The Realities of Long-Term Pandemic Life

The Realities of Long-Term Pandemic Life

We’re going on the 10th month of being in a pandemic and I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on that, especially since several of my books look at worlds following or during a pandemic.

The long-term view of living with a pandemic is so different than what I would have imagined. It never would have occurred to me that people would deny a deadly disease. Though, the pandemics I imagined in fiction were horrifically more vicious than COVID-19, with mortality rates in the 80th percentile. It has been shocking and disturbing that deadly disease has become politicized to the point that people discount the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people as weak citizens.

Though, the reality of it does show just how diverse humanity is, how truth can be stranger than fiction. Society doesn’t always behave as you would expect it to. In my thoughts of a pandemic life, I never thought of deniers, people seeing disease kill, but refusing to believe it was a problem. Yet, here we are.

There is an isolation to being in a pandemic like this, because there is so much that society is doing to fight it off. And I think that resiliency and cleverness is good. When we write, or even read, books about dystopias, so much of it is close and insular. So much of it is a few group of people who are making decisions. But stories are like that. They’re insular. In a real pandemic, there are so many things going on at once. As you leave your insular bubble, you realize just how different things are. Technology has allowed us to hear other stories. People in mask-heavy areas can hear from Facebook friends about how their area is.

The other thing that was unexpected was just how wary one begins to feel after months of exile and strange living. Not going to school or work or other normal things–seeing family–is very negative for the soul. The constraints of having to be physically distant from most people is hard. As human beings, we’re fairly communal, so it doesn’t feel natural. I miss the typical activities and the camaraderie and the normal activities. I’m sure it’s very hard for those who are in healthcare, who are surrounded by people getting sick and dying.

The good news is that as hard as it has been, we are so much luckier than people in previous pandemics. The bubonic plague lasted not just a year, but several. And there was no clear knowledge on how to avoid or treat their disease. At least modern medicine has some arrows in its quiver when it comes to fighting the disease. And the good news most recently is that we have positivity on the vaccine front. While it’s still a few months away, it’s a good sign that gives hope.

When the pandemic closures began back in March, I certainly never thought it would last this long. I thought we’d have two months of quarantine and get back to our lives (like China did). Yet, here we are 10 months later. It’s been quite an experience, but one I would never want to repeat. I hope, as a society, we have learned important lessons about plagues. I hope we’ve learned important lessons about how to aid our fellow man, even if they are not together. And more importantly, I hope that once the coronavirus is under control, that we don’t have another plague like this for many decades.

So, where are you at, after 10 months of pandemic life?