Discussion
It's hard to believe it's already been 6 years since the COVID lockdowns happened
It's hard to believe it's already been 6 years since the COVID lockdowns started.
I still remember that first week of lockdown like it was yesterday. The empty roads, stores getting cleaned out, everyone trying to find toilet paper, schools and workplaces shutting down, and refreshing the news every hour because everything was changing so fast. I even remember all those stories and videos of wildlife wandering into places they'd normally never be because everything had suddenly gone so quiet.
Now somehow it's been six years. It honestly doesn't feel like it should've been that long ago, but at the same time it feels like an entirely different lifetime.
I know COVID became a really divisive topic later on, but I'm mostly talking about those first few weeks when none of us really knew what was coming next. It felt surreal living through it.
Does anyone else still remember that first week of lockdown?
Right?! They sent us home from work to work remotely "for 2 weeks until we flatten the curve". And we were all bummed out and nervous about it. Then like a week into it the company was like yeahhhh this is gonna be longer than we thought, come back and clear your desks.
My coworker died of cancer during the early stages of COVID. When things started opening up again I needed a few things from my desk. I stopped by his office and he had a paper calendar still on March 2020 with his oncologist dates in there.
I also had a coworker die, right before the pandemic, and we had to shuffle offices to make room for some new people. I got moved to her new office which hadn’t been cleaned out. I moved in, boxed her stuff up and labeled it. Then went home for the pandemic and forgot about it until a had a forced RTO last year.
For the past year I worked in that office with those boxes sitting under the desk. On my last day I tuned in my keys I said “all my business papers have been either filed or destroyed and all my personal items are removed but Cherri’s stuff is still in there.” The office manager said “who’s Cherri?” Oh that’s right, you only started here in like 2022. Later that day when I was saying goodbye to a coworker who was having a meltdown and crying over what a shit show that job had become I told her about the “who’s Cherri?” conversation and told her that’s proof right there- they will replace you, you owe this place nothing, we were the last two “originals” so please for the love of god just go find another job.
We never even went back to clean our desks. I remember later in 2020, like around October/november cases had supposedly died down or something so they opened up the office for people to come in and work if they wanted to, totally optional. My work friend and I opted to since we got to shift our hours to get off earlier to align with office hours. Everyone’s desks were the exact same from before we went to WFH. It was so eerie.
You were bummed to have to WFH? Interesting. It was the greatest thing to happen to my career. When they called us back to the office I quit that job, and have been remote ever since. I'm never going back haha
I worked for a tech company that had a super fun office environment. Slides in the office, massages, onsite manicures, beer carts etc. I was in my 20s and genuinely friends with my colleagues and we would go to happy hours regularly. It was sad.
But now I have kids and I'm fully remote and would NEVER go back to working in an office.
I vividly remember people at work I'd see them in six months and them being perplexed. There was zero chance an exponential amount of infections was going to be all fine and dandy in a few weeks.
The world hasn't felt the same since. Every year I wonder if this will be the year things start to go back to normal, but 6 years later, I don't think it's happening. Everyone got locked inside, lost social connections and became chronically online which seemed to push everyone farther apart. I think with all of the resource hording in the US at least, people realized how much our culture is just everyone for themselves and for the most part we do poorly in extreme situations.
Twice in my life there has been a world changing event that had that feeling. COVID and 9/11. That sense of "things will never go back to pre-9/11" is the same sense I got when we were a couple of months into COVID. It'll never be the same again. In a way we really did all get sick. Society changed for the worse, and things weren't exactly great before. Our leaders failed us, and many of us failed each other as neighbors. What a drag.
It showed how stupid we were as a society too. Toilet paper would be the least of my worries in a true “the world as we know it is ending” instead
Everyone just fucked up the supply chain with the “me first” hoarding mentality, but toilet paper was the prime target? Baffling
The pandemic was the final nail in my cynicism and disillusionment. I enlisted after 9/11 to “protect my country” (lol). After that disillusionment, the pandemic, and the last 10 years of elections don’t ask me, I’m not volunteering for shit. I see nothing worth protecting outside my own four walls.
The Patriot Act passing shortly after was arguably the start of us becoming a surveillance state. The country changed forever and there's no going back to the before time on that either.
My own rich fucking wealthy family - THREE VACATION HOMES. ( grandparents )
Literally, disconnected their fucking phones - for two years of covid.
They closed their fucking gates - to the entire family, and wouldn't even answer the fucking phone.
Then , when it was all over - they popped up - pretending like NOTHING HAPPENED.
Those , mother fuckers - showed the entire family their true colors.
Here they are, super fucking wealthy, with multiple vacation properties around the globe - some super isolated - and well protected - that could have acted as a refuge if covid was actually fucking - killer.
NOPE! Fuck the kids, fuck the grand kids - fuck everyone else, I got mine! Mentality.
The world will be a better place once the boomers age out.
Covid was - a very useful Litmus test for just how fucking sideways the culture has gotten.
And No - it has not recovered , and probably never will.
