it might not even be any of those. What I do know though, is that I have to continue work and push through this feeling.

This quarter I have two synchronous and two asynchronous classes, which each have pros and cons. Originally, I thought I wanted all my classes to be synchronous, since that everyday interaction with my professor and classmates is valuable to me. However, as I experienced these asynchronous classes, I’ve realized that it can be nice to watch a lecture on my own time because it even allows me to pause the video to give me extra time for taking notes. This has made me pay more attention during lectures and take note of small details that I might have missed otherwise. Furthermore, I do realize that synchronous classes can also be a burden for those abroad who have to wake up in the middle of the night just to attend a class. I feel that it’s especially unfortunate when professors want students to attend but don’t make attendance mandatory for this reason; I find that most abroad students attend anyway, driven by the worry they’ll be missing out on something.

I do still find synchronous classes amazing though, especially for discussion-based courses. I feel in touch with other students from my classes whom I wouldn’t otherwise talk to or regularly reach out to. Since Santa Clara University is a small school, it is especially easy to interact with one another during classes on Zoom, and I even sometimes find it less intimidating to participate during class through Zoom than in person. I’m honestly not the type to participate in class, but this quarter I found myself participating in some classes more than usual. The breakout rooms also create more interaction, since we’re assigned to random classmates, instead of whomever we’re sitting closest to in an in-person class—though I admit breakout rooms can sometimes be awkward.

Something that I find beneficial in both synchronous and asynchronous classes is that professors post a lecture recording that I can always refer to whenever I want. I found this especially helpful when I studied for my midterms this quarter; it’s nice to have a recording to look back upon in case I missed something during a lecture.

Overall, life during these times is substantially different from anything most of us have ever experienced, and at times it can be extremely overwhelming and stressful—especially in terms of school for me. Online classes don’t provide the same environment and interactions as in-person classes and are by far not as enjoyable. But at the end of the day, I know that in every circumstance there is always something to be thankful for, and I’m appreciative for my situation right now. While the world has slowed down and my stress has ramped up, I’m slowly beginning to adjust to it.

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v.102(6); 2020 Jun

Reflections on Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Six Lessons from Working in Resource-Denied Settings

Leah ratner.

1 Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts;

2 Division of General Internal Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts;

Rachel Martin-Blais

3 Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California;

Clare Warrell

4 Department of Infectious Diseases, Royal Free NHS Hospitals Trust, London, United Kingdom;

Nirmala P. Narla

5 Division of Medical Critical Care, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the experience of communities in the global South that have grappled with vulnerability and scarcity for decades. In the global North, many frontline workers are now being similarly forced to provide and ration care in unprecedented ways, with minimal guidance. We outline six reflections gained as Western practitioners working in resource-denied settings which inform our current experience with COVID-19. The reflections include the following: managing trauma, remaining flexible in dynamic situations, and embracing discomfort to think bigger about context-specific solutions to collectively build back our systems. Through this contextualized reflection on resilience, we hope to motivate strength and solidarity for providers, patients, and health systems, while proposing critical questions for our response moving forward.

The 2019–2020 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the worldwide spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has changed healthcare systems across the globe. Many providers in high-income countries who have hardly known shortage in their lifetimes are being forced to consider triage, rationing, and altered provision of care in unprecedented ways. In the global North, this development has introduced frontline workers to vulnerability at a national level for the first time. Critical supply shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators have left healthcare workers (HCWs) with feelings of anxiety, guilt, and helplessness. However, these health system gaps may also highlight a source of newfound empowerment for change, as hardship can bring communities together to mobilize resilience. How can we, as HCWs from the global North, use this experience to learn new forms of resilience during this global health challenge? In the following text, we discuss collective lessons from global health work in resource-limited settings that inform our current experience with COVID-19.

LESSON 1. WHAT FLEXIBILITY REALLY MEANS

Global health practitioners are taught that when working in a resource-constrained setting, effective approaches need to use locally driven solutions, informed by evidence that is context-specific. Although it is tempting to apply previous experiences to new situations, context may make previous solutions irrelevant. For example, it may not be ethical to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation in settings where ventilators and circulatory supports are not available to support the patient in the post-resuscitation period. Identifying resource-specific solutions focused on equity, efficiency, and sustainability of the health system thus becomes essential in.

In a resource-limited setting, flexibility means adapting your practice in dynamically changing situations. This often involves pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone to focus on interpersonal and systematic details rather than stylistic ones. True flexibility can be astoundingly hard to achieve, and requires a fund of humility that we often lack in the medical community. However, a willingness to approach challenges in new ways—rather than trying to fit them to a previous mold—allows for solutions to materialize. We reflect on the increasing importance to recognize (and amplify) locally adapted successes when working in unfamiliar settings, acknowledging that this level of change is often uncomfortable.

