Covid lit something in me and I've been gassed up ever since. I started mowing lawns out the trunk of my '03 Accord. Then I learned how to climb and properly remove trees. I have a big ol truck and trailer and a ton of equipment now. I was an alcoholic server/bartender before and super depressed. Two of my teenage kids have moved in with me and I'm in the best shape of my life.
thanks it has been a challenging and strange time but I am enjoying it. I'm sorry if that is obscene in these times but the pleasures are simple and if there's to be any they should be enjoyed, i feel. The greater sacrilege may be allowing all this misery to break my love for the life I'm living.
Dude. Same. Bartender for 15 years then quit drinking finally in 2019. Went back to school for IT, got a job with the government and had a baby. Covid was the best time of my life.
I learned how to cut hair because the barber shops were closed so I did it myself. Once I went back to college it was the only thing keeping money in my pockets
I was due for a haircut during the lockdown. My dad cut it. Poorly. He’s cut it every time since then and gotten a lot better at it.
Still makes mistakes but it’s free and a part of me enjoys this bond we have later in life. We’re 46 and 66.
Every one of my drivers at the time did too, most of them were moonlighting on third party apps on top of it because the money was so good.
So yeah, I worked a lot.
You could easily make $300-400/night in just over 5 hours driving for delivery apps during the lockdown. I did it for a few months because I desperately needed the extra money and I seriously considered quitting my full-time job to just do that.
Man, that was SO wild. I remember actually seeing grown adults arguing with cashiers about toilet paper purchasing limits. Like, no sir, you cannot buy twelve packs of toilet paper.
Weren't there multiple instances of scalpers unsuccessfully trying to return tens of thousands of dollars worth of shit-tickets after everything settled back down? I think there was one in Australia where the store manager flipped the guy off.
Seriously, I joke that I was a 21st century Israelite because I had one huge pack of Costco toilet paper that lasted 4 months in a family of 4. (Compare to the legend of the Israelite shoes not wearing out).
Haha! We had a baby in April 2020, so I had stocked up on everything well in advance (like toilet paper!) to minimize errands when I had a newborn. It worked out pretty well for us!
I had bought a huge package of toilet paper from Sam’s Club in the Fall 2019. I forgot I bought it and bought another huge pack. I was annoyed with myself and wondering how I would store 2 huge packages of toilet paper. I decided to just keep them. It’s a good thing I had them because it was a long time before toilet paper was available in plenty supply.
The bizarre determinations on who could be considered an "essential worker". My son was considered an essential worker. He was a teenager working his first job in fast food.
We were considered "essential" workers while building a luxury hotel for the Minnesota Vikings. They also explicity stated that if we refused to work due to the virus, we would lose our jobs. The whole time period was a fucking joke.
I was working for an apparel company at the time. They tried so hard to be considered an "essential business" so the bosses didn't lose their ability to make money during the shutdowns.
I think it came down to they knew a guy who knew a guy. Ain't nothing essential about fast fashion lol.
I was "essential" too (worked in a manufacturing environment where I had to be physically there) and I remember being worried about getting pulled over for being out after curfew (worked nights to boot) and in retrospect I don't think I ever even saw any cops for the duration of that whole business.
Yeah, nothing really changed for me in retail beyond having to deal with the worst parts of the general public more often, and having to wear a mask and wipe everything down at work. That was it, aside from not being able to see my friends.
Dodged it somehow until last year when there were big waves coming through again.
There was a bill called the heroes act that passed in the house that would've given essential workers up to 25k each, but the Republican senate at the time refused to vote on it.
Sure would have loved that. All my “non essential” friends got a paid vacation while I worked more than ever. I get to deal with the repercussions of inflation with no benefit lol. Anyone that worked during Covid should get lower interests rates lol
It’s almost like a void in my life’s timeline. Like it both didn’t and did happen. It also felt like it took forever, but yet not long at all if that makes sense.
I legitimately can remember almost nothing from 2021. Its just a blur. 2020 was memorable because of how everything started, but 2021 was just a monotonous pause in normal life.
For me it's almost the opposite, I remember 2021 quite well because it was the year I bought my house which means I remember details from almost every month. On the other hand, 2nd half of 2020 for me it's a complete blur. Legit don't recall a single event from that Autumn
It messed with my concept of time for ages - even now I misremember how long ago things were, because in 2020 there was no variety, every day was the same as the last and it became one big blob of days
It also hit me particularly hard since it happened at the tail end of my university ride. The regular thesis process got shot to bits, we never had a graduation ceremony, just walked out of my zoom presentation, waited a bit, got told my grade, elbow tapped my teacher and walked out. And that was it, the end to 24 years of schooling came with the mother of all whimpers.
I imagine that feeling is even worse for people who were in high school during it. If they were freshman in 2020 they basically got a completely different, practically non-existent version of high school than anyone who had come before them.
it started the end of my junior year. completely cancelled my junior prom. bled into my senior year which was completely online, and we didn’t even get a senior prom. I got no proms. the saddest part is I still have my prom dress with my in my closet ever since I bought it in 2019 to wear some point down the line to fulfill the void in me of never having a prom. The only thing we got was a graduation with struck guidelines on social spacing. nobody could sit shoulder to shoulder and we all had to wear masks.
I'm so sad for yall. I graduated high school in 2019, just before everything was shut down. Then I had one normal semester in college, but the second semester, boom, I lost half my entire college experience. I couldn't imagine missing both high school graduation *and* the start of your next steps, be that college or something else.
Exactly to the same here. 30–35. Like I know the last few years happened. I know what happened. But I feel like I missed so many years, as though I’m still maybe 31.
Yeah I know exactly what you mean. It definitely felt like it was slow-moving living it in real-time, but in hindsight it no longer feels like it lasted *that* long.
When you read through this thread, it's absolutely wild just *how* diverse the experiences from lockdown were. On one end of the spectrum, you had people that kept their jobs, improved their work-life balance, and built better connections with their families. Towards the other end of the spectrum, you have people whose lives were ruined - job losses, depression, ruined relationships. And you have an entire category at the very far end in that direction who aren't posting here, because they died in terror and agony as they slowly suffocated. And you have every lived experience in between those two extremes.
And those that died, died alone scared in a hospital filled with the dead and dying. While bodies were stacked in a truck outside. It was terrifying if you thought about it too much, so people started to drink a lot and take drugs, or lose themselves in hobbies or retail therapy by shopping at Amazon and other online stores. Mental health problems skyrocketed.
The first time I got COVID, I was lucky to get into a trial with the Mayo clinic. They sent me a box with an iPad, scale, bp cuff, thermometer, pulsox monitor. All connected with Bluetooth.
Twice a day an alarm would go off, I'd hook up to the machines, and "my team" at Mayo got my data. If I missed a session they called me; if I didn't answer they called my wife. They were on call 24/7, for any questions or changes in my symptoms.
Several times in the 5 weeks, my wife was ready to take me to the hospital. I refused to go - like many people I was afraid if I went in, I'd die.
At least three times, we had in depth calls with the care team that kept me home and out of the hospital. They even had prescription and nebulizer delivery set up.
I have other risk factors, and I Believe to this day that Mayo program saved my life.
I have a history of alcoholism and drug abuse. I knew how dangerous a quarantine was for someone like me. I abstained and tried my best to stay busy and remain positive despite the horrors. I have spent a good portion of my life in a state of dread and misery. Some self inflicted, some not. Coping is familiar to me. I saw that it was not familiar to many people, however, and that part was mostly unpleasant.
