The Globe’s Point: One Year Of COVID-19

Well, Pioneers, it seems only natural that we pen the staff editorial that you have probably been expecting for some time now: reflections on the coronavirus pandemic one year out. 

It is a little startling to confront the reality that, yes, we are just a few days away from the one-year anniversary of when we received that fateful email from the President’s Office informing us that classes were to be held remotely for the rest of the Spring 2020 semester. 

It is difficult to recall what our exact emotions were at that time. Fear, definitely, of the unknown and the unprecedented, a word you probably never wanted to see as often as you have by this point. Some people were more casual, thinking of this as the extreme version of an extended snow day and that everything would be fine by the fall. 

As we should have expected, experts’ fears turned out to be much more accurate than the casual dismissals of the situation. In the U.S., there have been over 520,000 total deaths and 28 million total cases recorded by the Center for Disease Control as of Monday, March 8. Johns Hopkins’ data has recorded 116 million cases and 2.5 million deaths worldwide since the start of the pandemic. 

But we become insensitive to numbers when they reach a certain point, where we as human beings are unable to comprehend what they truly mean. Individual stories better convey the horror this pandemic has wreaked in a year—in more ways than just the transmission of the virus. Thousands of small business and restaurant owners have had to shutter their doors permanently. Younger people’s mental health has plummeted to abominable levels during social isolation. Mass grave sites—something we never considered would be used in the 21st Century—were set up in multiple states at the pandemic’s worst moments. The impacts are innumerable because literally everyone on the planet has been impacted by COVID-19. 

So what have we learned, if anything? In many ways, we seem to still be at the same crossroads of where we started: people taking the virus seriously and those who are not. Month after month, there is this constant push and pull between enforcing and lifting mask mandates, occupancy limits and travel restrictions. 

Nothing seems to change, and both sides become aggravated. Pioneers, if you are feeling weary one year into this pandemic, you are not alone. After all, misery does love company.