We can realistically break down the four years pretty cleanly - two years of long night at the start, and then two years of relative calm with periodic reminders that things will probably never quite be the same. Life from Feb, 2022 through Feb, 2024, was in many ways quite similar to say Feb 2018 to Feb 2020. There are some aspects that have never come back - be it the constancy of Monday to Thursday work travel in my job. But yes largely Feb 2022 to Feb 2024 was fairly normal. Except for the memories of those first two years.
Back when this all started, when we were isolated in my parents home with my parents, sister, her then fiancee (now husband) and staring down uncertainty, I was the only person in my household to firmly, firmly believe that the time there was a treatment, a vaccine, and it was safe to do things, people would return with a fury. Let's all remember, the roaring 20s followed the Spanish Flu pandemic. My parents doubted me, my sister did as well - that this would be different. That the clorox wiping of the world would last. Some of that has (still get handed a clorox wipe every time I board a United plane), but yes very much we're living in the roaring 20s yet again.
Looking back at the quadrennial, it's weird how the year that will stick with me the most might be the second one, from March 2021 through March 2022. In some ways, a lot of good things happened - from the vaccines to the opening of country borders, to the return of some level of travel, but it was also such a harrowing series of false starts. That year started with me getting my first vaccine shot in March at a supersite in New Jersey. That was such a cool feeling, of us all doing something collectively to combat this invisible killer.
But then it also turned the discourse of vaccine mandates and denialism and so much else to eleven. We had the worst wave of the entire pandemic that summer with the Delta variant - million cases a day, seemingly put us back to square one. Even after that calmed, and they had a booster made just for that, we had the Omicron variant. Yes, in many ways the weird mix of super high rate of transmission and lower criticality made it almost the cure to this all, but there was that feeling of staring into another winter in the abyss.
But there was light at the end of the Omicron tunnel - clearing through country by country and having this stabilize in time for February 2022, the two year mark. The most meaningful moment for me was when I took a trip to Cape Town in Feb 2022, something I did in Feb 2020 right before it all went down, and a trip that nearly didn't happen due to the Omicron surge. But that subsided just in time for me to go. I remember so vividly having a perfect approach with view of Table Mountain and that beautiful city as we descended into the airport. It was the start of a new era, a closing of the darkest two years I had to live through.
Of course, I got Covid in South Africa, luckily only showing symptoms once I reached back home, but it was the one time I know for sure I got the disease. My family did as well. It was a rough week, but we moved on to a brighter future for the two years to come.
I'll always look back at those first two years and think about what I missed - the travel, the time with friends, the nights in New York. There are aspects that were so routine in 2019, a great year all around in my life, that just disappearned. And while so much has come back in the past two years, some aspects have still not, such as the Friday after-work happy hour, now replaced with Thursday. Of course, maybe this is for my health a positive anyway, but those Friday nights after a long week at work us all calling it quits early and hitting the town was such a constant source of joy.
But that's also growing older too - if anything the pandemic just turbo charged my growth to becoming an adult - starting it at 28 and now being about to be 33. That's already a period of change, I guess, but the pandemic just exposed that to the fullest degree. But if anything it also made me realize what I truly love in life - my family, and my ability to see the world. After going a year with barely leaving the state of New Jersey (Mar 2020 through April 2021), I've now crossed the point where I'm travelling more now than I did before the pandemic (excluding work travel). You never know when the next global shutdown will come, so enjoy the world when you can.
If anything, that's the long term realization and value out of all of this. I truly can say I am happy to have lived through the pandemic and these last four years. Of course, I am happy in the literal sense that I lived through it when so many others didn't - and more than that my family did as well. But in the sense of living in this world, treasuring what it has to offer, living through the pandemic helped that crystalize as well. Even if we're at the point that the world today is more or less fully similar to the world in January, 2020, the twists and turns in that interim period will never leave.