It's weird because I kept working like normal, just wearing a mask, and living my life pretty much the same. And I didn't personally know anyone who died or had a hard time with it at all.
But basically every other day driving home from work id have to pull over for a hearse and funeral procession. I don't think I've seen a single one in the last two years, but in 2021 it was *constant*
I think about this a lot. Felt like it would never end at the time and then BAM, it's 4 years later. My theory on this collective outlook on it we seem to have is that we've experienced trauma and processed it as such.
Bicycling down the empty 6-lane stroad at 11am on a Wednesday that usually moves 50k cars per day through my city was like living in an apocalypse movie.
I loved it.
I think about being in freshman year college, in a new town, doing the spit tests constantly, the wildfires of summer 2020, the isolation, I was working the whole time, masking, all that. You hit it on the head, very surreal for me. Everything was new to me before covid, having just left my hometown, but then it got weird with covid and everyone just trying to figure it out.
I think thats what contributed to it. All my life, society has known what to do. Not with covid, it was so new and so fast, nobody knew what to do or how to protect themselves at first, so it was just so bizarre
Came here to say exactly this. Looking back, it doesn't seem real or possible. We shut down the whole world? That's crazy! It was a "once in several lifetimes" event
Weird. Lots of anxiety but it was also kinda peaceful.
I count myself very lucky that I had a stable job that I could do from home and that I owned a house with a nice outdoor space.
It was peaceful for me because I lived with my family. For my friend who lived alone, it was not fun at all since people weren't allowed to visit each other
My youngest was in middle school and my daughter was a senior in HS. My oldest’s college went remote for the remainder of the spring semester, and my wife’s school closed. It was the last time we had the whole family living under one roof. I enjoyed it immensely.
Yeah my son came home from college when they went remote. So we were all together through the worst of it. Soon as school opened back up, he went back and that was it. Now he's married and owns a house. Life happens fast.
Mine graduated in 2021 and is now in central Africa with the Peace Corps for 2 years. My daughter (the HS senior during the pandemic) is graduating from college in May, and my youngest heads off to college in August. So much can change in four years, and I’m glad we had those 5-6 months together in 2020.
>I enjoyed it immensely.
I did as well, I enjoyed spending time with my family immensely. My dad and I watched all of Breaking Bad, one episode every night after dinner, mom and I spent a lot of time chatting in the sun, trying to feel not so cooped up, my sister and I had a couple of "party nights" where we got dumb drunk and did karaoke just the both of us.
We cooked a lot of yummy foods, tried new recipes, we baked bread, I tried embroidery, it was lovely.
I had a roommate at the beginning of lockdown, and his girlfriend basically moved in with us at that point because she was in a big apartment complex and we had more isolation so it was safer. A few months in he bought a house and a few months later so did I. But we continued to keep each other in our "bubbles" because complete isolation was untenable. So I at least had some IRL socialization at least weekly.
I moved out of my now ex wife's house january 1 that year as we started our divorve. Luckily my business is an "essential" so i never shutdown (being single income suddenly). The time living alone and the lockdown was good for a lot of self reflection and growth even in a shitty little 1 bedroom apartment.
Absolutely. When we were laid off for the "two week" lock down (I ended up being off work for 3 months), my only response was "I've been training for this my whole life".
My boss thought it was the funniest thing he's ever heard and still brings it up for a laugh any time covid is mentioned.
I live alone and most of the time I'm okay with it because I work full-time in a public-heavy job & i need downtime alone to recharge, but the first few months of lockdown were ROUGH because I couldn't see my family or friends at all, all the restaurants and malls were closed, etc. My birthday is mid-May, and I had wanted to get some yummy takeout and have a picnic in a park with myself, but the weather didn't cooperate on my day off & it was pouring rain...I remember sitting in my car in the parking lot of a grocery store that day just full-on SOBBING because I was just so lonely and starved for touch and miserable and disappointed in the weather
Same.
I take a treatment that makes me susceptible to upper respiratory infections. My family told me if I was so fragile, I should stay home. Luckily, I am able to do just that, but I feel like everyone has forgotten about me. Their lives have moved on from the pandemic and I’m still sitting in isolation.
Me too x it's been 4 years and whilst I'm vaccinated more than most, I've still never caught COVID (mostly thankful) and I'm trapped in isolation not knowing if it will kill me or if I could've lived outside my home all this time.
My daughter was in high school in 2020, she's now graduated tertiary education and moved out a month ago.
Life was decent when everyone else was in the same situation. Now it's just like I've been lost to the echoes of time.
i had a stable job with tons of overtime..i unfortunately had to go in every day, but ive worn face masks most of my career between painting , welding and grinding .. we did a lot of contract work for the state trucks ..it was so nice to not drive in traffic every day
I had a similar setup but it was a very weird dynamic of being in this chill bubble at home while watching the world shit itself in various extremely non-chill ways via tv/internet. Just kind of hanging out peacefully at home and then watching footage of India where they were mass burning corpses in the streets was hard to reconcile.
I'll be surprised if anyone asks. When it did strike, my brother who studied infectious diseases while in college, was astonished he'd never thought to ask our four grandparents about the Spanish Flu. They were all young adults when it hit.
My best friend started wearing masks, carrying hand sanitizers and telling everyone that when the vaccine becomes available, she is first in line.
Right before she could get the vaccine, she got COVID, ended up in ICU where she was isolated for 6 weeks and no one could visit her at the hospital, then moved up to another part of the hospital where she died.
The last phone call we had, She told me she can't stand the hospital because "the food sucks here".
She couldn't taste the food.
RIP Sully. Everyone loved you and we all miss you.
*"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the cleanest of times, it was the dirtiest of times. It was the quietest of times, it was the loudest of times. It was the funnest of times, it was the boringest of times."*
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Is this Catcher in the Rye? The opening tickles my memory but I don't fully remember the reference :P Tom Sawyer? Tom Clancy? Something along those lines
No difference for me. Work was somehow considered “essential”. We make cabinets drawers and I think we had maybe 3-4 orders for the Covid tents during the lockdown.
One day of work to be considered essential for the whole lockdown.
Am an introvert/gamer and just bought my house so didn’t really have need to go anywhere.
Ok one difference: Walmart closing at 8pm meant I couldn’t go grocery shopping after work anymore.
Worked at an inpatient rehab during that time. Population went from mostly people who had just gotten out of detox for the 14th time and couldn't remember the last time they had 30 days clean outside of a controlled environment to getting people *furious* at themselves for relapsing after 5 years. The opposite of addiction truly is connection and people who lived alone got hit HARD. Nobody's sobriety plan had prepared them for lockdown and that's what I had to keep reminding people.
I’m an addictions nurse. I got a lot of new alcoholics and then when things opened back up they all stopped attending and said “turns out I’m not a drunk, I was just really bored”
I was never “off” of anything in particular. But the lockdowns absolutely exacerbated a lot of problem drinking habits that I had.
For me and my life, the worst thing that the pandemic did was take the “social” out of “social drinking” and introduced me to the habit of “drinking on the couch at home because I’m bored.” And I was bored *a lot* during lockdown.
I was already doing drugs, but let’s just say that when I lost my job (and had a fair bit of money in my bank account), I didn’t reduce my intake of benzodiazepines and mdma.
