Hi. You’ve made it. I hope you know how strong you are, and if you don’t, I’m here to remind you.
What do you know now that you didn’t when it started?
This has been a year of intense, relentless, painful learning for all of us.
I’ll bet that you, like me, have ingested and digested an unprecedented amount of medical, physiological, immunology, epidemiology, economic information. We, led by thousands of researchers across the world, have had to hit the ground running to reach even the most superficial understanding of what has befallen us.
Still, however large the quantity of hard knowledge we’ve had to accumulate, it pales in comparison with the social, personal, psychoemotional growth (maturing? aging?) we all experienced.
Today, as we mark the first anniversary of shutdowns in many of our countries, I just want to reflect on what has happened, starting with the hardest.
1. Despondency
It’s a cliché, but I think it’s worth saying it again: this crisis has lifted the veil on who we are, collectively.
I’ve always been one to manage expectations. Until Covid-19, I was a relative stranger to disappointment. I expected people to be people. I, like many of you, expected the United States of Trump epically to fuck this up. I expected Bolsonaro’s Brazil to turn into the humanitarian catastrophe that it is now. It did not shock me when Boris Johnson, mouthpiece for his former advisor Dominic Cummings and U.K. Prime Minister, delayed the response because they thought herd immunity was a good idea. It broke my heart, but I expected it.
I knew there would be ignorance, obstinacy, hubris, cruelty, selfishness, and carelessness. What I didn’t expect is the extent to which they already corroded politics and science, or how thin they would stretch my personal relationships. Katie put it best:
It came in the shape of political leaders I thought we could trust, like France President Emmanuel Macron. I voted for the guy, not as a default against the far-right, but because I thought he was a man of reason who would ground his decisions in hard data and research if required. He even impressed me when he reacted swiftly in the first two months of the crisis, bringing infections down to stunningly low levels. All this goodwill began to evaporate not only when he opened everything up at once, allowing the virus to take over, but also when he reshuffled his team to keep risk management as an afterthought. Then they implemented a series of nonsensical measures that only deepened resentment and desire to break rules. Then, once France was comfortably settled on a plateau of 20,000 new cases a day for 2 months (a country of 67 million, yes, that’s HIGH), Macron’s team told the press that he’s so clever he may as well be an epidemiologist (some of us now refer to him as Epidemiologist The First — at least there is laughter). I do not want to vote for him again.
He wasn’t alone. There was Sweden, which is so incapable of tolerating debate and opposition to its now-debunked herd immunity strategy both sides are trading death threats. Or California, when they closed all outdoors recreation spaces (AGAIN: OUTDOORS IS THE SAFEST PLACE YOU CAN BE) whilst Governor Gavin Newson dined at the much-fêted The French Laundry:
This would’ve been enough to break me, but then there were a loud contingent of unhinged medical doctors and other PhD havers (remember ultracrepidarians?). For a non-exhaustive list of them, look for the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, to which I will not link. They peddled misinformation. They pushed ineffective and dangerous treatments. They minimised the crisis. They shoved aside the growing cohort of Covid long-haulers. They made up CO2 poisoning as a consequence of mask-wearing. They rose against what they described as a “loss of liberty” (never mind that one of the great principles of liberty is that yours stops where mine begins). They muddled the conversation, confused the public, and created an incalculable amount of damage.
And there were people I love who flaunted the rules either because they didn’t want to hear “bad news” (“please stop giving me anxiety”), or because, whilst they understood the risks, they didn’t care.
There was also the revelation of what we already knew: we were not all equal in the face of this crisis. It turns out vulnerable people were far more vulnerable than we knew. Whether it was skin colour, ethnicity, immigration status, level of income, age, disability, gender, the suffering hit some of us in shockingly disproportionate ways. This was true in the U.S., where inequalities were always clear. But it was true across the EU, too. In France, the excess mortality amongst immigrants and their descendants was multiples that of citizens. Same in the U.K. and Germany. Yet in many of these places, we argued that we must “live with the virus.”
We could not be bothered, so we prolonged the suffering, escalated unemployment and poverty, increased deaths and lifelong disabilities. Forget what we want to be. This is what we are, as Western societies. This is what we’ve chosen to be, and I’m not sure we’re going to change.
2. Bright spots
In all this, there were things that filled me with hope.
The first was the research community. The way they rallied. The speed and the abandon with which they threw themselves into work to model, grasp, and solve this disaster. Do you even know what a feat it is that they made vaccines in less than a year? Can you imagine how many lives they’re going to save? Beyond that, have you any notion of what leap mRNA technology represents in the fight against infectious diseases? DO YOU KNOW HOW LUCKY WE ARE TO LIVE NOW? My God. Science gives me chills. It makes me cry. Without it, we’d be nowhere.
The second was those few countries who simply would not hear of it. Taiwan. China. Vietnam. Singapore. New Zealand. Australia. No-nonsense shutdowns, clear communication, zero (ZERO) infections, and an average of 10 extra points of economic growth compared with the rest of us. Reading about their strategies gave me proof that we’re capable of the best if we choose it (and it aggravated me even more that we didn’t meet the challenge).
At a smaller and more uneven scale, I am immeasurably proud of the people of New York City, who rallied in the most difficult circumstances. Residents, who used the lessons of the first wave, masked up and gathered on sidewalks and streets (how I underestimated them!). Local authorities, who reopened parks as soon as data came out on how safe they are. Teachers, who demanded safety in schools, then rolled with it when they saw the measures they’d asked for were working. Restaurant workers, who rallied wherever possible to build terraces and warm them up. Patrons, who showed up safely. Health care workers, who went to work, assailed by dread, to meet death and chaos. Protesters who marched all spring and summer, and still managed to avoid infecting each other despite tear gas and kettling. Young volunteers, who have been clicking every day and every night for months to secure jab appointments for their elders. To those who showed up, even in the darkest of times, you have my admiration and gratitude.
3. Moi
I saw the worst and the best of me. I hit my limits so many times. I lost my patience in appalling ways, with my kids and my partner. I shut out my extended family for two whole months because I couldn’t bear to watch them live. I experienced a dread that would not go away and I resisted mourning what I had thought was reality. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night, remembering the sirens that tore NYC’s eery silence last spring. I found that in the depths of rage and fear, I did not know how to let go. I still don’t.
Yet in the midst of that, I homeschooled my kids for most of the year (whilst working full time). I helped them learn how to read. I watched my partner show up for us, every day. I saw him stoke a passion in the little ones for Greek mythology. I listened to my bike guy tell me about the death of his son, and I watched him cry, and cried with him. I made a point of keeping all the holidays and used them to have deep, important conversations. I found my friends and sought their help and comfort, and gave it right back. I produced more work than I had in years. I started this newsletter. I attended classes and kept myself studying, and digging, and moving. We took our babies camping. I found new ways of speaking to those I love. I began to apologise more easily. I accepted how vulnerable I really am. And I remembered, every day, how bloody lucky we have been.
How to use this: I hope that my reflections on what went down for me will help you do the same.