Covid Nostalgia

gabriel conroy

Gabriel Conroy [pseudonym] is an ex-graduate student. He is happily married with no children and has about a million nieces and nephews. The views expressed by Gabriel are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of his spouse or employer.

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16 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

    It’s going to get worse for a while.

    Using the Spanish Flu as a basic template, we’ve got two years of this. The fourth wave is the one that will let us say “oh, this ain’t so bad”.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

      what’s gonna be weird is watching the repeated cycles of “well we can’t expect people to take precautions, that would be racist” which we saw in late February with In The Interest Of Being Visibly Not Racist We Won’t Cancel Chinese New Year, and then we saw in early June with In The Interest Of Being Visibly Not Racist We Won’t Cancel George Floyd Protest Marches.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

        If I wanted to make distinctions between criticizing the selfish bastards who want haircuts and praising the activists who oppose statuary, I’d say that the activists who oppose statuary are opposing statuary outside.

        Being outside is so much better. I’ve read that direct sunlight gives the virus a half-life measured in seconds. A light breeze provides an amazing amount of circulation and the chaotic movement of the air without ceilings allows the virus to go more than 8 or 9 feet up in the air to die (rather than, you know, face-level where it gets ingested before it reaches four or five half-lives).

        But it’s one thing when you’re out jogging and you get within 10 feet of another person for less than 5 seconds twice and quite another when you’re in an outdoor mosh pit.Report

      • The question in reply to DensityDuck says:

        New York City has had six weeks of daily protests and just had their first no covid deaths day.

        I think at this point if you want to see the protest increased virus spread you’re going to have to actually bring proofReport

  2. Rufus F. says:

    The early months were pretty bad, sure, but there was also a feeling that maybe this would be a reset too. It was like having the reel break in the middle of a movie and having to wait while they respool it and thinking “You know, maybe I’d rather be watching a different movie.” Now, there’s more social pressure to erase that and get back to a lifestyle that other people are more nostalgic for, back when we could eat frozen yogurt and life meant something, man.

    But, like Jaybird said, it ain’t over yet.Report

  3. fillyjonk says:

    I miss the feeling of something-like-hope I had early on, where I thought “Well, maybe if we all lock down really well for a month or two, this will burn itself out like SARS did”

    I admit I am feeling somewhat dismayed at the behavior of my fellow citizens in this.

    I also feel a twinge of nostalgia for February 29 – the last day I went out for “fun” shopping (as opposed to quick runs to the grocery or the home center for things I absolutely needed) and how at the JoAnn’s, looking at some of that ridiculous color-shifting cake yarn (other knitters/crocheters will know what I mean) and going “Well, it’s on sale, and also, if we have to lock down, it might be good to have yarn ahead for another afghan” and I remember even thinking with something like excitement (which seems kind of sick to me now) about “on lockdown, I will get so much knitting and sewing done!”

    Reader, I have mostly been either too anxious/unhappy or too wrapped up in “pivoting to online teaching,” I have not finished a single thing during this time. The yarn still sits in my yarn-storage room, untouched.

    On the upside? My garden is going well because apparently I can still cut brush and weed if I’m sad or angry

    I have a few low-level risk factors and people here are absolute crap at mask wearing and social distance, so I am staying locked down as much as I can. (I will most likely be back teaching in person in August, but until then – at home except for necessities)Report

    • I may have the option to return to my worksite next week, but it won’t be required. However, layoffs are coming (probably) and if I can’t go to work, I might not keep my job. Or I might. Even if I do or can return, it would be for only one day a week.

      People seem to do a goodish job here at wearing mask, though it’s not everyone.

      (I’m blogging right now because I have the day off. Otherwise, I don’t blog during work time.)Report

      • I will admit I am not confident (at this point) in the plans my university has to re open “in person” in the fall. One of my older (early sixtiesish) colleagues (and an MD at that) has already declared his intention to do all lectures online….I am considering it despite being younger (and female, which is apparently a point in my favor for surviving COVID).

        I will be teaching in a mask. I am not sure what faculty can do if they have a student who needs the cue of being able to read lips. Petition for one of those plexiglas face shields, I guess? Request an ASL interpreter, if the student knows ASL?

        I suspect a LOT of higher ed closures are looming. Right now we seem to be OK and I am keeping my fingers crossed that that remains AT LEAST until I hit eligibility for early retirement (6 or so years depending on how much grace period they give; I could retire without needing early retirement in 2029)Report

        • My field is in higher ed, or rather, my worksite is at a university, even though not all people in my field work in higher ed. (I’m being cagey because I don’t want to out myself, but a close reader of other comments I’ve made in the past can guess my profession.)

          At least at my my workplace, those with tenure or on the tenure have, at least for now, more secure positions. Non-tenured track people (like me) are facing the (still only potential, but in practice probably looming) layoffs.Report

  4. Jaybird says:

    Nate Silver, bless his heart, is running the numbers on the temperatures. There is a sweet spot where it’s warm enough to be outside but it’s not so warm that you say “heck with it” and go back inside for the air conditioning.

    My take on this is that we seriously need to figure out a way to improve indoor circulation, filter the air, and otherwise make it so we aren’t constantly sitting in a petri dish.

    You know the old joke about how a no-smoking section in a restaurant is like having a no-peeing section in a swimming pool? It is in that vein that I consider “no-COVID” sections at the office.Report

    • gabriel conroy in reply to Jaybird says:

      While I don’t know the facts, what I understand is that you’re right. I fear that if/when my worksite opens up, even on its planned limited and “hybrid” basis, they will not have accounted for the problem of air circulation or the fact that there will still be groups of people in the same place for up to an hour and 15 minutes.Report

  5. LeeEsq says:

    During the early days of Covid-19, people thought two weeks of shelter in place would be enough to defeat it. I remember people joking on Facebook that this was the first time that sitting on your coach and watching TV would save the world, so let’s not mess this up. It quickly turned out that like all previous pandemics, Covid-19 is going to take much longer to defeat than anticipated and normal life is going to be suspended for a long time. Like previous pandemics, telling people to put their lives on hold for months or even nearly a year is a tough sell.Report

    • gabriel conroy in reply to LeeEsq says:


      I remember people joking on Facebook that this was the first time that sitting on your coach and watching TV would save the world, so let’s not mess this up.

      I remember one public health official in my state making a similar statement, not as a joke, but as a “this is all you have to do to save the world” proposition. It really was clueless, both for the reason you mention (things were going to last longer than two weeks) and because not everyone has that same leisure time. Also, this public health official said “Netflix” instead of TV, as if everyone could afford to pay for Netflix.Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    I don’t know if I would say I am nostalgic for it but there was a feeling of novelty a few months ago at the start of the pandemic. This felt like a new experience in so many ways and in some ways a kind of communal experience. I remember doing things like driving around downtown SF so my girlfriend could get supplies from office.

    This was a mere three months ago but feels like it might as well have been years ago. Now things on wearing thin.Report