LESSON 2. FIND EXPERTISE IN PLACES YOU MAY NOT HAVE THOUGHT TO LOOK BEFORE

In the global North, we are accustomed to accessing expert guidelines that dictate how we practice medicine. However, this routine reliance to inform best practice has been dismantled in the setting of COVID-19 because in a novel situation, no one knows with certainty how best to proceed—at every level of every organization. Our inability to perform this kind of informed decision-making contributes to new feelings of anxiety, both within the medical community and amongst the lay public.

In this time of uncertainty, we have found ourselves drawing on lessons learned from our colleagues in the global South: creative ways to reuse and make PPE, new methods for sterilizing limited resources, and new treatment modalities that bypass high-cost medications. When clinically applicable, minimize hierarchy to facilitate engagement of all stakeholders—patients, HCWs, and community members—in bidirectional learning and creative problem-solving. Many of the most ingenious solutions to difficult problems come from colleagues who regularly think outside the box to overcome resource limitations and drive context-specific solutions. As the line between individual sub-specialties begins to blur and hierarchy is flattened—as chiefs of surgery are now being asked to practice as internal medicine interns on COVID-19 wards—new experts are quickly emerging. Let us look forward to calling on the newly gained specialty-agnostic expertise of COVID-19 providers in New York City, London, Wuhan, Milan, and Madrid.

LESSON 3: BLEND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND WORK; ADAPT YOUR PERCEPTION OF TIME

In Western cultures, monochronic time, or the sense that time is a commodity—limited and thus valuable—is a commonly shared ideal. Although monochronic time breeds effective multitasking by minimizing “waste,” it also places relative values on each of our relationships (time spent being proportional to importance in our lives). When demands on time are high, the ability to manage ever-increasing patient loads and academic requirements is viewed as a productive skill; however, this approach limits our engagement in any one area.

Variation in this conception of time can cause stress for first-time global health practitioners. Many cultures in the global South are polychronic, 2 where time is viewed as infinite. Like a stream, polychronic time adjusts its shape to fill the available space. It allows for meetings to seamlessly flow in and out of personal connection, and is often embraced in cultures where uncertainty is commonplace, allowing the unexpected to be expected . Deadlines are fluid, and empathy for understanding how life’s struggles influence these deadlines is recognized collectively. This understanding frees individuals from the tyranny of time, allowing focus where it is most needed in the moment. Although one’s conception of time is difficult to alter, acknowledging the fluidity of time may help us adapt in a rapidly changing environment.

LESSON 4. USE CHALLENGING SITUATIONS AS OPPORTUNITIES TO ADVOCATE

Like many disasters before it, the COVID-19 pandemic is bringing to light long-standing structural oppression, embedded racism, and widespread class inequity. Recent CDC data show that black Americans were more likely to require hospitalization for COVID-19 than white Americans in the same catchment area, and early data suggest they may also have higher rates of death. 3 , 4 Although freedom of social mobility caused resource-replete countries to be the first to be affected by the novel virus’s spread, they will hardly have the worst experience if communities with fewer resources are left to deal with the fallout on their own.

As social medicine advocates, we have consistently seen that those who are most vulnerable require increased, not equal, support in times of crisis to achieve equity. It is imperative to openly discuss the magnitude of disparity this pandemic is exposing, rather than diminish it. Epidemiologists and public health specialists, policy advocates, scientists, and frontline HCWs—no matter what your role, now is your time to advocate for solutions to injustice, poor safety planning, and inequity. This advocacy feels particularly uncomfortable during uncertain times, but remember that uncertainty exists because the system is broken. Recognize your strengths and where you can contribute in the call for progress.

LESSON 5. BEING A HCW WHEN RESOURCES ARE SCARCE IS TRAUMATIC

“Trauma-Informed Care” 1 , 5 has never been more critical. The existing literature largely focuses on coping strategies for HCWs outside of work, but what about during work, in the face of extraordinary demands? What about when friends and family call during “off hours” to ask a litany of questions about severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and its implications?

We tell our first-time global health practitioners to practice radical vulnerability 6 by allowing themselves to be openly honest about their needs with family, friends, and clinical colleagues. We are reminded to think about what our strengths and weaknesses look like at the peak of stress and adjust with individually tailored coping mechanisms, curated over years of training. Novel coronavirus disease feels no different, but this time, we were stripped from the ability to pre-prepare. Now, it is more important than ever to recognize your own trauma and to tell your coworkers when you are nearing burnout, not sleeping, or emotionally exhausted. In this era, assume that everyone comes from a place of trauma; listen from that place and share in that same vulnerability. Teach yourself to optimize resilience by preserving your boundaries, and ask your friends and family to respect your “virus-free time.”

