Living in the COVID World ... and Beyond #43: Four Years of COVID: Looking Back and Learnings Going Forward
We are approaching four years of living in the presence of COVID. It has been quite monumental in its impact although I, for one, can easily forget all the changes that it has caused in my life and society more broadly. I want to use this blogpost to reflect on my experiences and capture some of my key learnings.
My Experience
I was in Arizona visiting my parents in February 2020 when the news about COVID really started to hit the mainstream press. I recall there were initial COVID hotspots in the Seattle WA and the Bay Area, CALIF. I was scheduled to fly from Arizona to San Francisco for consulting work in late February/early March 2020. I was concerned about traveling into a COVID hotspot, had multiple conversations with work colleagues and friends, and ultimately, we decided to convert the Bay Area meetings to Zoom, and I flew home.
There were no documented COVID incidents yet in New England and the next week, I did in-person consulting days at a NYC provider of homeless services. I remember that after our final session, they were convening an emergency response team to begin thinking about what they would need to do across their shelter system relative to COVID. That was the last in-person consulting that I did for well over a year.
My dad died in May 2020 so that visit in February was the last time that I saw him. At this point, almost no one was traveling. I created and led a memorial service for my dad on Zoom with just our family attending. There was no public funeral.
My wife and I usually go to Cape Cod each summer and rent a big house and invite friends and family to join us there. In the summer of 2020, there were still so many unknowns about COVID that we did not feel comfortable doing our traditional summer vacation.
Everything that was in-person and important converted to virtual meeting spaces … some more easily and quickly … and others, especially larger group gatherings, with more complications, both technical and facilitative.
I am someone who had routinely traveled for work as well as other projects and now I was home all day, every day. I think over these last 4 years, my wife and I have spent more time together than maybe in the previous 34 years of marriage combined! Thank goodness we get along and enjoy each other’s company.
Things started to shift after the vaccinations were made available … but both my wife and I are still much more limited and vigilant in our travels than previously.
My Key Learnings
There is much to be learned from looking back at our experience through these COVID-infused years. There are learnings about public health policy, about information reliability and accuracy, about how politics can impact public health decision-making, and much much more. I want to focus here on my more personal learnings.
1. The importance of setting personal policies: I created my own personal policies about how I would behave relative to COVID. For example, there was a lengthy period of time during which I had a policy of not leaving my front door without first putting on a mask.
2. Continuing to gather new information. I subscribed to several reliable sources of COVID information – the CDC bulletin, the NY Times COVID updates, and a blog by Katelyn Jetelina entitled From Your Local Epidemiologist. For a period, I was reading much more … but I’ve settled down now to just these three. I have learned a lot about respiratory diseases over the last few years.
3. Continue to re-evaluate what personal policies make sense. My personal policies have evolved, and I expect will continue to evolve. Some policies have remained constant; for example, I have only flown in order to go to see my family in Arizona and for those trips I have stayed masked 100% of the time (except sneaking in a sip or two of water). On the other hand, we used to sanitize everything we brought into our home (from the grocery store or wherever); that ended thankfully as we understood more about how COVID was transmitted. My policies have changed based on the time of year and whether there was a spike in respiratory diseases. I’m considering making a new policy to avoid all social gatherings in December and January given that there has been a spike every year at that time.
4. Group policies for group events. I was recently invited to attend an in-person conference and there was no advance guidance on COVID prevention or monitoring procedures. I wrote the organizer, but my inquiry was responded back with take a COVOD test before you arrive, stay home if positive, and “do what makes sense for you.” Of course, doing what makes sense for oneself is contingent on what other members of the group are doing. I went ahead and attended bringing with me an ample supply of masks (and wearing one) and other anticontagion paraphernalia. When I arrived, I was greeted at the registration table by three unmasked individuals. I proceeded to the main meeting room where people were gathering, and about ¾ of the people were unmasked. There was no plan for daily testing. I was uncomfortable with the situation. I consulted with a few people and decided to leave the conference 1stthing the next morning, after getting a good night of sleep. Although I was sorry to miss the conference and the interaction with other attendees, I have no regrets about my decision.
What have you leaned for yourself and figured out about coping with COVID and the other respiratory viruses?