Day Something: Covid-19, ‘20, ‘21

The masks are off. 

Of course, some places like Texas and Indiana never had mask mandates at all, but even here in Philadelphia, PA, most of our mask mandates have been dropped. No more masks necessary in the grocery store, for dining indoors, or the most salient for members of our household, in school. 

This affects everyone in my family for at least 35 hours per week. And in our family, the response has varied. From shock and numbness to relief, excitement and even a touch of anxiety.

Personally, I am going with incredulous. This whole Covid-19, ’20, ’21 thing has held on so long I hesitate to let it go so quickly. And I am watching the spread of the Omicron subvariant (yes, that really is a thing) in Europe and Asia from the corner of my eye. 

I felt hopeful at first, perhaps even optimistic, that we would have a good, long run before the next time we would need to resort to extreme measures like virtual school or closing businesses. Perhaps we have even reached that magical tipping point where coronavirus goes from pandemic to endemic—and if so, amen. 

But mostly so far, unmasking has just made me feel awkward, uncomfortable, overly-exposed, and resulted in our entire family being chronically sick as germs and allergens we have avoided for two full years assault our systems. Illness caused me to take an early “Spring Break” from my daily writing over the past week in an attempt to get more rest, so I have lost count of which challenge day I’m on and I have “frozen” seven extra hours of writing I need to make up over the summer. 

In a sign that I myself have tipped over from pandemic to endemic, my news consumption has fallen dramatically. It centers mostly on the Russia/Ukraine headlines before I quickly toggle away. 

No matter what the news says at this point, I do not anticipate my day-to-day existence changing much. The war, though it feels strange to talk to my children about it at home, seems remote, affecting our family only indirectly via higher gas prices. It sounds callous and oh-so-very-American, but that is how I like my news. Remote. Indirect. Disturbing, yes, but easy to turn away from. 

I can check the news for 5 minutes and then go about my day, which now no longer includes trying to teach 6-year-olds the difference between the m and n sounds without the benefit of my mouth. 

I’m trying to turn toward these last few months of school with only planned interruptions to instruction (I hope), and surveying my students’ progress so far. They are on a roll, and perhaps unmasking—mine and theirs—can be an element in making even more growth from here on. 

But I feel so weary. 

And in this, I know I am not alone. The number of teachers in the School District of Philadelphia who resigned this year between December and February–169–was up 200% from last year. Plus, that doesn’t reflect teachers who will leave at the end of this year, those who left at the end of 2020 or 2021, or those who did not make it to December—of which, I personally know a few. 

These statistics are likely reflected all over the country: The Great Resignation, or The Great Retirement, coming soon to a classroom near you. 

I wonder how my friends with very young children, the under-5 set, feel about the loosening of mitigation measures right now. Children under 5 still cannot be vaccinated, and their prospects for an effective vaccine continue to be pushed back in time. 

We finally got our free government at-home Covid tests in the mail, and our special KN 94 masks at school, just in time for the end of the Omicron spike and the dropping (lifting?) of the mask mandate, respectively.

Such has been the nature of all of our responses to Covid-19, ’20, and ’21: Too little and far, far too late. 

The death toll, which totals more than 970,000 in the US, has dropped precipitously in the past weeks, but is still hanging out at more than 1,000 deaths per day. At this point, mostly unvaccinated people here are dying. People who were sickened during the Omicron surge, back when you felt much more certain your child’s cough and runny nose were Covid (like 40% of everyone else’s) than the common cold. All of, oh, two months ago. 

Just before the masks came off, Sarah asked at dinner one night at dinner, “What are you grateful for about this experience?” The experience of having lived, G-d-wiling, through a 100-year pandemic. 

“Meeting a new best friend,” through a pod (remember those? Shudder.) necessitated by virtual learning.

“Being happy to go back to school.”

“Having so much concentrated bonding time with our family!” (Rebecca said she was kidding about this one, but I am not convinced.) 

I see the beauty and the glistening resilience in Sarah’s question. And I aspire to someday get there, too. 

But that night, I did not chime in. Now, I usually lead the charge in my family on productive emotional processing—and I feel so proud of Sarah for the question, the thought process and the meaning-making behind it. 

Sarah feels so ready, joyful, giddy even to finally unmask and move forward in whatever this new life holds. And G-d bless the child for that. 

But I am not ready yet. Not ready, yet, to calculate the toll: societal contraction, psychological trauma, so many orphans, more than 6 million deaths.

I think of the patients, some 3,400 of them, still in ICUs all over the country. So many families still engaged in a life or death struggle with Covid ‘22. I think of these families, still waiting with bated breath, wondering from moment to moment which way things are really going to go. 

No. I am not ready, yet, to gather up and itemize, to measure, and weigh, and balance what we’ve gained against all the things we have lost.