LESSON 6. DO LOOK BACK–THE RIGHT WAY

No one denies that the COVID-19 pandemic has placed us in an unprecedented and terrifying situation. Yet how can we move beyond the frustration at our lack of preparedness and toward channeling our energy productively despite resource limitations?

Many in this situation may attempt to take on the fragility of the health system single-handedly, only to be quickly overwhelmed. 7 Despite the prominent role of the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles in quality improvement literature, 8 many healthcare systems do not allow sufficient time for personal self-reflection. Yet a resilient healthcare provider finds time to reflect on past mistakes, grow as a practitioner, and learn to avoid future pitfalls. Without learning from individual and systemic failures, we would never improve. Remind yourself and your colleagues daily that you are one piece in a giant global community working to turn the tide. Most of this cannot be controlled by you, so concentrate on where you can effect change. Do not live in the past, but learn from your experiences moving forward.

As Western-trained clinicians, how will working and living through the COVID-19 pandemic change our role in health care? How will it impact our view of the global community and give us a new empathic understanding for scarcity? How will recognition of our own embedded trauma allow us to better take care of others? How will we work to dismantle oppression in our health system at a regional, national, and international level? How can we work together to ensure preemptive health system strengthening and effective rebuilding? Although it may have taken a pandemic to publicly expose the vast interconnectedness of our global community, only by continuing to learn from this interdependence can we build back our collective society stronger.

Acknowledgment:

Publication charges for this article were waived due to the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19.

Pandemic lessons learned: ‘We need to be more equitable, effective, and efficient’

As the world emerges from the pandemic phase of COVID-19, which claimed millions of lives, public-health officials are tasked with remaining vigilant. “We often hear ‘It’s the worst pandemic in a century.’ But the truth is, the risk of pandemics is only growing,” says Raj Panjabi, MD, former special assistant to US President Joe Biden and senior director for global health security and biodefense at the White House National Security Council (NSC). As potential drivers of future outbreaks, Panjabi cites the increased risk that pathogens could spill over from animals, chronic underinvestment in public-health systems around the world, and population movement.

Panjabi served in his role at the NSC from February 2022 to August 2023. Previously, he had led the president’s Malaria Initiative and taught at Harvard Medical School. He also cofounded Last Mile Health , an organization that partners with governments to train and empower community health workers who provide essential primary healthcare in the world’s most remote communities.

Pooja Kumar, a McKinsey Health Institute global leader, sat down with Panjabi as his tenure with the Biden administration was winding down. The following is an edited version of their conversation about preventing and preparing for pandemics. The second part of the discussion—focused on health equity and access and the capacity of healthcare workers—appears in the Conversations on Health article, “We need to invest in health workers between major pandemics—not just when we have a pandemic.”

Pooja Kumar: Raj, as we emerge from the public-health crisis that was COVID-19, many folks are starting to think about what the real lessons learned are—what we can take away and build stronger so that we don’t go through something like that again in quite the same way. What do you think can or should be the role of governments in pandemic prevention and preparedness going forward?

Raj Panjabi: In this area, President Biden often says, “It’s not about if but when there’ll be another pandemic.” The science supports that. We know there’s the recurring risk of influenza pandemics; we now also know there’s a risk of coronavirus pandemics. Some modelers estimate that the risk of another pandemic as bad as or worse than COVID-19 could be as high as 50 percent in the next 25 years. We have to get better at detecting, preventing, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from pandemics.

Those five actions are the pillars of the National Biodefense Strategy the president released in October 2022. Because of the risk of future pandemics, because of the number of lives we’ve lost, it’s really important we double down on investing in pandemic prevention and preparedness. There’s a moral case for it; there’s also an economic case for it. The value proposition’s pretty simple: if we spend billions now, we can save trillions tomorrow.

Pooja Kumar: What types of things could the private sector do to help?

Raj Panjabi: The private sector plays a massive role. Let’s just take preparedness for a moment. The way we define preparedness is the ability to develop vaccines, tests, treatments, and personal protective equipment and to stand up clinical trials more rapidly if we have a pandemic outbreak or something that may emerge as a pandemic.

We’ve put some very big “moonshot” goals out there that we believe, working closely with our colleagues at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, are achievable with the technical and scientific knowledge we have today. They include being able to develop and authorize vaccines within 100 days of the next pandemic. We know how much coronavirus vaccines mattered—moving what had been about a three- to four-year development timeline down to 300 days. Imagine how many more lives, how much less economic damage, we’d have if we could have a vaccine in 100 days.

The private sector has a role to work on vaccines, if companies are involved in biologics. They also have a role to play in the supply chain: to ensure that vaccines get from cities to rural areas and from this country to other countries.