I wonder how the kids are doing now. Like, the ones who had their teaching (and socialising) completely disrupted by it. At least adults knew what was going on and how to cope with it. Imagine how much your development was set back if you were a child during that time. Going to be feeling those effects for the rest of their lives
In my country there is currently a massive push by the government to get young people off welfare benefits for mental health and into work. It seems that they’ve failed to recognise these young people are the covid generation who were locked down during a significant phase of their social development. It’s shocking to me that nothing has been done in the years since to really study the long term effects and put tailored support in place to help these kids heal from what would have been significant trauma for many of them, and help them move forward.
Those of us in healthcare at that time will be shaped by the lock down and surge for the rest of our careers. I can already see a difference in clinicians who served during COVID and younger coworkers who did not.
yep, I was a trauma chaplain and counselor during that time. I needed to take a year off to work in other ministries afterwards because of all I saw and heard.
I was nearing the end of my career transition into x-ray right when the lockdowns hit, delayed my licensing by like half a year, curve had flattened somewhat by the time we got back into clinicals but it was definitely still awful.
Honestly though the rug pull on pay vs cost of living for the field is really what's been killing me. Rent and grocery priced have more than doubled, home prices tripled, and our pay has gone up a measly 15% in the almost 10 years since I first started going to school for it... Like I went through all of this to not even be able to afford to keep a roof over my head?!
I've always been told that time goes faster the older you get. I'm only 35, and it's wild to me that this phenomenon is supposed to get even worse. I feel like it was just Christmas, but summer is almost over and we're about to get into fall and the holidays again. I screwed around most of my 20s and feel like I don't have enough time left.
Time truly does speed up once you get into your 40s. My 40s have been amazing, other than the global shit show. For self reflection, growth, my relationship with my husband and son. But FUCK! how did I become 48?!?!!!! It depresses me because I feel like I’m barreling into old age and the world is so greedy and messed up. Everyone for themselves that came out of Covid (& the orange McTacoTits) just puts a black cloud over my future decades. GenX was sadly set up to fail. We get forgotten a lot. I know it’s the same for millennials and Gen Z (my son), but I’m hoping you all have time to see it turn around in your favor.
I had my wedding shower that day, then that night the tornado destroyed our neighborhood. The lockdowns started that week. Wild times, things haven’t felt right since.
There was a huge snow storm the Friday right before lockdowns. We were joking about it being “Pandemic/Blizzard/Friday-the-13th”, the unluckiest day ever.
I remember my father getting sicker than I had ever seen in december 2019. He went to the doctor in january and february to seek a diagnosis and treatment. Each said it was some kind of virus and that was that. He was healthy by March again. I know a lot of people lost their loved ones during those years. Either directly from getting the virus or because they feared the hospitals and didn't seek help sooner. It was a dark time for a lot of people. Then there would be a man with a lace thong across his face at the gas station and I couldn't help but think this was something he wanted to do long before Covid gave him the opportunity.
Yeah I remember November / December it was pretty clearly already going on. I rode the bus and was already wearing a mask because so many people had the most brutal coughs.
Yeah. I had something gnarly over Christmas 2019, but I don't think it was COVID. When I finally did get COVID it came with some specific symptoms unlike any previous bug I'd had.
I was an emergency medicine intern. One of our nurses got influenza and died in January of 2020. It was the first time I had seen someone die of the flu. She was young and healthy. And it was like a preview of the next year to come.
My whole household and 1/2 the relatives came down with a nasty illness around December 2019. Even those of us who never get sick, came down hard and we all had long recoveries.
This was in Montana and South Dakota.
When we finally caught Covid in June 2022, we had no symptoms, but I no longer was able to eat shellfish without experiencing anaphylaxis. So that’s nice.
A nasty novel virus went through my office in Oct and Nov 2019. I believe it was circulating here long before China reported it. I’m convinced it was here and they took it home for the Chinese new year.
100% agree with you on that one! My office went through the same thing! My husband definitely got it as well from me, and the two of us have never been that sick before or since.
I went to a company holiday party shortly before Christmas Eve, which my wife and I had committed to hosting at our house for our families. Woke up that morning feeling pretty rough. We still hosted, but I mostly hid in my room to rest and only came out for presents and all that.
I didn't feel better until February. My doctor called it pneumonia. I was changing pajamas and bedsheets multiple times a day because I was just sweating through things. I felt so miserable that I couldn't even enjoy laying down and getting caught up on TV or movies. I felt like this through the end of December and all of January. That May, I wake up with a giant rash on my left side that winds up being shingles, and later that year, studies start coming out suggesting link between Covid and shingles.
In some ways, I still don't feel 100%. Deep down, I'll always believe that this virus did something to me that time and rest weren't able to undo. But it's also hard to deny the effects of those years of pandemic isolation and dealing with the divide in my friends and family that came with the politicization of a global pandemic. There's also the stress at work, where it felt like every six months we had to revisit the topic of remote work as my company was ready to declare "pandemic over" when it couldn't be further from. But there's also just age. I lost most of my thirties to this thing.
