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The Pandemic One Year Later – How it Has Changed Us

Pandemic
The pandemic meant that places that are normally thronged with tourists, including the Monastiraki neighborhood in Athens, lay empty for much of 2020. Credit: Greek Reporter

One year after it began in earnest in Europe and the Americas, what has the pandemic done to us? Has it taught us any lasting lessons? Has it taught us so many lessons — that we would rather not have learned — that it has scarred us all for life?

Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine Centers for Disease Control, spoke last week at a press conference about how he believes the pandemic has changed people and what we must do to keep victory in sight.

As part of his job, Shah has addressed the public — at first, every weekday, now only twice a week — since the beginning of the pandemic. He has provided a measured, reassuring voice to the public, explaining in detail exactly what needed to be done at each point in the process in order to make it through the horrors of this past year.

vaccine
A couple going to get their vaccines on the island of Symi. Credit: Greek Reporter

381 million doses of coronavirus vaccine administered so far

Now, with vaccine rolllout moving along at a frantic pace all over the US, Shah took a few moments during his presentation last week to look back on the terrors — and the lessons learned — from this past year.

As of this week, as we mark the one-year anniversary of the first coronavirus-related restrictions in the United States, health authorities around the country have administered more than 100 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.

In recounting the numbers that told the story of how the pandemic raged through the nation, Shah said that the figures show “not just the impact of Covid-19 but also the collaboration, the teamwork, the camaraderie that has been generated by our response.

“It truly takes a number of different actors coming together to mount the response that we have,” he noted.

Around the globe, more than 381 million doses of the vaccines have now been given out — and the pace of inoculations in the US comes to two million each day. In many areas, armies of volunteers have assembled to help in the massive global effort to rid the world of the coronavirus.

Pandemic was a “Long day’s journey into night”

Dr. Shah stated that it had been “One year since we began this long day’s journey into night. One year during which the unfathomable became the commonplace with, frankly, unnerving frequency.

“Some numbers tell us where we are, some numbers tell us where we’ve been and some numbers tell us where we might be going.”

However, figures, he says, are “notable for what they don’t capture. And that’s the thing with numbers — metrics matter. But not everything that matters can be measured.”

“The number (of dead) can’t  even begin to capture the sorrow, the grief, the loss” that families have had to come to terms with in the past year.

2,600,000 victims of Covid-19 globally

To date, a total of 2,600,000 people have lost their lives after battling with Covid-19. In Greece alone, a total of 7,137 people have died with the coronavirus.

“Worse yet,” the Maine CDC director added, “what that number doesn’t even begin to convey is how the process  of dying itself has changed during Covid. Because of Covid and the various restrictions that health care facilities have imposed, dying has become, for many, a solitary affair.

“And as a result, many families  have been deprived of the opportunity to be with those that they love in their final days. Even harder is that the process of experiencing grief, a process that is already difficult, can be made easier by being able to share.

Normal grieving process impossible

“That process, of grieving collectively, as family, and in groups, has been something that many families have not been able to do because of  Covid,” Shah noted.

This is something that numbers don’t even begin to capture, and the ramifications of the isolation of the families of the dying is impossible to measure. Only time will tell how much psychological damage has been done by the isolation and social distancing that has been imposed as a result of the virus raging across the planet.

So far, a total of 369 million coronavirus tests have been performed in the United States — more than one for every single citizen. But as Shah pointed out, that statistic has two sides. Yes, it is helpful and encouraging to see that many tests being performed — but the figure does not show the anxiety of all those who have been tested, who had to wait for the results.

Anxiety and depression saw huge increase in 2020

Anxiety and depression have unfortunately spiked in populations worldwide in the past year.

Kaiser Family Foundation researchers state that “during the pandemic, about 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, a share that has been largely consistent, up from one in ten adults who reported these symptoms from January to June 2019.”

Shah noted “How much on one hand the pandemic has been punctuated by anxiety, but also riven with boredom.

“We’ve been anxious because we don’t really ever quite know in a pandemic whether things will get better or worse. But we’ve also all experienced boredom because of the unbearable sameness of it all.

“It’s almost as if March of 2020 blurred into March of 2021 with little recollection of the year in between,” he stated.

“Sameness” of events makes them harder to process

“It’s a function of how little we’ve moved, both physically and metaphorically,” he declared. “So much of our lives, whether it’s work meetings, conferences, parties, reunions, family dinners — even funerals — have all occurred in the same physical space, on that same cramped screen, from that same chair.

“And as a result of that sameness, these events are harder to process  and harder to differentiate from one another.

“In effect, we are now all on the Zoom where it happens.”

Just going to work during this past year has posed a risk to health care providers, EMS workers and so many others, as they had to come face to face with the public each and every day.

In most cases, many teachers and others who have worked since the beginning of the pandemic have still not been vaccinated.

“A scarcity of friends”

“The pandemic has been marked by scarcity – both of PPE and of testing,” Shah stated, before adding “But there are other types of scarcity that have been brought into view by the pandemic.

“Throughout Covid, so many Maine people have struggled with the scarcity of basic necessities, like food, healthcare — and even friends,” he noted.

“All of us have endured. But some of us have endured more than others. The elderly for example, were affected in significant ways. In addition to suffering the majority of deaths, they struggled with things with things that many of us might take for granted.”

However, the outpouring of volunteers who helped to provide meals and financial assistance during the pandemic has been nothing short of outstanding. At the beginning of the outbreak, dentists and others whose offices had been shuttered delivered their unused PPE to hospitals.

Armies of volunteers helping others over the past year

Members of the public everywhere who had been asked to donate usable masks and respirators flocked to healthcare centers that had asked for them, giving of whatever they had on hand.

Manufacturers across the nation and the world converted their machinery from making cars to making ventilators and from making clothing to making masks. As has happened elsewhere, Shah noted, “Maine came together at its core rather than coming apart at the seams.”

People forced to do the impossible somehow found creative ways to keep access to social contacts and education, as Zoomed meetings and online classroom instruction became the norm across the globe.

The pandemic made several underlying issues come to light, however, as crises always seem to do.

The pandemic has worsened the daily challenges for people who were living on the margins, who were already just trying to get by, to have food and a roof over their head.

Poverty rates skyrocketing globally

The World Bank estimates that the pandemic will plunge “an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty,” with the total rising to as many as 150 million during 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction in the corners of the world most affected.

“More than anything, what has been remarkable about the pandemic has been how much all of us have changed,” the CDC director stated.

Perhaps the isolation caused by the pandemic has allowed us to see the most important parts and people of our life in stark relief, as if they were etched with a laser… And also what, and sometimes who — is not important to us at all.

Families spending more time together as never before

Professional sports have taken a nosedive in the past year, as families got out of doors and engaged in outdoor activities together — even with just pickup games in the backyard. The connections we used to make to the imaginary lives of people on television and in the movies have taken a back seat to the drama that we have lived this past year with those who are closest to us.

And that can only be a positive thing as we move forward into a new, post-pandemic world.

And as Dr. Shah went on to add, the extremely encouraging news on the vaccine front makes us very hopeful as 2021 unfolds.

“That, he said, “is our road to recovery.

“The pathway back toward normalcy”

“Our future will be different from our recent past. But there will be a gradual resumption of not just the activities but also the places in which they traditionally occur. We all want to get back to the way things were before.

“To be not ‘on the Zoom where it happens’, but ‘in the room where it happens’. We want that as  much for the familiarity as well as for the novelty of those experiences. That is the promise of vaccination,” he stated.

“That is the pathway back toward normalcy.”

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