And, of course, truly making it possible for every at-risk person in the world who wants a vaccine to get it means ensuring that manufacturing capacity is more distributed. In every region of the world we’ve worked with, from Southeast Asia to Latin America to Africa, you see governments trying to create incentives for manufacturers—of vaccines, treatments, personal protective equipment, tests. Governments want to build more capacity now to deal with the everyday epidemics we face and then be able to pivot during a pandemic to surge that capacity.

Pooja Kumar: Any other lessons learned that you’re going to take away, personally, from the pandemic?

Raj Panjabi: There are three Big E s I think of. Number one, we’ve got to be more equitable when we respond. That means getting more care to more people during a pandemic, after a pandemic, and in between pandemics, both for infectious diseases and the everyday epidemics of premature death. We’ve got to be focused on closing that inequity every day around the world.

The second is we’ve got to be a lot more effective : for example, by developing nasal vaccines that could—if successfully researched, developed, and authorized—block transmission of coronavirus. This could have an impact on potential future variants and the current COVID-19 variants now circulating and also on future pandemics. That would be a mucosal vaccine that could stop other respiratory-transmitted viruses, which are the kinds that create devastating pandemics in very short periods of time.

We’ve also got to do better at focusing on reducing mortality and morbidity in settings globally—to be more effective in those settings. We had, during my tenure at the National Security Council, not only a COVID-19 pandemic but also a multinational Mpox 1 Formerly monkeypox. outbreak. Making sure people have better treatments, in clinics as close to home as possible, was important for controlling that. But we could have been working in West Africa, where I first saw Mpox patients many years ago, to give people access to vaccines and treatments.

We’ve also had several viral-hemorrhagic-fever outbreaks—three Ebola outbreaks in Uganda and Marburg-virus-disease outbreaks in Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania. Thankfully, those outbreaks were controlled and then ended as a result of the work of local health workers and the institutions in those countries with the support of the United States investing millions of dollars; sending first responders and laboratory technicians; and establishing labs to provide infection prevention and control, to train and hire community health workers, and to train doctors. But the mortality rate of those who were infected was still higher in Uganda than it would have been if that same pathogen had been here in the United States. Clinical care gets less investment and needs to be more of a focus—medical preparedness needs to be focused. So that’s the second E : being more effective in the United States and globally.

We’ve got to make sure those countermeasures get to everyone everywhere in the world who needs them. And all of this is scientifically and technologically possible. It’s humanly possible to do it.

The third E is to be more efficient . Speed is lives. We’ve got to be faster in developing countermeasures, vaccines, and treatments. We’ve got to be faster in rolling out tests. We’ve got to be faster in standing up safe clinical trials to repurpose therapies, testing the repurposing of existing therapies for novel pathogens, and developing novel therapies.

We’ve got to do a lot of that faster. We’ve got to make sure those countermeasures get to everyone everywhere in the world who needs them. And all of this is scientifically and technologically possible. It’s humanly possible to do it.

We need individuals who care—whoever you are, wherever you live—the next time there’s a pandemic. Are you getting the right medical advice to protect yourself? Does your doctor or nurse have the gloves, the gowns, and the equipment to take care of you and to keep themselves safe? If you have symptoms, do you have a test available as quickly as possible to see if you have the disease? If you have it, do you get treated? And once vaccines get developed in a pandemic, do you want to protect yourself with those vaccines?

That’s what pandemic preparedness is about. And that’s why it’s worth investing in it.

Raj Panjabi, MD, is the former senior director for global health security and biodefense at the White House National Security Council. Pooja Kumar, MD, is a global leader of the McKinsey Health Institute and a senior partner in McKinsey’s Philadelphia office.

Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.

This article was edited by Hannah Buchdahl, an associate editor in the Washington, DC, office.

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The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency: What’s next?

Image of a Global map overlaid with a flow diagram in an interactive visualization titled 'Scale what works: The benefits of proven health interventions'

Scale what works: The benefits of proven health interventions

COVID-19: A catalyst to cancel burnout culture?

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A new review of Stanford’s experience during the first two years of the pandemic reveals that despite the hardships endured by students, faculty, and staff, the university’s pivot to remote education – and the resourcefulness with which it responded – offers valuable lessons for the future.

Go to the web site to view the video.

Lisa Anderson and Cindy Berhtram discuss the report, Lessons from Teaching and Learning at Stanford during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review, 2020-21 with colleague Erik Brown

Although many educators view that time as an aberration and welcome the return to pre-pandemic norms, the new 78-page report highlights innovations in teaching and learning that Stanford and other universities may consider adopting as common practice in the coming years. Titled Lessons from Teaching and Learning at Stanford during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review, 2020-21 , it was posted online this morning by Stanford Digital Education , a unit of the Provost’s Office.

