Legacy of a 1,157-day health emergency

It’s easy to forget how quickly the pandemic’s tide caught up with us.

Can we close the lid on the COVID-19 capsule and bury it already?

As historic moments in time go, Gov. Ned Lamont’s declaration of a public health emergency in Connecticut on March 10, 2020 etched a permanent spot in the state’s biography.

At the time, no one could possibly realize how profoundly day-to-day life would change. But if future historians could easily trace that date as the start of the pandemic’s impact in Connecticut, it will likely take some digging to identify May 11, 2023 as the day Lamont ended the emergency declaration.

So toss the (much smaller) headlines about it in the time capsule. It’s a little crowded in there, with more than three years of relics from the Era of COVID. For the typical first grader, that’s half a lifetime.

Much of the time capsule would be filled with memories of those early days of empty supermarket shelves, food drives, vacant streets and unused tickets to canceled events.

It’s easy to forget how quickly the pandemic’s tide caught up with us. On March 10, 2020, Quinnipiac, Sacred Heart and University of New Haven pivoted to online classes. Other schools thought they could hold off for a few weeks, but changed that policy the next day.

Even as Lamont acted with appropriate caution, he only made “strong recommendations,” not mandates. Just seven days later, he joined some of his peers in shuttering bars, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters. It was only as “COVID fatigue” set in that Lamont was crowned with the “King Ned” nickname.

President Joe Biden ended the federal public health emergency (initiated by former President Donald Trump) on the same day as Lamont. The change means that testing and vaccines will gradually shift from free services to fall under the leaky umbrella of health coverage. Most people won’t even notice until the bill comes.

But it would be a mistake not to recognize how life changed over those 1,157 days. Wearing a face mask in America will no longer draw the stares it might have pre-2020. Many seniors remain wary of joining large gatherings, such as concerts or movies.

The health care industry learned a lot more about infection management. Parents and educators finally started to be heard about the failing ventilation systems in so many of our schools. Virtual meetings took a lot of cars off our roads and reduced stress for workers. State and local officials stocked up on PPE. And 12,340 state residents have died of causes associated with COVID-19.

The announcement last week was really just a reminder that the state and federal government will step back and leave us to make personal health decisions. The routine scorecards of COVID’s presence will go away. One thing will not.

“Ending the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration does not mean that the virus has been eradicated,” Lamont reminded us.

Nor have the ripples from the aftershocks of the pandemic, including the spike in the need for mental health services for children. We can close the lid and bury this part of our collective past, but there’s still a lot of work to do to improve the future.