I'll never forget the freezer trucks outside hospitals and my healthcare colleagues commiserating with my grocery store employee friends about the number of coworkers they'd each lost.
I mean, I have memories but my sequencing and tracking to which year that was is not great. More specifically I keep thinking that things from 2021 were 2020
I had a lot of time anchors. I quit a job and started a new one. I had to wrestle with getting my parents back to the US. I moved states (and moved back). All I think which helped anchor me in time. I also did a lot of weird celebrations. A turducken for Thanksgiving. Caviar for Christmas.
I was off work for three months beginning in March 2020, and I was incredibly happy. I was fortunate to be stable financially. Having my time belong to me after years and years of being overworked was everything I needed.
2020 I remember, but 2021 is a total blur, but I was dealing with some serious mental health issues, to where I was disassociating quite a bit, and then I was dealing with trauma fog after my wife died.
2020, there was so much unprecedented stuff, it is kinda hard to forget.
I mean for a lot of the country covid was over by like fall 2020 right? Half of schools or something were only ever closed/remote from March thru summer and if you weren't in a white collar hotspot work didn't change either. So a weird April and May and that's it.
They just pretended it was over. Hospitals stayed packed. My wife died trying to get care at the ER when the hospital was over capacity with COVID patients. We were there for 24 hours, and the doctor didn't even see her until 20 minutes after she flatlined.
Oh, I know. They want to ignore unpleasant things, even though doing that can lead to even more unpleasant things because they obviously didn't learn the lesson from the bad stuff.
I haven't even stopped masking in crowded places and hospital settings. Only seems like healthcare will get less and less accessible from here on out, so... 😷
I can never remember when things happen. The past is all a blur. But I do remember 2020 because my son was a senior in high school so we didn't get to do the whole graduation thing, he left for the Marines, and I freaked out on my neighbor for shooting off fireworks. I remember a lot of stuff!
As I understand it ignoring a period of time, pretending nothing happened and not talking about it or treating it as relevant context for current events.
I think what adds to this is people's experiences were vastly different as well. I'm an office worker, we went to WFH and while there was a lot of stress, it was very different from the people considered "essential workers". I also didn't have any friends or family die, while I know others lost many
I also technically have never tested positive for Covid and I have continued to mask to this day. So many people I know have gotten Covid over and over, but absolutely don't want to talk about how badly it's impacted them, as they've pretty much just taken the line it's like the flu
I wasn't even living in the States then (I was in Berlin where we all wore masks even outdoors) and will still never forget seeing the photographs of all the body bags stacked in city streets.
Trump's current presidency and his last have this in common: being the stuff of nightmares.
I was just talking to a friend tonight about how I thought we’d have more Covid-era content (film, TV) and wondering if we’re all still too traumatized to approach it.
Started watching the Pit , hospital show, and the main character has Covid PTSD. I wasn’t ready and put me in a little off balance feeling for a few days.
I had just graduated in 2019 and gotten my first real job. I worked as a lab assistant just processing tests. My Asian co-workers warned me what their families in China were seeing, so I had a heads up. The company I was at turned into a covid testing powerhouse almost overnight. I remember it all.
The first half of a podcast I heard recently started with an interview of a doctor during the start of the pandemic - watching the spread come from NY to his hospital, the surreal feeling and not knowing. We’ve forgotten so much of it - not to mention the deaths
Because of course it was being stuck at home and not watching loved ones die, being helpless to a mysterious disease, racial violence, or the rise of facism and the loss of economic freedom 😩
My experience: folks I know who caught Covid, now remember very little. Especially the ones who got it twice. The few that did not get it (my husband and I included) have good memory of the period.
Same for my husband and I, we’ve never tested positive, though I suspect I had a relatively mild case twice. Not only do we remember it, but I oddly remember lockdown quite fondly. I’d been seriously burnt out and hating my job for some time and staying home with my family was lovely.
Maybe that’s it. My family avoided it until April 2021. My memory for the “lockdown” time period is excellent. I’ve had it three times total and my memory from 2021-now is shit.
I recall a historian saying how strange they once found it that there was so little media about the Spanish Flu, when it killed more people than both world wars combined…until after 2020. People just *don’t* like talking about pandemics
My main memories of that time: All of the anxiety around the world, watching Covid case and death counts constantly rising, and being in a meeting when I found out my dad had been admitted to the hospital. He had 1/2 vax shots when he caught it. The docs said he may not have made it otherwise.
Was a bit overwhelmed so in May 2020 started compulsively bookmarking things on Pinboard and never quite stopped. People have forgotten a lot. Actively tried to forget come 2022.
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BIDEN did the shutdown and stay-at-home orders, etc.
2020, there was so much unprecedented stuff, it is kinda hard to forget.
Trump's current presidency and his last have this in common: being the stuff of nightmares.
Dam
I'm seeing it start to play out again, with avian influenza.
And some people seem to think that lockdown went on for years.
Was a bit overwhelmed so in May 2020 started compulsively bookmarking things on Pinboard and never quite stopped. People have forgotten a lot. Actively tried to forget come 2022.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/22/magazine/covid-pandemic-oral-history.html