“This review documents the resilience, creativity, and compassion that blossomed at Stanford in the face of a pandemic that upended our educational practices,” Provost Persis Drell said. “It shows how our community pulled together to ensure we continued to support our educational mission. Now, as the pandemic wanes, we have the chance to chart a new course in digital learning that is guided by the lessons we learned during the pandemic.”

The review, which draws upon interviews with 59 Stanford leaders, faculty, staff, and students, highlights recurring themes and spotlights remarkable stories. It also is informed by analyses of internal Stanford reports and articles by University Communications as well as secondary digital resources, such as recorded campus events and stories in higher education publications.

Lisa J. Anderson and Cynthia Berhtram , both of Stanford Digital Education, led the project and authored the review. They document how the pandemic exacerbated pre-existing inequities and how the pivot to emergency remote education demanded real-time solutions. And they show how Stanford rose to these challenges through creativity and ongoing collaboration. They determined that worthwhile advances in teaching and learning were made during this difficult period, and that these advances could be the basis for lasting improvements if the university recognizes and builds on them.

Some view the teaching that occurred during the pandemic as evidence of the limitations of online learning. Vice Provost for Digital Education Matthew Rascoff questions such thinking in his letter introducing the review. He notes that the authors use the term “emergency remote teaching” throughout the report in order “to draw a critical distinction between what occurred during the pandemic at Stanford and true online learning.”

He explains: “Emergency remote teaching was an urgent response to a global crisis. Well-designed online learning is the product of patient ‘backwards design,’ an intentional, collaborative process that begins with the needs and learning goals of the student. There was no time for such design during the pandemic, but there will be in the future.”

Four chapters deal with key subjects

The review’s analysis divides Stanford’s response to the pandemic in 2020-21 into four chapters: innovations in pedagogy, the changing role of students and staff, the development of professional networks, and a new emphasis on the whole student.

Chapter I details new approaches to teaching that were tried as instructors sought to make their classes more inclusive, with many becoming more sophisticated in their use of technologies such as the video conferencing platform Zoom and the learning management system Canvas. Breakout rooms, back-channel chats, and online office hours became commonplace. The shift to remote education caused instructors to experiment with splitting class lessons into smaller, more digestible chunks; creating courses that could work for both face-to-face and online audiences; using scaffolded formative assessments in place of one high-stakes final exam, and much more. “Every faculty member’s eyes were opened to the possibilities of remote teaching,” Jim Plummer, the John M. Fluke Professor of Electrical Engineering, told the review’s authors. “This is a huge opportunity for Stanford and other universities.”

Chapter II describes how the switch to online instruction led staff and students to shoulder new responsibilities. New student jobs such as digital ambassadors and course development assistants were created to support faculty in making the most of the virtual experience. Staff units, including teaching and learning teams and educational technology support teams, developed new models to meet increased demand for their services. Traditional silos were broached as teams became more cross functional. “Staff were empowered to think creatively about how to respond to an extraordinary situation,” Helen Chu, senior director of learning spaces in Learning Technologies and Spaces, said in an interview for the report.

Chapter III discusses the new networks that emerged to deal with the “infodemic” that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic. The Stanford community had to make sense of a tsunami of information about remote teaching and learning. New Slack channels, new symposiums and workshops, new online clearinghouses, and new communities of practices, or CoPs, were established to help guide people through it. For instance, the Teaching Commons website, which had been defunct, was revived to provide instructors with curated content to answer a variety of questions. “It became this growing ecosystem, turning the ‘untamed jungles’ of Stanford into a garden,” Kenji Ikemoto, an academic technology specialist, explained to Stanford Digital Education researchers.

Chapter IV covers the increased awareness that student well-being is critical for learning. This appreciation for the “whole student” arose from seeing how the pandemic’s effects on students’ inequitable access to resources, as well as its impact overall on mental health, led to difficulties in academic performance. Stanford responded with new programs and materials at Vaden Health Services. Resources to encourage equity and inclusion proliferated. Guides were available to faculty to help them lead discussions on sensitive subjects. Many adopted for the first time classroom practices such as “temperature checks” and “share spaces” to enable instructors to see how students were feeling. “I think of it as a huge permission slip to everybody on campus to care and empathize, and to bring their humanity forward in every interaction with students,” Susie Brubaker-Cole, vice provost of student affairs, said in an interview. “We need to build a culture around that.”

Questions for the future

The review offers “lessons learned” in its final chapter, but it does not issue recommendations. Instead, it suggests that the Stanford community consider a series of questions in the coming months, including:

How do we provide digital education opportunities that enhance equity and access for students?
Under what circumstances should faculty and academic instructors be able to teach with flexibility, using such instructional modalities as fully online, hybrid, or flipped instruction?
Should students be afforded alternatives to attending classes in-person and have more options of alternative forms of assessment?

The review provides vital context for answering these and other questions, though it offers only a sampling of views. The authors make no claim to its being comprehensive and underscore the need for further input. The report is described as a “beginning.”