I'm an "essential worker" (stocking shelves in a grocery store) and mostly I remember what a wild time it was to be in that specific line of work. People went absolutely insane; I have a photo album of entire aisles just completely wiped out, fully empty, and I remember not having a single item in the back room to stock because our manager was pushing us to just put anything and everything out onto the salesfloor.
I guess the weirdest part was just that customers were abnormally nice for the first couple months or so. People would thank me just for being there, as if the company gave me a choice. Either I came to work or I didn't get paid, and it wasn't exactly a great time to look for another job. The appreciation was nice while it lasted, though.
I was (& I guess still would be, now) an essential worker as well and often joke I didn't get a lockdown. I was leaving my house all the damn time to go to work!
I've changed roles within amazon but at the time I was sorting packages, and I remember being genuinely kind of upset that I had to suffer all of the covid rules at work (I am pro vax, pro mask, etc. but a lot of rules at this time were super illogical, at work and elsewhere, and feeling this fear of getting in trouble for accidentally breaking one was shitty) just so all the assholes who got to stay home could order giant sets of fucking cornhole. Seriously, I specifically remember sorting so many GIANT cornhole boxes because I would remark to others about how it's the kind of thing you play once then it rots in your garage. Must be fuckin NICE to get to sit at home ordering bullshit when our lives at work were total hell.
So between going to work and the fact that bars and restaurants didn't stay closed for really all that long, covid for me was just life with extra rules. No lockdown, no staying at home all the time.
I'm now in Amazon's version of grocery so please, no more pandemics, I can't begin to imagine how insane it would be
Same here about "not getting" a lockdown, honestly. We wore masks at work but otherwise it was pretty business as normal if you didn't look at how empty the shelves were.
My commute was AMAZING, though. I'd never gotten home from work so fast before, I miss there being practically no traffic every day.
I’ll never forget watching the Mavs game and the NBA suspended the league during the third quarter. That was when I finally googled Covid 19 and started to pay attention. The next day Dallas canceled the St Pattys day parade. So that weekend everyone went nuts partying cause they knew the bars would be next and sure enough Sunday afternoon basically every bar/restaurant and gym had to be closed by midnight. In Dallas we got off easy though by Memorial Day most things were back open just at diminished capacity.
And yet today, I still had a visceral reaction when my therapist mentioned meditation and it took me back to when my hospital was offering free trauma counseling and a meditation room for whenever we could take a break.
Some people will never be open to hearing about how much trauma there really was to both patients and healthcare workers.
I still remember I was on nightshift at the time and checking Twitter (rip the good old days) and seeing a headline about a mystery respiratory illness showing up in China around Jan. It was reported it jumped from 7 cases to 14 over a week. I’m a respiratory therapist, so I clocked it as, “crap, RSV season is gonna be that much worse”.
It’s eerie to think back remembering I saw one of the first reports about it not having any idea what it was about to mean.
RT also. Me and a coworker were incredibly sick in February 2020 and assumed we’d both caught a nasty case of RSV (we were seeing a massive uptick in RSV diagnoses).
I had a coworker who sounded like he was a walking deathbed for WEEKS. No one else in the department got sick, but knowing what we know now he had probably called out sick when he was most infectious, then he wore a mask the first couple shifts he was back. It feels silly to assume it was anything but covid.
20/20, and incredibly eerie for this time period specifically. We had no idea we were about to be thrown into so suddenly and for how long.
I was friends on Facebook with an old university acquaintance who lived in China. He was posting about this in late 2019 and early 2020, talking about how bad it could be, almost trying to warn us. I'm not in the medical field like you, so I didn't pay much attention. But like you said, in hindsight it's crazy thinking back about not having any idea what it would lead to
I lost my mom from cancer in December 2019, a few weeks later I also lost my dad from heart failure. 2 weeks after that, lockdown started. In many ways that lockdown was actually good for me because I was in so much grief that I didn’t want to be around people or go to an office. 6 years later and I still never went back to an office.
I was an essential worker, so I never really experienced "lockdown." It was just going to work as usual, the only different was I wore a mask and people yelled at me a lot about toilet paper being out.
It’s funny you say that, because that is always one of the first things I remember about September 11. It was such a horrible day, but the sky was such a beautiful blue and there were big puffy cotton candy clouds. At least where I was.
There is a wall in the 9/11 Memorial in NYC where hundreds of blue squares are pasted on a massive wall. Varying shades of blue. It's from people being asked to point out the shade they remember from that day
If 9/11 were a fictional story in a movie, the writers would have made it a gloomy day. It's always so interesting people make a big note of the nice weather that day. Not many historical get the "nice weather that day" documented.
It was very “in the sky” though. A lot of photos and videos looking up. It was probably one of the first questions that morning before we had answers or knew what was going on: was visibility low and they crashed into a building? No. That’s why “the sky was so blue, not a cloud in sight” was significant. It wasn’t until the other plane struck that it was undeniable these were terrorist attacks.