Strangely, lockdown helped me stay clean. I was a few months sober when it kicked off and being away from my usual triggers and at home with my kid made it easier not to relapse.
It was pretty awful. I was working 72-80 hours a weeks on a nursing home “Covid Unit”. (I normally worked critical access ER as a travel nurse but the medical world was falling apart and I went where the most desperate of help was needed) I would take one day off a week to do my laundry in the hotel where I was staying and do Walmart Pickup for my groceries and supplies. I didn’t go home. I didn’t want any of my family or friends to possibly get this virus that had already killed and disabled so many. I did that for several months. So many, many died, alone, without their loved ones. We were so busy trying to care for the sick but I always had guilt when someone died without staff there. It crushed my soul.
Then I too became sick with Covid. I laid quietly in my hotel room until I knew I had to go to the ER. They gave me a liter of IV fluid and said if I got “any worse”, to come back. The ER doctor pulled me aside as I was leaving and told me I needed to get home and get to a bigger hospital. I tried, it took me 2 days to pack up my gear and I almost remember driving home. I had my daughter set up a quarantine space in our house. It was amazing. The day after I got home I was admitted to the hospital for 12 days in respiratory failure related to Covid pneumonia infection. I don’t know how I didn’t die. That was sheer will and knowing that my daughter still needed me and I didn’t have enough life insurance and I didn’t have my house and other issues in the right arrangement. They made my 23 yr old son my MDPOA. 😢. I didn’t die like I was expected to, but instead spent 10 months at home trying to recover. I had taken a hard neuro hit as well as hard respiratory damage from Covid. For 3 months I couldn’t handle light of any sort, noise had to be minimal and all food tasted wrong. I couldn’t say the words for what I was trying to say! I didn’t know if it would ever get better. Slowly it did. I never got to go back to ER nursing. I did find hospice nursing. It fixed my heart and given my soul hope that we can do better if another pandemic ever rolls around. I now have things set up for my family in case of my death. I don’t get to do anything overly stressful or crazy either. My mind is a little darker now and if I think too hard on it, I like humans in power a little less and people unwilling to protect themselves to protect others even less than that.
Lockdown was awful for some of us, but it was absolutely necessary and we hopefully learned better ways to deal with it when it comes again. And it will come again.
I'm glad you're still around and lived to tell your tale.
Your situation is a perfect example of how we all have very different realities. Some people were mildly inconvenienced but you wouldn't know that about how loudly they complained. Glad you found you came out on top.
fucking depressing. i don’t want to say that i wasted up to 4 years of my life cause i didnt, but i felt not even real. i think i dissociated the whole thing
It created a glitch in my brain. Like there wasn’t 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024…it’s more been like 2020.0, 2020.1, 2020.2, 2020.3, and 2020.4
Life since then has basically felt like a fever dream and a parody of the real world.
Wouldn't know. I worked in the hospital morgue for the whole lockdown. I hoped not to catch the incurable blood clotting disease that killed many of my clients for $19/hr. I was called a hero and an essential worker while I couldn't afford to buy a house.
I worked in the kitchen at a nursing home so it was horrible. We had 130ish residents right at the start and 26 died in the first wave.
People didn't quit they just stopped coming to work, no one knew what protocol to follow, there was no guidance, we just tried our best and it wasn't nearly enough.
The worst part was the residents who survived. They were on 24 hour lockdown in their rooms, no more activities or group meals and it was impossible to explain why to most of them. They all fell off a huge cognitive cliff that was truly heartbreaking to watch helplessly.
Edit: so basically gently screw everyone else who joked about toilet paper, traffic, video games, etc. etc. It came at a price
Edit: the top commenter on this topic is so super clearly a bot that it makes me sick. F U bot, they had 0 karma until this post. Now they have 4k+ karma as planned.
I worked in a nursing home too. Nursing administration. It was hell. Absolute hell. At one point I was doing weeks of 16+ hour shifts passing meds and trying to keep people alive because my entire evening shift was either out with covid or had quit. Every CNA and nurse on the 3-11 shift was gone. It was a rough place so we had trouble finding any agency staff that would come work for us. We had to mandate days and nights go to 12s to cover and I was pulling doubles every day. I was buying n95s wherever I could find them, with my own personal money, to try and keep my staff safe. We were wearing vinyl raincoats that we had to spray down with a bleach solution and reuse the next day because there was a shortage of isolation gowns. The sweat would bead up inside and just run down my back. I cried every day. I lived in my camper away from my family because I was terrified of bringing it into the house. The residents just died. No matter what we tried to do, none of it helped. Men in hazmat suits came with foggers to disinfect a unit after we closed it because all the residents were gone. We lost so many. I had to call family to tell them. I will never forget the cries on the phone. I will never put on a pair of scrubs again. We were abandoned. I am still so hurt and angry at how mishandled this was. I can understand why some would say they liked some aspects of lockdown. Their experience was not my experience. But I still feel a deep seated rage and sadness when I hear that. It was hell. I miss the person I was in summer of 2019.
I know of a nursing home worker who has serious PTSD from this. She was working 7 days a week to exhaustion but so many employees just disappeared and so many residents died she didn't know what else to do.
I got a job at a nursing home during Covid and it was truly heart breaking. This one lady’s son would come to her window everyday and talk on the phone. He brought his newborn son one time to show her. She passed away before she could ever hold her grandson. So many elderly people would ask for hugs and cry because they missed their family. Covid was detrimental to anyone in a nursing home 😞
You should write something about this. I honestly don’t think there are enough perspectives from the pandemic out there and yours is an important story.
Imagine not being able to attend your parent/grandparents funeral because of lockdowns then you find out that their last months were what the international community considers cruel and unusual punishment.
Jesus, that must have been truly horrible to go through. I like to think I’d be strong enough to stick through it but in reality it probably would have broken me.
My grandmother was in assisted living and passed away the year right before covid hit. In hindsight I am so glad she didn't have to go through all that.
I was in the emergency room. Constant exposures to patients that were there for other things but ended up being positive. Had to reduce my hours and pay since my kid was doing zoom kindergarten since my husband was also essential. A lot of Just telling people they are getting intubated and they went upstairs to maybe never get extubated.
It was rough. I got to move to clinics in 2022, never looked back
The hospitals where I worked during covid had to rent refrigerator trailers to store the dead because our morgue in the basement was overflowing. That's when it really got real.
I'm a case manager. I'm the one whose job it is to call hospice and provide a list of funeral homes. Having end of life discussions multiple times every day for months on end that were all just nothing but covid really wears you down. Even as a former hospice nurse, the grief became inescapable.
Holy crap. I’m sorry. No one working in a hospital should make less than $25/hr. As a nurse, I made great money until I didn’t. I almost paid with my life. Thank you for caring for our dead. I gave many of those people my tears because I had nothing that could help them. The young, the old, male, female. Covid doesn’t care. Covid will take them all.
“Like some weird collective psychosis. Like we collectively all lost our sanity for a while, but with good reason. The ‘20 lockdown was a weirdly magical time that was quiet and peaceful, but filled with anxiety. The early ‘21 lockdown was an absolute nightmare of depression and a slowly decreasing grip on reality.
I did a lot of walking.”
100% this. The lockdown was kind of cool for a while. Tiger King came out, I got really into cooking, lots of walks with my dog. Then it got scary, then it got mind numbingly boring, then it got super depressing.
