Pandemic changed life a year ago
Weary world looks back, casts hopeful eye on the future
No one has been untouched.
Not the Michigan woman who awakened one morning, her wife dead by her side. Not the domestic worker in Mozambique, her livelihood threatened by the virus. Not the North Carolina mother who struggled to keep her business and her family going amid rising anti-Asian ugliness. Not the sixth grader, exiled from the classroom in the blink of an eye.
It happened a year ago. “I expected to go back after that week,” said Darelyn Maldonado, now 12. “I didn’t think that it would take years.”
On March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, few could foresee the long road ahead or the many ways in which they would suffer — the deaths and agonies of millions, the ruined economies, the disrupted lives and near-universal loneliness and isolation.
A year later, some are dreaming of a return to normal, thanks to vaccines that seemed to materialize as if by magic. Others live in places where the magic seems to be reserved for wealthier worlds.
At the same time, people are looking back at where they were when they first understood how drastically life would change.
On March 11, 2020, confirmed cases of COVID19 stood at 125,000, and reported deaths stood at fewer than 5,000. Today, more than 117 million people are confirmed to have been infected, and according to Johns Hopkins University, more than 2.6 million people have died.
On that day, Italy closed shops and restaurants after locking down in the face of 10,000 reported infections. The NBA suspended its season, and Tom Hanks, filming a movie in Australia, announced he was infected.
On that evening, President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office, announcing restrictions on travel from Europe that set off a trans-Atlantic scramble. Airports flooded with unmasked crowds in the days that followed. Soon, they were empty.
And that, for much of the world, was just the beginning.
Today, thanks to her vaccination, Maggie Sedidi, 59, is optimistic: “By next year, or maybe the year after, I really do hope that people will be able to begin returning to normal life.”
But it is a hard-earned optimism.
Sedidi, a nurse at Soweto’s Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, the largest hospital in South Africa and the entire continent, recalls she was devastated when the first cases appeared there last March.
And she recalls being terrified when she got COVID-19. Her manager fell ill at the same time and died.
South Africa has had by far Africa’s worst experience with the virus. The country of 60 million people has had more than 1.5 million confirmed cases, including more than 51,000 deaths.
“You can imagine, I was really, really frightened. I had all the symptoms, except dying,” she said.
Her recuperation period was lengthy.
“I had shortness of breath and tightness of the chest. It lasted for six months,” she said. “I didn’t think it would ever go away.”
Latoria Glenn-Carr and her wife of six years, Tyeisha, were diagnosed Oct. 29 at a hospital emergency room near their home outside Detroit. Despite Latoria’s qualms, they were sent home.
Tyeisha, 43, died in bed next to her wife three days later.
One month later, COVID19 killed Glenn-Carr’s mother too.
In quiet times, in prayer, Glenn-Carr thinks she should have pushed for the hospital to keep Tyeisha, or should have taken her to a different hospital. She is also angry at America’s leaders — in particular, Trump, who she believes was more worried about the economy than people’s lives.
“If he was more empathetic to the issues and concerned about people, in general, he would have taken it more seriously,” she said. “And because of that, 500,000 people are dead.”
She joined a survivor’s group for people who lost loved ones to COVID-19. They meet weekly on Zoom, text each other and help with the grieving process. Glenn-Carr knows she will dread birthdays and Mother’s Days that will go uncelebrated.
“Nothing goes back to the way it was,” she said.
Life pivoted for Maldonado last March during her library class. She recalls sitting at a table with her close friends, talking with the teacher about COVID19. The teacher told them their school in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, would be shutting down — briefly, she said.
In the 12 months since, she has lived in limbo and online.
Where she once awakened excited to go to school, she now struggles without the give-and-take that comes with sitting in a classroom.
But Darelyn lives with the worry that someone she loves could die. There’s also the frustration of having to give up softball and so much else that brings her joy.
A year from now, she pictures herself doing all the things she missed in this pandemic year.
“Playing outside with friends, playing softball,” she said. “Being with the people that I love most.”