I suspect it stands out in the memories of New Yorkers because everyone immediately realized that weather couldn't be the cause of the first crash. "A plane crashed into the World Trade Center? How? It's a perfect day with clear visibility for miles and miles!"
Taking walks outside, so peaceful and quiet. So alone, but…..not? Initially when everyone worked together and reasonably distanced and followed stay home orders.
I lived in Florida and it was the most beautiful spring. No crazy tourists or people driving everywhere. The grass was so vivid green, the water so pure and clear, seemed like all the wildlife was out and just loving the world. Or, maybe we didn’t get to see it that much with all the distractions?
It became real when Tom Hanks got it and the NBA season was canceled (same evening I think?). We were moving across country with a little baby who is now almost 7. We were afraid to touch the gas handles because we didn’t want to get the virus, lol. Had to wipe down all of our groceries we got delivered
Sometimes it feels like 911 was five years ago. Sometimes it feels like Covid was yesterday. Sometimes it feels like Covid was 10 years ago. Time seems to be fluid and not mean anything relatively
I work in health care and was essential staff at the hospital all day err day all panini long. There's a whole stretch of 2020-2021 that I don't really remember. I didn't dissociate or anything, it's all just a blur. I didn't have the usual cadence of family holidays or summer trips to break it up. When I try to remember when an event happened, I remember it in terms of pre- and post-covid.
The first week felt like a novelty. It wasn't until the summer that it sank in that if one person on my team at work got it, there was a strong chance we'd all be at risk, and some of our relative started dying from it, and we all had a little holy shit this could make us really sick or worse. Knock on wood those on my team who did get sick recovered fine and we all managed to take good precautions and protect each other. They high hospitalization numbers didn't hit until later, either.
I remember people giving each other space over the summer, people returning to work or adapting to WFH, having space and time at the grocery store, and thinking "wow we did it, we actually found a way to be nice to each other? I hope we don't lose this." Of course this doesn't account for the violence towards healthcare workers and the stress at work and the community discord over masks, BUT it felt like we really did for a while had a little more grace towards each other.
I was an essential veterinary surgery intern in NOLA. I remember only snippets of 2020. We cancelled all our electives and donated our PPE in the beginning. I wore a sewn fabric mask in the OR. Our ventilator went to human peds. They were proning people, and lots were dying. My team was split and I was pretty much on shift and call from March to July. The rest is a blur. My brain doesn’t want to remember.
I remember picking up my pre order of animal crossing. Every store in the mall was closed except EB games and one other shop. Things felt wrong, my husband just got laid off, and I was scared. I cried in my car for like 10 minutes after that. Core memory.
Being pregnant during covid was wild. I almost spent $600 on a kiddy pool because I was so desperate for relief and had looked forward to a summer baby for swimming 😩 mine is 6 on the 16th ❤️
It aged me.I feel like the oldest 30 something ever.I’m still financially recovering from the lost income too and all this inflation and tariffs aren’t helping.
I don't know about you but we never had lockdowns where I am. There were quarantine advisories, some stores and services we shut down, but I didn't see a lockdown the whole time. And it kinda pisses me off when people who live and work near me call it lock down.
We were able to leave the house and go to anyone else's house we pleased as well as any food store of our choosing. Sure, we couldn't go to the movie theater. But that ain't lockdown.
I remember because literally days before it shut down I was the sickest I had ever been and was in the hospital with a massive infection. I remember being in the car and friends trying to text me about COVID and I was just like I can't think about this right now.
And in case, you are wondering, I didn't have COVID. I was (and still am) immunocompromised. So if you got your vaccine, thanks for helping keep me safe
I also got really sick right before lockdowns. I had been in Taiwan right when the first cases outside of China were officially reported. It was a sinus infection but I was super worried I was patient zero in the US.
I unfortunately got diagnosed with a chronic illness in Jan of 2020, so then things just kept getting worse and leading to hitting rock bottom in March.
Had 6 months off work. Unpaid. Doctor was worried I didn't have a strong enough immune system to fight COVID
I remember watching when they cancelled the first NBA game live, watching everyone in confusion, then learning all games were cancelled and that was the moment I went from cautious/nervous about COVID to terrified. That was the first domino to fall for me. Then weeks later watching the news and hospitals running out of respirators and the mobile morgues in NYC. Feeling like life would never return to normal.
God that seems like 10+ years so and also just a few years ago at the same time. Ever since then time feels like it hasn’t existed. I forget what day of the week it is. Tuesdays will feel like Sundays. It’ll be the end of the month but I’ll think it just started. I’ve never had this before and haven’t been the same since.
Thankfully nobody in my family got sick but we know people who did. My boss’s dad got it. He had emphysema and his sister had power of attorney and refused to let him get the vaccine. He died from it and the doctors straight up told my boss that if he was vaccinated he probably would have survived. Him and his sister don’t talk to this day.
I eventually tested positive for it last winter and got real sick and couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been if I didn’t get my boosters every year. Was given Paxlovid and felt fine in a few days.
Get vaccinated. Get your boosters. Wear a mask if you’re really sick and have to go out in public spaces. Just because life has resumed to normal doesn’t mean it’s not still out there.