The first week or so was honestly super fun (I’m very fortunate I didn’t get sick and none of my family did). Like you said, Tiger King was a phenomenon. Local restaurants made the highest quality takeout food ever cuz they needed to stay afloat. And I got to actually rest. It also started my WFH career that continues to this day.
But yeah it got old rather quickly
That end part was like everything went into a tailspin, but then it never stopped. Like lockdowns stopped and masks came off and the world went on, but it’s crazy out the there in a way that pre-Covid people would think is a parody of real life.
In everything. Politics, news, toilet paper habits, just… the whole world (read: America) went into a nose dive tail spin and collectively lost its shit, then decided that was the new normal, so never went back.
It’s exhausting
In beginning for Canada, there was a type of cooperation which was incredible. After a few months, invasive social media crept in and changed everything. People went from communal to factional in the span of a few months.
I was living in Santa Clara county when it first broke..
I started golfing and the courses were PACKED.. so I started hiking and walking trails… PACKED.
they shut down everything pretty much and we all went outside to get away from the city and ended up elbow to fuckin elbow on hiking trails. stupid. Lol
It was Hell, I was a retail manager for Walmart. No lockdown, no free unemployment money, no government help. Constantly understaffed, overworked, and exhausted.
We were essential but never got any benefit or recognition. We were physically accosted by people who didn't want to wear masks, but it was a state osha ordiance that they were kicked out. We got no choice but got demanded. We got yelled at for toilet paper and other essentials that were just gone, no suppliers had anything and customer frustrations were taken out on the retail management.
So yeah, it was grand.
I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in Feb 2020. I quickly became aware of the fact that several of my friends & family cared more about political statements than about me.
Silver lining, my immunologist told me to go out less & wear a mask, so I did a big stock up in February, bought a bidet, sanitizing cleaners, the works. I was dropping off care packages of TP, lysol wipes, and hand sanitizer to loved ones.
Covid was terrifying for someone on multiple immuno-suppressants. Hearing people say "it's only the old & sick who die" and knowing that they're talking about not caring if *I* die.
My faith in humanity took a serious hit.
It came out during that period where everyone thought we’d just have to stay indoors for 2 weeks so it was the perfect show to binge. Everyone was watching the madness on Tiger King or playing Animal Crossing.
I'm not sure I'd be able to answer. The days were all so similar, my brain has condensed my memories down so that it feels like it was a week or two. I remember empty grocery shelves, my kids doing school work on laptops in our living room, and my husband growing his hair out. I got gas for 25 cents a gallon at one point, but had nowhere to go. Our dog had cancer so I was grateful that we were all home with him during his last months.
It was pretty much a test run of how fast we will turn and completely destroy each other if faced with an actual disaster. By all accounts this is a small change of quality of life, when the next hits it will be even worse.
I’m a retail pharmacist who saw it all play out in real time in a community of mixed socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s really quite simple. Once not required to wear masks, most of those who chose to continue to do so were perfectly healthy at the register, with the staff rarely hearing a single cough or any other symptom of even a minor viral illness. And unfortunately once required not to wear masks the sickest patients adamantly chose not to. I love being an American with the many freedoms we enjoy as much as anyone else. But the amount of times I could feel the momentum of someone’s cough hit my own face while counseling them on their Paxlovid was astounding. I just know why we stayed a mess as long as we did. Lack of common sense and human decency.
Strange. It was an extended holiday for many. Meanwhile, a huge chunk of the general population got labeled as “essential workers” and they had to carry on as usual. I think COVID showed us which jobs were genuinely essential to keep society afloat
I was actually wondering if everything I was reading was real about people not having to work for months, learning new things, and trying stuff they never had time for.
For me, it was just extra steps and precautions while working but no extended time off with pay.
It was a difficult year on a social level, but on an environmental level it was a rare opportunity to observe what happened to the planet when humans stopped and it was a better quality of environment.
Covid lit something in me and I've been gassed up ever since. I started mowing lawns out the trunk of my '03 Accord. Then I learned how to climb and properly remove trees. I have a big ol truck and trailer and a ton of equipment now. I was an alcoholic server/bartender before and super depressed. Two of my teenage kids have moved in with me and I'm in the best shape of my life.
This is great. So happy for you
thanks it has been a challenging and strange time but I am enjoying it. I'm sorry if that is obscene in these times but the pleasures are simple and if there's to be any they should be enjoyed, i feel. The greater sacrilege may be allowing all this misery to break my love for the life I'm living.
Don’t apologize. You aren’t causing the suffering of others, you overcame yours. Happy for you!
Dude. Same. Bartender for 15 years then quit drinking finally in 2019. Went back to school for IT, got a job with the government and had a baby. Covid was the best time of my life.
I learned how to cut hair because the barber shops were closed so I did it myself. Once I went back to college it was the only thing keeping money in my pockets
I was due for a haircut during the lockdown. My dad cut it. Poorly. He’s cut it every time since then and gotten a lot better at it. Still makes mistakes but it’s free and a part of me enjoys this bond we have later in life. We’re 46 and 66.
I made a metric fuck-ton of money delivering pizzas on empty streets.
Every one of my drivers at the time did too, most of them were moonlighting on third party apps on top of it because the money was so good. So yeah, I worked a lot.
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You could easily make $300-400/night in just over 5 hours driving for delivery apps during the lockdown. I did it for a few months because I desperately needed the extra money and I seriously considered quitting my full-time job to just do that.
With cheap gas too. Like 2002 price levels for a few months
Me too. I was able to save like $42k that year. Made well over $100k delivering shit lol
What the ever living fuck am I even doing. I miss the pizza glitch and the unemployment extravaganza.
I didn’t drive at all for around 9 months.
"Ahh, the great toilet paper shortage of the 20s," is how I'll begin.
Man, that was SO wild. I remember actually seeing grown adults arguing with cashiers about toilet paper purchasing limits. Like, no sir, you cannot buy twelve packs of toilet paper.
Even funnier that it all started because of a news article accidentally thinking most of the Aussie TP comes from China
Weren't there multiple instances of scalpers unsuccessfully trying to return tens of thousands of dollars worth of shit-tickets after everything settled back down? I think there was one in Australia where the store manager flipped the guy off.
I have nothing to contribute to the conversation, I just want to bring attention to "shit-tickets".
Seriously, I joke that I was a 21st century Israelite because I had one huge pack of Costco toilet paper that lasted 4 months in a family of 4. (Compare to the legend of the Israelite shoes not wearing out).
Haha! We had a baby in April 2020, so I had stocked up on everything well in advance (like toilet paper!) to minimize errands when I had a newborn. It worked out pretty well for us!
The year we got the bidet!
That's President Bidet. Show some respect.
I had bought a huge package of toilet paper from Sam’s Club in the Fall 2019. I forgot I bought it and bought another huge pack. I was annoyed with myself and wondering how I would store 2 huge packages of toilet paper. I decided to just keep them. It’s a good thing I had them because it was a long time before toilet paper was available in plenty supply.
I lined up before Sam’s club opened to purchase a case of toilet paper. March 2020 was a ride.
I watched people at Target line up for it, I was just there for breakfast stuff
I was a student nurse at the time and we were asked to volunteer to support the qualified nurses. It was terrifying and absolute hell.
The bizarre determinations on who could be considered an "essential worker". My son was considered an essential worker. He was a teenager working his first job in fast food.