In the coming months, members of the Stanford community are encouraged to read the review and its website, offer comments and join the effort to build upon this work.

“We take seriously the call to learn from the pandemic teaching and learning experience, and this review is an important step in that direction,” Rascoff said. “We hope that by discussing its implications we can collectively map a promising future of innovation in teaching, learning, and digital education at Stanford.”

At the request of Provost Drell, Stanford Digital Education will be reaching across campus during the coming academic year to help the university devise a new university-wide digital strategy. The team will gather input from different units to understand their priorities and to see how the university could best support them.

“I am confident that we can continue Stanford’s history of finding new and better ways to provide outstanding education that extends beyond the physical boundaries of our campus,” the provost said.

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Guest Essay

As Bird Flu Looms, the Lessons of Past Pandemics Take On New Urgency

A woman wears a mechanical nozzle mask in 1919 during the Spanish flu epidemic.

By John M. Barry

Mr. Barry, a scholar at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, is the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.”

In 1918, an influenza virus jumped from birds to humans and killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people in a world with less than a quarter of today’s population. Dozens of mammals also became infected.

Now we are seeing another onslaught of avian influenza. For years it has been devastating bird populations worldwide and more recently has begun infecting mammals , including cattle, a transmission never seen before. In another first, the virus almost certainly jumped recently from a cow to at least one human — fortunately, a mild case.

While much would still have to happen for this virus to ignite another human pandemic, these events provide another reason — as if one were needed — for governments and public health authorities to prepare for the next pandemic. As they do, they must be cautious about the lessons they might think Covid-19 left behind. We need to be prepared to fight the next war, not the last one.

Two assumptions based on our Covid experience would be especially dangerous and could cause tremendous damage, even if policymakers realized their mistake and adjusted quickly.

The first involves who is most likely to die from a pandemic virus. Covid primarily killed people 65 years and older , but Covid was an anomaly. The five previous pandemics we have reliable data about all killed much younger populations.

The 1889 pandemic most resembles Covid (and some scientists believe a coronavirus caused it). Young children escaped almost untouched and it killed mostly older people, but people ages 15 to 24 suffered the most excess mortality , or deaths above normal. Influenza caused the other pandemics, but unlike deaths from seasonal influenza, which usually kills older adults, in the 1957, 1968 and 2009 outbreaks, half or more deaths occurred in people younger than 65. The catastrophic 1918 pandemic was the complete reverse of Covid: Well over 90 percent of the excess mortality occurred in people younger than 65. Children under 10 were the most vulnerable, and those ages 25 to 29 followed.

Any presumption that older people would be the chief victims of the next pandemic — as they were in Covid — is wrong, and any policy so premised could leave healthy young adults and children exposed to a lethal virus.

The second dangerous assumption is that public health measures like school and business closings and masking had little impact. That is incorrect.

Australia, Germany and Switzerland are among the countries that demonstrated those interventions can succeed. Even the experience of the United States provides overwhelming, if indirect, evidence of the success of those public health measures.

The evidence comes from influenza, which transmits like Covid, with nearly one-third of cases transmitted by asymptomatic people. The winter before Covid, influenza killed an estimated 25,000 here ; in that first pandemic winter, influenza deaths were under 800. The public health steps taken to slow Covid contributed significantly to this decline, and those same measures no doubt affected Covid as well.

So the question isn’t whether those measures work. They do. It’s whether their benefits outweigh their social and economic costs. This will be a continuing calculation.

Such measures can moderate transmission, but they cannot be sustained indefinitely. And even the most extreme interventions cannot eliminate a pathogen that escapes initial containment if, like influenza or the virus that causes Covid-19, it is both airborne and transmitted by people showing no symptoms. Yet such interventions can achieve two important goals.

The first is preventing hospitals from being overrun. Achieving this outcome could require a cycle of imposing, lifting and reimposing public health measures to slow the spread of the virus. But the public should accept that because the goal is understandable, narrow and well defined.

The second objective is to slow transmission to buy time for identifying, manufacturing and distributing therapeutics and vaccines and for clinicians to learn how to manage care with the resources at hand. Artificial intelligence will perhaps be able to extrapolate from mountains of data which restrictions deliver the most benefits — whether, for example, just closing bars would be enough to significantly dampen spread — and which impose the greatest cost. A.I. should also speed drug development. And wastewater monitoring can track the pathogen’s movements and may make it possible to limit the locations where interventions are needed.

Still, what’s achievable will depend on the pathogen’s severity and transmissibility, and, as we sadly learned in the United States, how well — or poorly — leaders communicate the goals and the reasons behind them.

Specifically, officials will confront whether to impose the two most contentious interventions, school closings and mask mandates. What should they do?