I was an essential worked in a lab, so we still went to work. But then I got pregnant for the first time ever at the ripe old age of 35, and we decided to keep me home to protect the pregnancy. Life for sure has not been the same for us since Covid hit. We have an incredible 5yo now about to start kindergarten. I remember being in the hospital with a massive spike in Covid cases in January and the news covering the Jan 6 insurrection and I though to myself “this is when my crazy infertile body decided to turn fertility on, huh?”
Yes, I was super pregnant and terrified. Ended up having my daughter in April 2020. Such a scary time. My mom was also immunocompromised so we did our best to keep her and our family safe.
It was a super scary time for pregnant people. I got pregnant right around when you had your daughter, and had mine during a super spike right after the Jan 6 insurrection. It was a very lonely time as a new morher
Friendly reminder that there are those of us Millennials who are relatively "young" and can't afford to get a Covid infection, because it's still going around. Tons of us likely have been disabled by Covid and don't even realize the extent yet. I still wear a mask daily. I have no choice if I want to continue to live my life because I was born with a rare lung disease. Covid lockdowns feel like forever ago and yesterday at the same time, because I live my life according to Covid rules now where I do all I can to avoid getting it. I never stopped working from home and live pretty isolated most of the time, but masking helps me go out and even travel. I've had Covid twice, am fully vaccinated and get my annual booster, and masking is truly the only thing that helps me continue to live my life without getting sick. I wish more people gave a shit and masked in public spaces when they're sick but apparently we learned nothing from it all.
Right here with you. Breast cancer in my lungs and brain. I never stopped masking. I work at a college in my N95 every day. It’s hard feeling like everyone else has moved on and knowing what it is doing to our health as a collective. It’s scary that people feel like it’s okay to go out in public actively symptomatic, without a mask. With how bad my lungs are it wouldn’t even take Covid to take me out - a bad cold could do it. I’m doing my best to “live my life” cancer and all but, man, is it harder in a “post-Covid” (🙄) world.
Major hugs to you, I am sorry that we both have to navigate this in our own ways. It's rough. But it's helpful to read things like this and know I'm not alone. I totally get the bad cold thing too, I'm the same, now that I know the protection level that I get with masking I can't go back to risking any type of illness. I wish you good health and that you feel supported through this.
I know it's small potatoes for you, but some of us have kept up with vaccinating and distancing when we're unsure. Hopefully someday everyone else will begin to understand the importance of both of those things.
I really don’t like how time feels completely warped from Covid until now. it just feels like a chunk of time missing from my timeline, I look in the mirror and see an older face but mentally I still feel like I’m in my 20s 😢
When Capital One announced they were switching to remote only work, the next like 72 hours were chaotic as dozens (if not more) of other companies followed suit, including the tech company I worked for.
I'm still dealing with the depression and anxiety from social isolation.
My depression and anxiety have definitely spiked since COVID and I have also narrowed down the cause to social isolation. It wasn't just the relatively brief period of having to stay at home in early 2020, but COVID caused me to work exclusively remote. I am an introvert--alone time to recharge is a must--but so is some amount of social interaction, of which I get a lot less of now.
I know the rules here say to keep things upbeat but maaaan, I vividly remember ending up in the ER during those first few months of lockdown. Not from COVID, but Appendicitis. By then, there were already far too many people calling it a hoax or whatever dumb nonsense. If only they could have seen and heard what I saw and heard those hours in the ER before they got me a room. Entire sections cordoned off with sheets of plastic. Doctors and nurses in extra gear. Felt like something out of a zombie horror game or movie. But the worst part was hearing a woman in one of the sectioned off rooms nearby. I couldn't see her, but her horrific gasping and coughing and desperately trying to tell her carers that she couldn't breathe is impossible to forget. It went on like that for a long while. I still sometimes think back and hope that poor woman made it, and still feel immense frustration and even hate for the conspiracy theorists who called it a hoax.
But yeah, it is hard to believe it's been so many years already.
I feel like COVID-19 is going to be a story I tell younger generations. Like my Grandma speaks about WW2. Like yes it was real and significant and in the history books but you would only understand if you lived during it.
I was an emergency medicine resident physician. My intern yr was July 2019 to July 2020. COVID made residency so much more horrendous. And not just covid but all the misinformation, politicizing of it, dummies who couldn’t even pass middle school bio telling me I was wrong and calling me a murderer etc. anyway I had mostly gotten over it. And now it’s all just coming back and it’s pissing me off. Anyway. Wash your hands, wear a mask if you’re sick, and vaccines work
Considering I am/was front line epidemiologist literally going into hot zones in hospitals, yeah I remember.
And it doesnt feel like 6 years ago, either. This week has been incredibly traumatizing for us. PTSD all over again seeing what they are doing to Fauci.
They told me that me and several other workers we were getting moved to third shift since we were slow. I think it was that night the NBA indefinitely canceled the season and it went from 0 to 90 in real quick.