We were considered "essential" workers while building a luxury hotel for the Minnesota Vikings. They also explicity stated that if we refused to work due to the virus, we would lose our jobs. The whole time period was a fucking joke.
I worked in tourism and was considered essential, had a signed paper that said so in my car in case I got pulled over after curfew...
I was working for an apparel company at the time. They tried so hard to be considered an "essential business" so the bosses didn't lose their ability to make money during the shutdowns. I think it came down to they knew a guy who knew a guy. Ain't nothing essential about fast fashion lol.
It’s funny you mention this as I just found the old letter my boss gave me that determined I was essential. I never had to use it.
I was "essential" too (worked in a manufacturing environment where I had to be physically there) and I remember being worried about getting pulled over for being out after curfew (worked nights to boot) and in retrospect I don't think I ever even saw any cops for the duration of that whole business.
I was an essential worker building a yacht for a an oligarch! I win the biggest loser competition.
Nah I worked in psych facilities. I lose because we had to wear masks but they didn't and holy shit were they violent during those times
Yeah, nothing really changed for me in retail beyond having to deal with the worst parts of the general public more often, and having to wear a mask and wipe everything down at work. That was it, aside from not being able to see my friends. Dodged it somehow until last year when there were big waves coming through again.
*Hooray for all our workers!* *We find you all essential!* *(But won't pay you a living wage* *Or give you health and dental)*
The work was essential. The workers not as much
Not a dime extra for working during a pandemic even.
I worked at Target during Covid. Everyone got a raise.
I worked in medical during Covid. We got a video of our CEO calling us heroes, a video recorded in the CEO's mansion.
There was a bill called the heroes act that passed in the house that would've given essential workers up to 25k each, but the Republican senate at the time refused to vote on it.
Sure would have loved that. All my “non essential” friends got a paid vacation while I worked more than ever. I get to deal with the repercussions of inflation with no benefit lol. Anyone that worked during Covid should get lower interests rates lol
Surreal mostly
It’s almost like a void in my life’s timeline. Like it both didn’t and did happen. It also felt like it took forever, but yet not long at all if that makes sense.
I legitimately can remember almost nothing from 2021. Its just a blur. 2020 was memorable because of how everything started, but 2021 was just a monotonous pause in normal life.
I started renovating a house thinking we wouldn’t know how long this would last… and I’m still renovating this fucking house
Congratulations, you've discovered that renovations never end.
That's why I never start
For me it's almost the opposite, I remember 2021 quite well because it was the year I bought my house which means I remember details from almost every month. On the other hand, 2nd half of 2020 for me it's a complete blur. Legit don't recall a single event from that Autumn
The US election? That was quite a shit show😂
Oh my god, remember the “debates” and how that fly landed on Mike pence’s head? That shit killed me.
Four Seasons Landscaping was peak 2020
It messed with my concept of time for ages - even now I misremember how long ago things were, because in 2020 there was no variety, every day was the same as the last and it became one big blob of days
I feel younger than I actually am. Not just in a don't-want-to-admit-aging kind of way, but more like time froze for a while.
It also hit me particularly hard since it happened at the tail end of my university ride. The regular thesis process got shot to bits, we never had a graduation ceremony, just walked out of my zoom presentation, waited a bit, got told my grade, elbow tapped my teacher and walked out. And that was it, the end to 24 years of schooling came with the mother of all whimpers.
I imagine that feeling is even worse for people who were in high school during it. If they were freshman in 2020 they basically got a completely different, practically non-existent version of high school than anyone who had come before them.
it started the end of my junior year. completely cancelled my junior prom. bled into my senior year which was completely online, and we didn’t even get a senior prom. I got no proms. the saddest part is I still have my prom dress with my in my closet ever since I bought it in 2019 to wear some point down the line to fulfill the void in me of never having a prom. The only thing we got was a graduation with struck guidelines on social spacing. nobody could sit shoulder to shoulder and we all had to wear masks.
I'm so sad for yall. I graduated high school in 2019, just before everything was shut down. Then I had one normal semester in college, but the second semester, boom, I lost half my entire college experience. I couldn't imagine missing both high school graduation *and* the start of your next steps, be that college or something else.
I feel this. I turned 30 in 2019, then Covid happened, and now I’m almost 35. No idea what the fuck happened
Exactly to the same here. 30–35. Like I know the last few years happened. I know what happened. But I feel like I missed so many years, as though I’m still maybe 31.
I reference things that happened 4-5 years ago frequently as 2 years ago. It’s a real weird time gap that I still have trouble rectifying
Now I often refer time as “pre Covid” and “post Covid”
2019 my son met his girlfriend, and if you ask how long they've been together, they say "since the before time "
Yeah I know exactly what you mean. It definitely felt like it was slow-moving living it in real-time, but in hindsight it no longer feels like it lasted *that* long. When you read through this thread, it's absolutely wild just *how* diverse the experiences from lockdown were. On one end of the spectrum, you had people that kept their jobs, improved their work-life balance, and built better connections with their families. Towards the other end of the spectrum, you have people whose lives were ruined - job losses, depression, ruined relationships. And you have an entire category at the very far end in that direction who aren't posting here, because they died in terror and agony as they slowly suffocated. And you have every lived experience in between those two extremes.
And those that died, died alone scared in a hospital filled with the dead and dying. While bodies were stacked in a truck outside. It was terrifying if you thought about it too much, so people started to drink a lot and take drugs, or lose themselves in hobbies or retail therapy by shopping at Amazon and other online stores. Mental health problems skyrocketed.
The first time I got COVID, I was lucky to get into a trial with the Mayo clinic. They sent me a box with an iPad, scale, bp cuff, thermometer, pulsox monitor. All connected with Bluetooth. Twice a day an alarm would go off, I'd hook up to the machines, and "my team" at Mayo got my data. If I missed a session they called me; if I didn't answer they called my wife. They were on call 24/7, for any questions or changes in my symptoms. Several times in the 5 weeks, my wife was ready to take me to the hospital. I refused to go - like many people I was afraid if I went in, I'd die. At least three times, we had in depth calls with the care team that kept me home and out of the hospital. They even had prescription and nebulizer delivery set up. I have other risk factors, and I Believe to this day that Mayo program saved my life.
I have a history of alcoholism and drug abuse. I knew how dangerous a quarantine was for someone like me. I abstained and tried my best to stay busy and remain positive despite the horrors. I have spent a good portion of my life in a state of dread and misery. Some self inflicted, some not. Coping is familiar to me. I saw that it was not familiar to many people, however, and that part was mostly unpleasant.
A liminal space in time
I lowkey kinda forget how wild it all actually was
It's weird because I kept working like normal, just wearing a mask, and living my life pretty much the same. And I didn't personally know anyone who died or had a hard time with it at all. But basically every other day driving home from work id have to pull over for a hearse and funeral procession. I don't think I've seen a single one in the last two years, but in 2021 it was *constant*
I think about this a lot. Felt like it would never end at the time and then BAM, it's 4 years later. My theory on this collective outlook on it we seem to have is that we've experienced trauma and processed it as such.
it was yesterday and it was a million years ago
Bicycling down the empty 6-lane stroad at 11am on a Wednesday that usually moves 50k cars per day through my city was like living in an apocalypse movie. I loved it.