Children are generally superspreaders of respiratory disease and can have disproportionate impact. Indeed, vaccinating children against pneumococcal pneumonia can cut the disease by 87 percent in people 50 and older. And schools were central to spreading the pandemics of 1957, 1968 and 2009. So there was good reason to think closing schools during Covid would save many lives.

In fact, closing schools did reduce Covid’s spread, yet the consensus view is that any gain was not worth the societal disruption and damage to children’s social and educational development. But that tells us nothing about the future. What if the next pandemic is deadlier than 1957’s but as in 1957, 48 percent of excess deaths are among those younger than 15 and schools are central to spread? Would it make sense to close schools then?

Masks present a much simpler question. They work. We’ve known they work since 1917, when they helped protect soldiers from a measles epidemic. A century later, all the data on Covid have actually demonstrated significant benefits from masks.

But whether to mandate masks is a difficult call. Too many people wear poorly fitted masks or wear them incorrectly. So even without adding in the complexities of politics, compliance is a problem. Whether government mask mandates will be worth the resistance they foment will depend on the severity of the virus.

That does not mean that institutions and businesses can’t or shouldn’t require masks. Nor does it mean we can’t increase the use of masks with better messaging. People accept smoking bans because they understand long-term exposure to secondhand smoke can cause cancer. A few minutes of exposure to Covid can kill. Messaging that combines self-protection with communitarian values could dent resistance significantly.

Individuals should want to protect themselves, given the long-term threat to their health. An estimated 7 percent of Americans have been affected by long Covid of varying severity, and a re-infection can still set it off in those who have so far avoided it. The 1918 pandemic also caused neurological and cardiovascular problems lasting decades, and children exposed in utero suffered worse health and higher mortality than their siblings. We can expect the same from the next pandemic.

What should we learn from the past? Every pandemic we have good information about was unique. That makes information itself the most valuable commodity. We must gather it, analyze it, act upon it and communicate it.

Epidemiological information can answer the biggest question: whether to deploy society-wide public health interventions at all. But the epidemiology of the virus is hardly the only information that matters. Before Covid vaccines were available, the single drug that saved the most lives was dexamethasone. Health officials in Britain discovered its effectiveness because the country has a shared data system that enabled them to analyze the efficacy of treatments being tried around the country. We have no comparable system in the United States. We need one.

Perhaps most important, government officials and health care experts must communicate to the public effectively. The United States failed dismally at this. There was no organized effort to counter social media disinformation, and experts damaged their own credibility by reversing their advice several times. They could have avoided these self-inflicted wounds by setting public expectations properly. The public should have been told that scientists had never seen this virus before, that they were giving their best advice based on their knowledge at the time and that their advice could — and probably would — change as more information came in. Had they done this, they probably would have retained more of the public’s confidence.

Trust matters. A pre-Covid analysis of the pandemic readiness of countries around the world rated the United States first because of its resources. Yet America had the second-worst rate of infections of any high-income country.

A pandemic analysis of 177 countries published in 2022 found that resources did not correlate with infections. Trust in government and fellow citizens did. That’s the lesson we really need to remember for the next time.

John M. Barry, a scholar at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, is the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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A Year After COVID-19, Pastors Reflect on Lessons Learned

Insights | Faith & Culture | May 10, 2024

Nearly a year after the official end of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, pastors are looking back on the lessons they learned.

By Tobin Perry

Pastors in 2020 did many things they never thought they would. They preached to empty rooms, became overnight tech experts, hosted drive-in worship services, and led online small groups. The pandemic ushered church leaders into uncharted territories as they navigated pastoral care from a distance and dealt with the complex needs of their congregations during a time of dramatic global uncertainty.

But at the top of the list of things pastors did in 2020 that they never thought they’d do is cancel in-person worship services.

Herschel York remembers joking with a reporter about the improbability of canceling worship services at the church he pastored, Buck Run Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, just a few days before every church in the country was calling off public worship services.

“I said when they cancel the NCAA Tournament and the Kentucky Sweet 16, then call me back,” York said.

By the end of the week, the NCAA had canceled their tournament. For the first time in a century, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association did the same. And York had canceled the services at Buck Run Baptist Church, not holding another until the first Sunday in May when the congregation met outside.

COVID’s impact on pastors and churches

York’s experience mirrors that of church leaders across the country. Now, nearly a year after the government concluded the public health emergency in the United States, pastors are looking back on the lessons they learned during one of the most unusual ministry experiences of the past century.

According to a 2021 LifeWay Research study , the percentage of pastors who felt overwhelmed in pastoral ministry increased by nine points from 2015 to 2021 (54% to 63%), even though fewer pastors believed they had to be available 24/7.