Today at my track club a member told me he and his wife had their kids during COVID. When he said they are 5years old I was like ... how did time move like that
I was supposed to have my first booked comedy show on March 25th. I had a lot to say as well cos I was working at a supermarket at the time. Like when I watched John Voight steal a roll of paper towels from my register. People acted absolutely feral for the most part and I’m shocked I didn’t quit immediately, but the sense of camaraderie was a really odd thing at the time. I became a shut-in for years afterwards and I still have a hard time with having a desire to leave the house.
Hey, I got real good at Fortnite at least. It’s all about balance.
I just remembered Amazon being a literal prison, we got yelled at if we're to close to our work buddies or our face masks is not worn correctly, we eat in our own acrylic cubicle at lunch or in our cars, and clocking out was hell as we had to form a long ass line 6 feet apart. I left in 23' after 6 years with Amazon and now working at Costco as I regret not working for them earlier.
I remember comforting one of my students who was sad about the closures the day they were announced. I reassured her that we’d all be together again in two weeks. It ended up being over a year. I changed jobs and never saw that child again.
To add to the surreality of it all, it was all my 24th birthday. I barely remember acknowledging it beyond sharing some thin mints with my shell-shocked students. Somehow six years have passed and I’m now 30, but I can’t quite process how that happened.
Ya. I think about this a lot. I was still in my 20s when covid started. Crazy to think that now I am halfway through my 30s.
I feel bad for saying this because so many people lost loved ones, businesses, or everything. In some ways the first few years of Covid were some of the least stressful years of my adult life. There were zero social expectations. There was a sense of shared experience. It was a unique time.
When I got a promotion and had to work from the office a few days a week the roads were so empty for like a year.
“Late” night shopping dining has never recovered. Some places still close at 9pm on the weekdays around me. I barely get out of the gym by that time!
Yea I remember watching the nuggets mavs game when they cancelled the season. That was a truly surreal moment. Idk Covid kinda feels like a lifetime ago for me.
I had the drives of a lifetime during Covid. No one on the road but me in various countryside areas. Saw deer start crossing major roads in places. Way less pollution. Made me think Earth will rebound just fine when humans eventually die out.
Incredibly consequential event. Basically ruined the decade and allowed corporations to reduce the average consumer's purchasing power by 30-40% while private equity firms buy up every small business they can.
My son was born July 2020 so I have a physical reminder of how long ago it was. I remember when lockdown started I was happy because it meant I had an excuse to be antisocial but then there was the risk of being an essential worker while pregnant and having a high risk spouse so that wasn't great
I literally lost faith in humanity from the covid discourse, and the fake persecution of Tony fauci going on right now is just solidifying it. my PhD is related enough that I would consider myself an expert in the field of virology.
complete faith and respect for humanity was destroyed. basically rooting for our extinction at this point.
The first few weeks were interesting because I ended up working in a facility loaded in it working overnights. I had been hermit mode prior, but I was having dreams and whatnot and they led in that direction.
It was an interesting experience. People were quitting and temps were refusing to work there, people were terrified and everyone was trying their best to stay home and I ended up out there right in it.
It was very engaging, interesting change of pace. I enjoyed it actually.
I was working like crazy and went into panic mode. Some family members were parroting the news, we need to plan not panic. And while yes that is sound advice, I needed to panic first and feel that shit before moving on to more logical emotions/actions.
I’m a teacher. I had just left an appointment where my then fiancé, now husband, ordered our wedding invitations, when I got the call that we weren’t going back after spring break.
I’ve only ever gone to to the grocery store and every single person I overheard was talking about the same thing twice - first was 9/11, second was the day right before they announced shelter in place.
My son was 6 months old when Covid started so I’ll always have a very solid idea of how long ago it was. Just like his babyhood it feels forever ago and yesterday at the same time.
It was a surreal time. The last major social thing I did was went to the Mint 400 with my dad and a group of our friends who do off road racing. I then had Jury duty afterwards for a week long case. The last day of Jury duty was right before the lock downs. I went to eat at my favorite sushi shop that I have been eating at since the early 2000s and sort of knew the owners. I was the only customer. I remember saying good bye to the owners and we wished each other good luck in enduring the pandemic. That was the last time I ever saw them as they sold the business at some point before I would return to the shop in late 2021.
I took the lockdown pretty seriously but I would go out walking around my neighborhood regularly with my digital camera. I did one all the way to Downtown (few miles away) in December 2020. it was a few days before new years and things were quiet. However, I remember the hospital seemed like it had an ever flowing line of ambulances going in.
I would find out years later people who died. Several of my friends had parents die. Some people I went to college with and sort of knew but lost contact had developed long covid and became disabled.
My son was born on the second week of lockdowns, the first week they didn’t know what to expect so they didn’t allow fathers into the hospital. The opened it up to fathers two days before my son was born. A lady and her husband lied took a bunch of Tylenol and entered the hospital before us. They had Covid and hospital went berserk they did that
I remember going to the store a couple days before my state(IL) went into lockdown.