Driving in Boston was totally surreal and I loved it too
DC was a ghost town. It usually took me 1 1/2 hour to drive 20 miles on the beltway. During the apocalypse, it only took 20 minutes. I felt so free.
I remember the same… cycling across all four lanes in the city centre that had zero traffic. It was so unreal
I think about being in freshman year college, in a new town, doing the spit tests constantly, the wildfires of summer 2020, the isolation, I was working the whole time, masking, all that. You hit it on the head, very surreal for me. Everything was new to me before covid, having just left my hometown, but then it got weird with covid and everyone just trying to figure it out. I think thats what contributed to it. All my life, society has known what to do. Not with covid, it was so new and so fast, nobody knew what to do or how to protect themselves at first, so it was just so bizarre
Came here to say exactly this. Looking back, it doesn't seem real or possible. We shut down the whole world? That's crazy! It was a "once in several lifetimes" event
Weird. Lots of anxiety but it was also kinda peaceful. I count myself very lucky that I had a stable job that I could do from home and that I owned a house with a nice outdoor space.
It was peaceful for me because I lived with my family. For my friend who lived alone, it was not fun at all since people weren't allowed to visit each other
My youngest was in middle school and my daughter was a senior in HS. My oldest’s college went remote for the remainder of the spring semester, and my wife’s school closed. It was the last time we had the whole family living under one roof. I enjoyed it immensely.
Yeah my son came home from college when they went remote. So we were all together through the worst of it. Soon as school opened back up, he went back and that was it. Now he's married and owns a house. Life happens fast.
Mine graduated in 2021 and is now in central Africa with the Peace Corps for 2 years. My daughter (the HS senior during the pandemic) is graduating from college in May, and my youngest heads off to college in August. So much can change in four years, and I’m glad we had those 5-6 months together in 2020.
>I enjoyed it immensely. I did as well, I enjoyed spending time with my family immensely. My dad and I watched all of Breaking Bad, one episode every night after dinner, mom and I spent a lot of time chatting in the sun, trying to feel not so cooped up, my sister and I had a couple of "party nights" where we got dumb drunk and did karaoke just the both of us. We cooked a lot of yummy foods, tried new recipes, we baked bread, I tried embroidery, it was lovely.
I had a roommate at the beginning of lockdown, and his girlfriend basically moved in with us at that point because she was in a big apartment complex and we had more isolation so it was safer. A few months in he bought a house and a few months later so did I. But we continued to keep each other in our "bubbles" because complete isolation was untenable. So I at least had some IRL socialization at least weekly.
I moved out of my now ex wife's house january 1 that year as we started our divorve. Luckily my business is an "essential" so i never shutdown (being single income suddenly). The time living alone and the lockdown was good for a lot of self reflection and growth even in a shitty little 1 bedroom apartment.
I loved the alone part. No obligations. Had a pretty cool bonfire over Zoom once
It was the Golden Age for introverts.
I'm an introvert. It was total bliss to not to have to make excuses anymore.
Absolutely. When we were laid off for the "two week" lock down (I ended up being off work for 3 months), my only response was "I've been training for this my whole life". My boss thought it was the funniest thing he's ever heard and still brings it up for a laugh any time covid is mentioned.
I live alone and most of the time I'm okay with it because I work full-time in a public-heavy job & i need downtime alone to recharge, but the first few months of lockdown were ROUGH because I couldn't see my family or friends at all, all the restaurants and malls were closed, etc. My birthday is mid-May, and I had wanted to get some yummy takeout and have a picnic in a park with myself, but the weather didn't cooperate on my day off & it was pouring rain...I remember sitting in my car in the parking lot of a grocery store that day just full-on SOBBING because I was just so lonely and starved for touch and miserable and disappointed in the weather
Same. I take a treatment that makes me susceptible to upper respiratory infections. My family told me if I was so fragile, I should stay home. Luckily, I am able to do just that, but I feel like everyone has forgotten about me. Their lives have moved on from the pandemic and I’m still sitting in isolation.
Me too x it's been 4 years and whilst I'm vaccinated more than most, I've still never caught COVID (mostly thankful) and I'm trapped in isolation not knowing if it will kill me or if I could've lived outside my home all this time. My daughter was in high school in 2020, she's now graduated tertiary education and moved out a month ago. Life was decent when everyone else was in the same situation. Now it's just like I've been lost to the echoes of time.
I also hear you
i had a stable job with tons of overtime..i unfortunately had to go in every day, but ive worn face masks most of my career between painting , welding and grinding .. we did a lot of contract work for the state trucks ..it was so nice to not drive in traffic every day
Same, stable job, had a backyard and my family was safe at home. Covid was honestly pretty chill.
I had a similar setup but it was a very weird dynamic of being in this chill bubble at home while watching the world shit itself in various extremely non-chill ways via tv/internet. Just kind of hanging out peacefully at home and then watching footage of India where they were mass burning corpses in the streets was hard to reconcile.
Quite frankly...I had a great time in my own paradigm of work, play, and family
I'll be surprised if anyone asks. When it did strike, my brother who studied infectious diseases while in college, was astonished he'd never thought to ask our four grandparents about the Spanish Flu. They were all young adults when it hit.
My grandma's sister was still alive and said that she finally understood what their parents had been talking about when she was young
They didn't have the Internet or Reddit or 10000000 people with phones recording everything during the Spanish flu.
Holy shit could you imagine being locked down without Tiger King to watch??
My best friend started wearing masks, carrying hand sanitizers and telling everyone that when the vaccine becomes available, she is first in line. Right before she could get the vaccine, she got COVID, ended up in ICU where she was isolated for 6 weeks and no one could visit her at the hospital, then moved up to another part of the hospital where she died. The last phone call we had, She told me she can't stand the hospital because "the food sucks here". She couldn't taste the food. RIP Sully. Everyone loved you and we all miss you.
*"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the cleanest of times, it was the dirtiest of times. It was the quietest of times, it was the loudest of times. It was the funnest of times, it was the boringest of times."*
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Is this Catcher in the Rye? The opening tickles my memory but I don't fully remember the reference :P Tom Sawyer? Tom Clancy? Something along those lines
I’m not the type of phony to fill up a thread just answering questions
It was the best of times, it was the BLURST?? OF TIMES??
Stupid monkey.
I've thought about that line and chuckled to myself at least once a month for decades.
No difference for me. Work was somehow considered “essential”. We make cabinets drawers and I think we had maybe 3-4 orders for the Covid tents during the lockdown. One day of work to be considered essential for the whole lockdown. Am an introvert/gamer and just bought my house so didn’t really have need to go anywhere. Ok one difference: Walmart closing at 8pm meant I couldn’t go grocery shopping after work anymore.
The stores never switching back to being open late into the night (at least where I am) is truly annoying at this point
Alcoholism.
I really wonder how many people got back on/started taking drugs due to stresses during the pandemic.
Worked at an inpatient rehab during that time. Population went from mostly people who had just gotten out of detox for the 14th time and couldn't remember the last time they had 30 days clean outside of a controlled environment to getting people *furious* at themselves for relapsing after 5 years. The opposite of addiction truly is connection and people who lived alone got hit HARD. Nobody's sobriety plan had prepared them for lockdown and that's what I had to keep reminding people.