The same study noted a statistically insignificant percentage of pastors leaving ministry during the first year and a half of the pandemic, despite the well-worn narrative that suggested the opposite. A Hartford Institute for Religion Research study showed that over three-quarters of pastors never questioned their ministry calling during the pandemic.

Navigating rapid change

James Murray, pastor of Centerville Baptist Church in Kelly, North Carolina, remembers a period of ministry marked by frequently changing plans. As state and federal guidelines changed—along with hospital protocols—Murray had to adjust.

“I’ll never forget that first time they started allowing clergy back into the hospital,” Murray said. “I was so thankful to be able to go see somebody who was having a surgery again.”

Bobby Pell, who planted Northwoods Church in Evansville, Indiana, in 2002, echoed Murray’s sentiments about the fluctuating conditions during COVID-19.

“One of our greatest challenges was decision-making. We’d have staff meetings on Monday morning, set our course, only to find government guidelines changing within days, rendering our decisions obsolete—particularly in those initial six weeks. This forced us to streamline our decision-making process. It felt like we were playing chess. And I quickly realized I was far from a grandmaster in navigating these unpredictable changes.”

Like most pastors, Pell had to learn to preach to a nearly empty room. The experience showed him how much he’d depended upon the feedback of the congregation during his sermons. Before, he could see from the congregation’s response how much they liked the sermon. Now he had only a computer screen to judge his effectiveness.

“I believe this experience helped my preaching in the long term,” Pell said. “It made me realize, ultimately, God’s Word is sufficient, whether the congregation is giving positive or negative feedback. Understanding this helped me rely more on the sufficiency of Scripture.”

During COVID, Pell began listening to five to 15 sermons a week, a practice he has continued. As he listened to more sermons, he consciously shortened his own messages, realizing how difficult it can be to pay attention to longer ones.

Advice for future pastors

While the once-in-a-lifetime confluence of events in 2020 (a global pandemic, major racial stress, and a controversial presidential election) seems unlikely to repeat together in the near future, York believes churches must be ready for significant, ministry-altering events to happen again in the coming years. It’s critical, he believes, for churches to have a game plan for what to do. Central to that plan is a strong emphasis on worship and preaching. Everything else must be secondary.

“Whatever else we have to cut, we’re not going to cut that,” said York, who retired in January after pastoring Buck Run Baptist for 21 years and now serves as the dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. “We’ll do whatever it takes to continue that, even if we have to do it virtually.”

Pell and Murray urge future pastors encountering something like the COVID pandemic to lean on the support of other pastors and ministry leaders.

Murray says other local pastors provided critical support during this period. They often bounced ideas off of one another and leaned on the wisdom of one another.

“Don’t face ministry alone, pandemic or not. The isolation brought on by the pandemic underscores this even more,” Murray said. “Maintain open communication with your church leaders and lean on fellow pastors, especially those who’ve navigated similar challenges. It’s crucial not to navigate these times in isolation.”

Pell says one ministry colleague was particularly helpful to him during this period.

“The conversation was so helpful because he was thinking about things I should have been thinking about and visa-versa,” Pell said. “It only happened when you put us in the room together. I found that invaluable.”

Ministry shifts during COVID

Like many ministry leaders, Pell notes some who attended Northwoods before COVID never returned after the restrictions were lifted. Of the church’s 500 pre-pandemic regular attendees, about 100 didn’t return. COVID particularly impacted the church’s small group ministry.

Once Pell and other Northwoods leaders came to grips with these changes, they shifted their strategy. Recognizing the value of small group ministry, they organized Sunday night gatherings twice a month on the church grounds, where everyone comes together for a meal and participates in both large and small group activities. Today, the church’s small group participation is higher than it was pre-pandemic.

“The pandemic showed me that ministry is full of fault lines, many of which I’m not initially aware of. It has taught me the importance of being open to change,” Pell said. “Adapting is crucial for overcoming challenges like a pandemic or any significant crisis.”

Murray noted both positive and negative post-pandemic ramifications for his church. Like Pell, he notes that many people never returned to church after the pandemic. But, he says, the pandemic also created a strong desire in many to gather for worship and find renewal.

“I remember that first gathering we had outdoors; we were threatened by rain, yet people still came,” Murray said. “Everyone was there, so excited to see one another. It created a renewed desire for many folks to gather. I think anytime you go through difficulties together with your leadership, it’s going to strengthen those bonds. It really helped strengthen the relationships I had with our leaders in our church and with some other pastors as we went through these things together. So, while it might have put a strain on a lot of relationships, it strengthened a lot of others by knowing that we’ve navigated this stuff together.”

For permission to republish this article, contact Marissa Postell Sullivan .

Tobin Perry

@TobinPerry

Tobin is a freelance writer in Evansville, Indiana.

Stay the Course: A Pastor’s Guide to Navigating the Restless Waters of Ministry

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