We heard whispering.
We knew something was coming but no one could have imagined its true destruction.
March 2020 was when the world seemed to end. A cataclysmic event, the likes of which we hadn’t seen in 100 years.
Four years ago, fear, worry, panic, death and the unknown became a part of our everyday lives.
COVID became a word that infested every aspect of our existence. And decided all our fates going forward.
Individually and as a country, we have not dealt with the seismic shift that occurred.
Human nature is such we want to forget. Act as though that terrible year and all its consequences didn’t happen.
But the scars are still there. We are just beginning to see through the devastation and feel like we can finally breath.
To some extent we are all suffering from PTSD.
First comes the trauma. The immediate reaction and experience to a life-threatening or emotionally stressful event. But when that trauma isn’t processed, it can progress to a more lingering process -where the events, fears, and memories are replayed over and over again. Or shoved so deep they’ll never be accessed.
The horrors are still too painful to accept.
Bodies stacked up in refrigerated storage units because death was so rampant and overwhelming regular morgues couldn’t accommodate them.
Disinfecting anything we touched- mail, groceries, boxes, carts. . .
Wearing masks, even outside.
Stopping all human contact.
Keeping six feet apart.
Shuttered businesses.
Schools closed.
Empty streets.
Locked down at home.
Those dying in the hospital forced to face masked staffers and doctors. Left alone in their pain and anguish.
It killed thousands of my colleagues who gave their lives on the front lines so others could live.
It wasn’t until the massive roll out of vaccines in 2021, wide spread access to a treatment (paxlovid) in May, 2023 and financial infusions into our economy that allowed us to move finally forward.
Now four years later we can:
Buy toilet paper.
Shop inside stores.
Eat at restaurants.
Watch a big screen movie.
Stop wondering if we are sick and contagious because tests weren’t available.
Stop searching for masks because there was a nationwide shortage.
Stop disinfecting everything when cleaning supplies were non-existent.
4 years ago we were told COVID would,
“disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear,”
It did not.
We can finally breath without coverage, share with all our loved ones in person and actually shake hands with strangers if we choose. Just like we use to. I still recommend washing hands before eating or touching your face but the option is very real.
Not like 2020.
Are we better?
Without Question.
We have the best financial recovery from COVID in the world.
Greatest job market since the 1960’s.
Violent crime is at a 40-year low.
Unemployment, rampant in 2020 when businesses were shuttered, is below 4%.
The stock market is at an all-time high.
Deaths and illness are significantly lower.
Still too high, at hundreds a day due to the lies, misinformation and distrust some purposely spread that could have kept the public safe. But nowhere near the thousands of souls lost daily throughout 2020, when it peaked at twelve thousand deaths a day in December 2020 and January 2021.
Human nature wants to erase what happened in the past. Especially such a trauma. Pretend it didn’t happen.
But it did. And we will never be the same.
We all have a degree of PTSD.
Ignoring, diminishing or altering the facts won’t change what we shared, lived, felt and saw. Nor the consequences we are still struggling to resolve.
Children, parents, siblings, spouses without loved ones.
Friends and co-workers gone forever.
Those still living with long COVID symptoms.
Businesses destroyed.
Devastating losses to the medical field.
I cannot forget.
I did not close my doors for one minute during the pandemic. My staff and I struggled as best we could with updates and changing knowledge based on scientific research in order to provide quality, continued care to all our patients.
We cannot forget.
That’s how we repeat horrors. And disrespect the over 7 million lives lost worldwide and almost 1.2 million in the US. The highest number of deaths from COVID, in any country, in the world. Brazil was next, losing almost three quarters of a million. Then India at just over half a million.
Are we better four years later?
Thank goodness the answer is a resounding, yes!
-https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/nurses-and-essential-workers-the-sacrificial-lambs-of-us-pandemics-in-1918-and-2020/
-https://www.washingtonian.com/2024/03/13/four-years-ago-today-we-leapt-into-the-unknown/
-https://www.npr.org/sections/latest-updates-trump-covid-19-results/2020/10/02/919432383/how-trump-has-downplayed-the-coronavirus-pandemic
-https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-have-long-covid/
-https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
-https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries