The End of the Panny-Dee
I think what I wanted out of an “end” of the pandemic was feeling like it was actually over, that we would celebrate it being over and we would mourne the unthinkable tragedy, fear, and loss of social fabric.
Instead what we got is a boring collective amnesia, a mass forgetting the uncertainty, distancing from friends, and how we changed society for just a minute to center workers.
I feel like I’m one of the only ones that remembers.
It makes me feel crazy that I think about how COVID-19 is the number 4 cause of death in the US (in 2022) and that long-COVID could cause a whole generation of unknown future health problems. And everyone just decided to move on with their lives as if nothing happened.
The unbearable news cycle made up “quiet quitting”, CEOs and executives are demanding return to office in an effort to take back that worker power gained when we all saw that working from home was not the end of the world. Workers should be demanding flexibility now that we’ve demonstrated it for three years. Instead companies are laying people off in droves.
Do you remember the beginning?
Who remembers the beginning of the pandemic?
Do you remember “flatten the curve”?
Do you remember standing in line at the grocery store? Hanging out with friends outside in parks all year round? Putting on a mask to pick up your food from your local restaurant’s makeshift order window (built by putting a table in front of the door)? Takeout alcohol? Comprehensive data about the state of the pandemic?
And then the very start of it all, the stay at home orders, the WHO declaring a pandemic, governments trying to muddle their way through messaging.
All around I felt the pandemic around me, but in this feeling of shared responsibility and community. We started the slow streets program in San Francisco, closed JFK through Golden Gate Park and The Great Highway to cars! There were bands playing in the street, block parties, people going on lots of walks!
Sometimes I miss the beginning of the pandemic. It really felt like we were out here for each other in a big way - even through the fear and uncertainty.
The Great Forgetting
Instead what we got was a great forgetting. The pandemic and the George Floyd protests made it feel like we were really reckoning with deep intrinsic harms that this country has been perpetuating on a variety of levels. We could fight back against cops! (see Portland for nearly a year during the protests) We could have work flexibility! We could recognize essential workers as being essential! We could forgive debt and just give people money! (do you remember the pandemic checks??) Through it all we were gaining something!
Only for everyone to wish to “go back to the way things were”?? Are you kidding me? The way things were sucked! This was a chance to forge a new path, a new awareness of our history and power. At the end, I hoped for us definitively ending the pandemic (maybe that was never realistic) and on the other side we’d stand up, triumphant. Not just battling the pandemic but battling our other demons. But instead we opted for a bland forgetting where we just went back to the bad old times.
Now the only reminders of the pandemic are the old social distancing and masking stickers on the windows of stores, or the worn down marks on the floor of where to stand in line to stay six feet apart - now ignored. It’s one of the few ways that I know the past four years wasn’t just a fever dream.
I want us to remember what happened and to act like it’s still happening (it is) and to have a real ending like we had a real beginning. A time to mourne and to celebrate.