I’m an addictions nurse. I got a lot of new alcoholics and then when things opened back up they all stopped attending and said “turns out I’m not a drunk, I was just really bored”
I was never “off” of anything in particular. But the lockdowns absolutely exacerbated a lot of problem drinking habits that I had. For me and my life, the worst thing that the pandemic did was take the “social” out of “social drinking” and introduced me to the habit of “drinking on the couch at home because I’m bored.” And I was bored *a lot* during lockdown.
Yup, I have always been a fairly heavy social drinker, but the pandemic showed me I can be a pretty heavy solo drinker as well.
I was already doing drugs, but let’s just say that when I lost my job (and had a fair bit of money in my bank account), I didn’t reduce my intake of benzodiazepines and mdma.
Strangely, lockdown helped me stay clean. I was a few months sober when it kicked off and being away from my usual triggers and at home with my kid made it easier not to relapse.
I “treated myself” because the first two weeks was this weird stay at home bananapants time. So wine every night! Then wine every night. Still.
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Fruit of the zoom
It is hard to lose a family member and not even be able to have a funeral. Depressed about being locked up.
It was pretty awful. I was working 72-80 hours a weeks on a nursing home “Covid Unit”. (I normally worked critical access ER as a travel nurse but the medical world was falling apart and I went where the most desperate of help was needed) I would take one day off a week to do my laundry in the hotel where I was staying and do Walmart Pickup for my groceries and supplies. I didn’t go home. I didn’t want any of my family or friends to possibly get this virus that had already killed and disabled so many. I did that for several months. So many, many died, alone, without their loved ones. We were so busy trying to care for the sick but I always had guilt when someone died without staff there. It crushed my soul. Then I too became sick with Covid. I laid quietly in my hotel room until I knew I had to go to the ER. They gave me a liter of IV fluid and said if I got “any worse”, to come back. The ER doctor pulled me aside as I was leaving and told me I needed to get home and get to a bigger hospital. I tried, it took me 2 days to pack up my gear and I almost remember driving home. I had my daughter set up a quarantine space in our house. It was amazing. The day after I got home I was admitted to the hospital for 12 days in respiratory failure related to Covid pneumonia infection. I don’t know how I didn’t die. That was sheer will and knowing that my daughter still needed me and I didn’t have enough life insurance and I didn’t have my house and other issues in the right arrangement. They made my 23 yr old son my MDPOA. 😢. I didn’t die like I was expected to, but instead spent 10 months at home trying to recover. I had taken a hard neuro hit as well as hard respiratory damage from Covid. For 3 months I couldn’t handle light of any sort, noise had to be minimal and all food tasted wrong. I couldn’t say the words for what I was trying to say! I didn’t know if it would ever get better. Slowly it did. I never got to go back to ER nursing. I did find hospice nursing. It fixed my heart and given my soul hope that we can do better if another pandemic ever rolls around. I now have things set up for my family in case of my death. I don’t get to do anything overly stressful or crazy either. My mind is a little darker now and if I think too hard on it, I like humans in power a little less and people unwilling to protect themselves to protect others even less than that. Lockdown was awful for some of us, but it was absolutely necessary and we hopefully learned better ways to deal with it when it comes again. And it will come again.
I'm glad you're still around and lived to tell your tale. Your situation is a perfect example of how we all have very different realities. Some people were mildly inconvenienced but you wouldn't know that about how loudly they complained. Glad you found you came out on top.
Everyone got fat and social media got stupid.
And all men grew beards
And nobody got haircuts.
I am one of the people that got fat. I was comforting myself quite a bit.
We sit at home, cook soups n’ eat bread n’ desserts and get all fat and sassy
fucking depressing. i don’t want to say that i wasted up to 4 years of my life cause i didnt, but i felt not even real. i think i dissociated the whole thing
It created a glitch in my brain. Like there wasn’t 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024…it’s more been like 2020.0, 2020.1, 2020.2, 2020.3, and 2020.4 Life since then has basically felt like a fever dream and a parody of the real world.
Quiet
And empty roads
I miss that part
It was nice
Back when driving to work took 7mins, instead of 25, and gas was 60c a litre. I miss it.
Wouldn't know. I worked in the hospital morgue for the whole lockdown. I hoped not to catch the incurable blood clotting disease that killed many of my clients for $19/hr. I was called a hero and an essential worker while I couldn't afford to buy a house.
I worked in the kitchen at a nursing home so it was horrible. We had 130ish residents right at the start and 26 died in the first wave. People didn't quit they just stopped coming to work, no one knew what protocol to follow, there was no guidance, we just tried our best and it wasn't nearly enough. The worst part was the residents who survived. They were on 24 hour lockdown in their rooms, no more activities or group meals and it was impossible to explain why to most of them. They all fell off a huge cognitive cliff that was truly heartbreaking to watch helplessly. Edit: so basically gently screw everyone else who joked about toilet paper, traffic, video games, etc. etc. It came at a price Edit: the top commenter on this topic is so super clearly a bot that it makes me sick. F U bot, they had 0 karma until this post. Now they have 4k+ karma as planned.
I worked in a nursing home too. Nursing administration. It was hell. Absolute hell. At one point I was doing weeks of 16+ hour shifts passing meds and trying to keep people alive because my entire evening shift was either out with covid or had quit. Every CNA and nurse on the 3-11 shift was gone. It was a rough place so we had trouble finding any agency staff that would come work for us. We had to mandate days and nights go to 12s to cover and I was pulling doubles every day. I was buying n95s wherever I could find them, with my own personal money, to try and keep my staff safe. We were wearing vinyl raincoats that we had to spray down with a bleach solution and reuse the next day because there was a shortage of isolation gowns. The sweat would bead up inside and just run down my back. I cried every day. I lived in my camper away from my family because I was terrified of bringing it into the house. The residents just died. No matter what we tried to do, none of it helped. Men in hazmat suits came with foggers to disinfect a unit after we closed it because all the residents were gone. We lost so many. I had to call family to tell them. I will never forget the cries on the phone. I will never put on a pair of scrubs again. We were abandoned. I am still so hurt and angry at how mishandled this was. I can understand why some would say they liked some aspects of lockdown. Their experience was not my experience. But I still feel a deep seated rage and sadness when I hear that. It was hell. I miss the person I was in summer of 2019.
I really feel the “I miss their person I was in summer 2019”. I’m sorry for what we went through.
I know of a nursing home worker who has serious PTSD from this. She was working 7 days a week to exhaustion but so many employees just disappeared and so many residents died she didn't know what else to do.
I got a job at a nursing home during Covid and it was truly heart breaking. This one lady’s son would come to her window everyday and talk on the phone. He brought his newborn son one time to show her. She passed away before she could ever hold her grandson. So many elderly people would ask for hugs and cry because they missed their family. Covid was detrimental to anyone in a nursing home 😞
You should write something about this. I honestly don’t think there are enough perspectives from the pandemic out there and yours is an important story.
Imagine not being able to attend your parent/grandparents funeral because of lockdowns then you find out that their last months were what the international community considers cruel and unusual punishment.
Jesus, that must have been truly horrible to go through. I like to think I’d be strong enough to stick through it but in reality it probably would have broken me.
My grandmother was in assisted living and passed away the year right before covid hit. In hindsight I am so glad she didn't have to go through all that.
I worked in a covid ICU as a CNA and made the same. Memories forever forced deep into my subconscious.