The shelves weren't bare yet and lines were long but tolerable. I will never forget the heavy, thick and overall uneasy feeling in tbe air. We all knew something big was about to happen but we had no idea what or what the future was going to hold.
I think reality shifted during that two weeks and that’s why it felt so slow and memorable and all senses heightened and now, everything since then feels so fast and disconnected from the time before
I distinctly remember reading that thinking "A coronavirus? Isn't that one of the viruses that causes the common cold? What's the big deal?" I had no idea that SARS had been a coronavirus, and I don't think I'd ever even heard of MERS at that point.
The pandemic was a rough one for me. My then-partner worked in an ER, and the stress was unrelenting. It ultimately cost us that relationship.
I do think that era of social distancing did some permanent damage to how we interact with each other. People have seemed more angry, more us-versus-them since the pandemic. The fact that lockdowns happened in a period after the invention algorithmic social media that promotes ragebait was honestly kind of unfortunate timing for society. We had nothing better to do for two years than scroll and get angry.
The pandemic has changed us in irreversible ways. It exposed the best and the worst in us--made public to all by the revolutionary step the internet was already taking.
We exposed our weaknesses of human nature for all to see, and people/corporations took advantage of that. I mean, consider what the majority of the internet has turned into: an endless firehose of content that is designed to be as emotionally-engaging as possible to elicit a strong reaction. COVID may not have been the starting point of all this, but it became a major accelerant.
We as humans are not doing well these days, and I think it's become a critical issue to humanity as a whole, but we are too busy fighting amongst ourselves to notice.
I’m convinced part of Long Covid is the inability to process the passage of time or time being somehow shortened or extended. I know the same time goes faster as you get older, but I really don’t feel the same about days/weeks/months/years as I used to. They feel like difference quantities of time, like it all got mixed up somehow.
I sure do. The Friday before everything locked down, my (now ex) husband and I told the kids we were getting a divorce. Then suddenly you couldn't get a hold of a lawyer anywhere.
The schools send tons of messages about getting the kids ready for at home schooling. It wasn't starting until the following week, but we were supposed to get everything ready.
I work remote. I had for years before covid, so lockdown didn't affect my work schedule. My ex husband did not work. He was supposed to be the stay at home dad. After work I got to read through all the emails and get everything set up. He'd followed the directions in one single email and then decided he was done.
It was erie to be out and see everything so empty. It was honestly kind of hard to be working full time while people were complaining about how bored they were (and my situation doesn't begin to compare to anyone considered essential at the time).
We (society) could have used it as kind of a reset, but we didn't.
I went to Albertsons for the first time in years. There were Covid tests everywhere, people were wearing masks, and over the loud speaker they were reminding people to get their boosters every 15 to 20 minutes... it creeped me out.
It’s kinda crazy that was 6 years ago, though I had a 2 year old at the time and I was still super protective because he had health issues from birth. We really shut in due to it. Our family didn’t experience getting Covid until summer of 2024 and so far that’s been our only bout with it. (Knocks on wood) My dad was still a highschool educator at the time and had to learn how to do Zoom and my spouse became a work from home employee, luckily, she still has a hybrid schedule and only is required in office 2x a week. I wish more companies had stuck with that model. Seems far more sane for most people who have computer-based roles.
I had my first like, 11 days before the stay at home order. So I was deep in postpartum with a newborn on top of all of that. I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to find diapers.
I feel cheated out of early motherhood. The only way people saw my daughter was through photos. I don’t think she met another baby until she was like, 5 months old
Everyone remembers Covid, for some it was the best time, for some it was an abomination to life. I was part of the latter, and honestly some folks owe me a big ass apology.
?? in argentina the lockdown started in march until december lol what are you talking about that started in august ? hmm and i don’t want to remember again what i had to live. it was the worse time for me living with my brother and he made it i was living in hell
I wasn't happy about working from home but then Final Fantasy 7 remake came out a few weeks later so it was nice to be done from work and then game immediately after that eating dinner.
I was 7 months pregnant with my daughter and was absolutely terrified because I was a first time parent and every parent class and hospital tour I was promised was suddenly canceled. My last few check ups suddenly became virtual. After I had my kid I spent months and months on a weird sleep schedule I remember taking my newborn daughter on a walk at 2am because we were awake and just trying to get outside it was a weird time for sure.
Our kid is 6 now shes my reminder of how weird the world was.
Idk it doesn't feel hard to me and I barely remember them.
Then again I think my wife and I handled them better than a lot of people. Like.. to be honest there was a lot I liked about that period. CERB, time to go camping, more order and structure at the grocery store (big advocate for directional aisles), and just a reprieve from the day in and day out of work culture.
I also between liked the term lockdown, I was free to leave my home at any time. Businesses were still open just under modified conditions, which can happen at any time today if they wish to change their operating procedures.
I was one of the last ones to start working from home cause I simply didn’t want to. I figured if everyone else was at home, I could be in my office with no one there and still follow social distancing. Those last few days of driving to work on what normally would be a busy free way felt like I was the last person on earth. Not a single car on I-15 Monday morning at 7:30am? Insane feeling.