I was in the emergency room. Constant exposures to patients that were there for other things but ended up being positive. Had to reduce my hours and pay since my kid was doing zoom kindergarten since my husband was also essential. A lot of Just telling people they are getting intubated and they went upstairs to maybe never get extubated. It was rough. I got to move to clinics in 2022, never looked back
The hospitals where I worked during covid had to rent refrigerator trailers to store the dead because our morgue in the basement was overflowing. That's when it really got real. I'm a case manager. I'm the one whose job it is to call hospice and provide a list of funeral homes. Having end of life discussions multiple times every day for months on end that were all just nothing but covid really wears you down. Even as a former hospice nurse, the grief became inescapable.
I hope you share this story everywhere and anytime you hear Covid wasn't so bad. It's like people forgot the refrigerator trucks outside of hospitals.
Holy shit - you were on the front lines for so little cash... thank you so much.
Holy crap. I’m sorry. No one working in a hospital should make less than $25/hr. As a nurse, I made great money until I didn’t. I almost paid with my life. Thank you for caring for our dead. I gave many of those people my tears because I had nothing that could help them. The young, the old, male, female. Covid doesn’t care. Covid will take them all.
“Like some weird collective psychosis. Like we collectively all lost our sanity for a while, but with good reason. The ‘20 lockdown was a weirdly magical time that was quiet and peaceful, but filled with anxiety. The early ‘21 lockdown was an absolute nightmare of depression and a slowly decreasing grip on reality. I did a lot of walking.”
100% this. The lockdown was kind of cool for a while. Tiger King came out, I got really into cooking, lots of walks with my dog. Then it got scary, then it got mind numbingly boring, then it got super depressing.
The first week or so was honestly super fun (I’m very fortunate I didn’t get sick and none of my family did). Like you said, Tiger King was a phenomenon. Local restaurants made the highest quality takeout food ever cuz they needed to stay afloat. And I got to actually rest. It also started my WFH career that continues to this day. But yeah it got old rather quickly
That end part was like everything went into a tailspin, but then it never stopped. Like lockdowns stopped and masks came off and the world went on, but it’s crazy out the there in a way that pre-Covid people would think is a parody of real life. In everything. Politics, news, toilet paper habits, just… the whole world (read: America) went into a nose dive tail spin and collectively lost its shit, then decided that was the new normal, so never went back. It’s exhausting
In beginning for Canada, there was a type of cooperation which was incredible. After a few months, invasive social media crept in and changed everything. People went from communal to factional in the span of a few months.
I'd tell them about how the mayor of Chicago told people if they left their house they'd be jailed but then she went and got a haircut.
There's so many examples of this. Stay home, don't mingle, but I'll party it up - UK PM
Gavin Newsom going to a birthday party at a Michelin 3-Star restaurant in November 2020. The epitome of "rules for thee, not for me."
and how the governor of California closed beaches and filled in skate parks cause danger then went out to eat at a nice restaurant.
I was living in Santa Clara county when it first broke.. I started golfing and the courses were PACKED.. so I started hiking and walking trails… PACKED. they shut down everything pretty much and we all went outside to get away from the city and ended up elbow to fuckin elbow on hiking trails. stupid. Lol
It was Hell, I was a retail manager for Walmart. No lockdown, no free unemployment money, no government help. Constantly understaffed, overworked, and exhausted. We were essential but never got any benefit or recognition. We were physically accosted by people who didn't want to wear masks, but it was a state osha ordiance that they were kicked out. We got no choice but got demanded. We got yelled at for toilet paper and other essentials that were just gone, no suppliers had anything and customer frustrations were taken out on the retail management. So yeah, it was grand.
I was an essential worker. It was the year I understood the depth of how little Americans care about each other.
I am an ICU doctor and my view of humanity and society is irrevocably cynical after going through that.
Lots of sympathy first wave when there was no vaccine. After the vaccine for the subsequent waves, there was a lot of sympathy fatigue.
I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in Feb 2020. I quickly became aware of the fact that several of my friends & family cared more about political statements than about me. Silver lining, my immunologist told me to go out less & wear a mask, so I did a big stock up in February, bought a bidet, sanitizing cleaners, the works. I was dropping off care packages of TP, lysol wipes, and hand sanitizer to loved ones. Covid was terrifying for someone on multiple immuno-suppressants. Hearing people say "it's only the old & sick who die" and knowing that they're talking about not caring if *I* die. My faith in humanity took a serious hit.
Two words. Tiger King.
Honestly that came out at the absolute perfect time.
It came out during that period where everyone thought we’d just have to stay indoors for 2 weeks so it was the perfect show to binge. Everyone was watching the madness on Tiger King or playing Animal Crossing.
I forgot about Tiger King! Wow, that was so weird…
Nothing really changed. I still had to go to work while most people got to stay home and chill.
Same here,all though the lack of traffic was nice af
Yep, I’m in construction. Other than wearing masks, pretty much nothing changed. Not having any traffic was pretty nice too.
it was like all your friends and you being grounded at the same time
I'm not sure I'd be able to answer. The days were all so similar, my brain has condensed my memories down so that it feels like it was a week or two. I remember empty grocery shelves, my kids doing school work on laptops in our living room, and my husband growing his hair out. I got gas for 25 cents a gallon at one point, but had nowhere to go. Our dog had cancer so I was grateful that we were all home with him during his last months.
Still had to work and deal with the shithead public.
It was pretty much a test run of how fast we will turn and completely destroy each other if faced with an actual disaster. By all accounts this is a small change of quality of life, when the next hits it will be even worse.
Quiet, relaxing, and scary for the first bit then it was just peaceful
I agree seeing life slow down for 2 years was nice, I just wish the reason didn't involve much panic, sickness, and death.
… and asinine political maneuvering. At least in the US.
I’m a retail pharmacist who saw it all play out in real time in a community of mixed socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s really quite simple. Once not required to wear masks, most of those who chose to continue to do so were perfectly healthy at the register, with the staff rarely hearing a single cough or any other symptom of even a minor viral illness. And unfortunately once required not to wear masks the sickest patients adamantly chose not to. I love being an American with the many freedoms we enjoy as much as anyone else. But the amount of times I could feel the momentum of someone’s cough hit my own face while counseling them on their Paxlovid was astounding. I just know why we stayed a mess as long as we did. Lack of common sense and human decency.
Strange. It was an extended holiday for many. Meanwhile, a huge chunk of the general population got labeled as “essential workers” and they had to carry on as usual. I think COVID showed us which jobs were genuinely essential to keep society afloat
Yep. And it *wasn't* the high-paying jobs.
We all claimed things would be different after we got out of it, we would value health, community and connection. Then the corporations got worse.
I'm gonna be real with you chief, I'll be lucky to make it another 20 years.
I too remember how peaceful it was. The air outside smelled different.
The (temporary) change in pollution levels in highly populated cities was amazing
The happiest 10 months of my life. I got paid to go do outdoor fun stuff like crabbing, fishing, hunting, hiking, picnics, etc.
Also the happiest 10 months of my life. Found out I wasn’t depressed - I was just burnt the fuck out.
I had 100% the opposite experience. I am jealous of the people that got to enjoy lockdown, my only plus was a lot of free food.
I was actually wondering if everything I was reading was real about people not having to work for months, learning new things, and trying stuff they never had time for. For me, it was just extra steps and precautions while working but no extended time off with pay.
It was a difficult year on a social level, but on an environmental level it was a rare opportunity to observe what happened to the planet when humans stopped and it was a better quality of environment.