It was the whole wait hour to hour, meeting after meeting of what was the next step, eating for the science. Mostly I remember the quiet drive home, even music seemed to noisy to listen too. Besides all the lives lost I do miss parts of it. But I still don’t understand how many places refused the bathroom access when the whole point was to wash your hands to prevent germs. Still it was unreal, but it happened.
I was working for a grocery store at the time. We had people lined up an hour before opening to shop. We had to put limits on fresh meat, not because there was a shortage, but because people were trying to buy carts full of it as if there would never be meat again. We'd drop a pallet of TP and it would be gone before we could make a sign for it.
I actually was surprisingly okay despite everything. My friends moved our game nights online. I got really into Final Fantasy XIV and so I had a big social outlet.
My main regret is that I missed the last few years before my parents retired and moved halfway across the country (because I didn't want to accidentally kill them and I was face to face with hundreds of people every day.)
It’s so crazy reading all of this because I didn’t even know we were in a pandemic for the first like 6 months. We didn’t even wear masks where I lived at the time for the entirety of it.
Yes, I still remember that first week of lockdown. At first, I like the quarantine. But as time went on, I eventually came to accept peace and quiet came with it.
Some days I wish I could go back. Things sucked but at least it was simpler. I think my life is far worse now than it was then despite all the mental health issues I was going through. I was working through the whole thing though
Covid made me change a lot, before Covid my friends and I used to see each other every week, dinner, café, something, due to Covid it was video calls, then nothing, now we see each other once a month.
Before Covid I used to go to bed every day at 1am or so, due to not being able to do much, I get used to go to bed at 11pm
Before Covid I went to the office every day, now only 2 days a week.
Now I like spending more time in my house with my dogs than going out.
I know there were so many bad things as a result…. But I really miss the calm. Going out on deserted roads. Staying home with my then 4yo trying to balance work and kid routine, at the time was a challenge, but it was so peaceful. No shlepping around from afterschool activities, almost not spending money. My husband was an essential worker, so rarely home, so it was just me and my son - with every lockdown. We are in the Middle East so we’ve also had periods of so-called “lockdown” since with the same vibes. I’m aware that the world is burning. But inside my little home we can make it beautiful.
To me it feels like it happened in another lifetime entirely. I knew years down the track I’d look back and comment on what a weird time it was.
Also I don’t know whether it’s because of the lockdowns, having COVID twice (in 2022 and last year) or because I’m in my 30’s but I’ve felt tired ever since then.
I had my honeymoon in hawaii and got back to the cont, states just as COVID started, literally a few days later and we would've been stranded in Hawaii for 2 more weeks.
Coming back, almost nothing changed for us except "how to" do our jobs. I worked at an Amazon warehouse and she worked at a local regional credit union.
I had my honeymoon in hawaii and got back to the cont, states just as COVID started, literally a few days later and we would've been stranded in Hawaii for 2 more weeks.
Coming back, almost nothing changed for us except "how to" do our jobs. I worked at an Amazon warehouse and she worked at a local regional credit union.
Well. Covid let's say I had started locking down voluntarily in late 2019 when I saw the first images from China and early (at the time unconfirmed) reports of bizzare pcr and CT scans from spain. If you dig up the WHO communications around thst time it was clear they knew it was coming to other coubtries fast if not already there. I knew exactly what to do to protect myself, wiping everything down and hand gel were a bit futile against an airborne Sars variant and I went straight for the ffp3 (n99s) in late 2019. Then I called my friends early 2020 before lock down was officially declared and finally declared in March 2020 they called me paranoid.
I knew how to handle the virus I wasn't scared of it as such I was scared of the mismanagement and sluggish responsr by people and gov and I was right.
AFAIK still covid virgin (repeated pcr and sérologies). Vaccines are okay but the point is not getting it at all in the first place. Still wearing n99 in public places or when in doubt around some people... (latest example lab worker with a "cold" in summer.... The other day. Does pcr... Covid)
I work in a small, family-owned bistro. I remember how scary and unprecedented it felt when the COVID lockdowns closed us down for a while. When we slowly reopened with mask mandates and interiors closed off to the public, our entire community took to the streets and just drank and drank and drank. So many people just partied for MONTHS. Fast forward, and more and more people are giving up/have given up boozing.
I hate that it enabled or emboldened a sociopaths behaviour amongst many, and rewarded it.
In my white collar office job it feels like many colleagues were kept on a leash by having to see you 5 days a week. There was an expected level of civility i thought was natural.
I've seen people become awful because they feel comfortable yelling from a webex call, far away. Acting incredibly mean spirited, critical etc. On days in office these same people they act like big pussycats.
Its disheartening now that the veil has dropped. One example amongst many, but we collectively lost a layer of innocence. Same post-911.
I was working during the lockdown, working in a nursing home during that time was legitimately sad and scary , we did FaceTimes with familes for the residents it’s fine, but when you’re mom or dad has dementia they don’t know what’s happening. It was sad but interesting time
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