essay for covid 19 pandemic

Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

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Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

MyPerfectWords.com is a professional persuasive essay writing service that can help you craft an excellent persuasive essay on Covid-19. Our experienced essay writer will create a well-structured, insightful paper in no time!

So don't hesitate and place your ' write my essay online ' request today!

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Serious disabled woman concentrating on her work she sitting at her workplace and working on computer at office

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic

The year 2019 will forever be engraved in many people’s hearts and minds as the time when a deadly virus known as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) invaded almost all the sectors, thereby disrupting daily activities. It is described as a communicable respiratory illness which is triggered by a new strain of coronavirus which leads to various ailments in human beings. There is currently no known cure or vaccine for the virus as scientists worldwide are still trying to learn about the illness to respond appropriately through research (Goodell, 2020). This paper aims at exploring the effects that the pandemic has had on society regarding the economy, social life, education, religion, and family.

The emergence of the pandemic, which began in China-2019, quickly spread to other nations across the world with devastating effects on their economies As a way of containing the disease, many countries instituted strict measures, such as curfews, the mandatory wearing of masks, and social distancing of 1 meter apart (Goodell, 2020). Covid-19 has significantly changed the way these preventive methods relate with each concerning trade matters. The majority of the states affected opted to close their borders as fear among the citizens increased. The implementation of the strict rules interfered with the business operations of many nations. It became difficult for international trade to continue as a result of the closed borders. Most businesses have also had to close due to financial constraints.

When it comes to socialization, people have been forced to use other means to meet their friends and families across the world. Social media platforms have seen an increased usage during this difficult time as people try to find new ways of socializing. It has happened especially in such countries as Australia, where the restrictions were extreme as it enforced a lockdown for close to a hundred days (Goodell, 2020). The use of masks is also quickly becoming the new norm across numerous states. Unlike in developed countries where the governments have offered their citizens some aid mostly in terms of cash transfers, developing countries have struggled to balance between the people’s livelihood and the containment of the Covid-19. As such, most people have turned to social media platforms as a medium of communication and socialization due to lockdowns.

Learning institutions have also not been spared by the Covid-19 pandemic. Most countries affected by the spread of the virus were forced to suspend their educational curriculum calendar to allow children and university students to stay home until the time when the disease is finally neutralized (Goodell, 2020). However, students and parents have been pushing the governments to resume schools with clear protocols which ensure that both the students and the teachers follow the rules, including the mandatory wearing of masks. Religion has also been significantly affected as it has become difficult for people to seek for spiritual nourishment (Goodell, 2020). Many religious leaders have had to devise other ways of reaching out to the congregates. For example, many churches now have to move their services online by using such platforms as YouTube, Facebook, Zoom, among others to convey essential teachings.

Covid-19 has also directly affected many families across the world, as the majority have succumbed to the disease. The United States of America and Italy are some of the pandemic’s worst casualties, where many people were killed by the lethal virus (Goodell, 2020). Some people have in the end lost more than one member of the family because of the disease, and in some worse case scenarios, the illness has claimed a whole family.

In conclusion, this paper has highlighted the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy, social life, education, religion, and family units. Many countries and businesses had underestimated the disease’s impact before they later suffered from the consequences. Therefore, international bodies, such as the World Health Organization, need to help developing countries establish critical management healthcare systems, which can help to deal with the future pandemics.

Goodell, J. W. (2020). COVID-19 and finance: Agendas for future research. Finance Research Letters , 35 , 101512. Web.

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Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

Print article

Writing about COVID-19 in your college admission essay

For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

Are my experiences different from others’?
Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
Am I aware of my privilege?
Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

Grading scales and policies
Graduation requirements
Instructional methods
Schedules and course offerings
Testing requirements
Your academic calendar
Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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COVID-19 Pandemic

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 11, 2024 | Original: April 25, 2023

The outbreak of the infectious respiratory disease known as COVID-19 triggered one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history. COVID-19 claimed nearly 7 million lives worldwide. In the United States, deaths from COVID-19 exceeded 1.1 million, nearly twice the American death toll from the 1918 flu pandemic . The COVID-19 pandemic also took a heavy toll economically, politically and psychologically, revealing deep divisions in the way that Americans viewed the role of government in a public health crisis, particularly vaccine mandates. While the United States downgraded its “national emergency” status over the pandemic on May 11, 2023, the full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will reverberate for decades.

A New Virus Breaks Out in Wuhan, China

In December 2019, the China office of the World Health Organization (WHO) received news of an isolated outbreak of a pneumonia-like virus in the city of Wuhan. The virus caused high fevers and shortness of breath, and the cases seemed connected to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, which was closed by an emergency order on January 1, 2020.

After testing samples of the unknown virus, the WHO identified it as a novel type of coronavirus similar to the deadly SARS virus that swept through Asia from 2002-2004. The WHO named this new strain SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2). The first Chinese victim of SARS-CoV-2 died on January 11, 2020.

Where, exactly, the novel virus originated has been hotly debated. There are two leading theories. One is that the virus jumped from animals to humans, possibly carried by infected animals sold at the Wuhan market in late 2019. A second theory claims the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research lab that was studying coronaviruses. U.S. intelligence agencies maintain that both origin stories are “plausible.”

The First COVID-19 Cases in America

The WHO hoped that the virus outbreak would be contained to Wuhan, but by mid-January 2020, infections were reported in Thailand, Japan and Korea, all from people who had traveled to China.

On January 18, 2020, a 35-year-old man checked into an urgent care center near Seattle, Washington. He had just returned from Wuhan and was experiencing a fever, nausea and vomiting. On January 21, he was identified as the first American infected with SARS-CoV-2.

In reality, dozens of Americans had contracted SARS-CoV-2 weeks earlier, but doctors didn’t think to test for a new type of virus. One of those unknowingly infected patients died on February 6, 2020, but her death wasn’t confirmed as the first American casualty until April 21.

On February 11, 2020, the WHO released a new name for the disease causing the deadly outbreak: Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19. By mid-March 2020, all 50 U.S. states had reported at least one positive case of COVID-19, and nearly all of the new infections were caused by “community spread,” not by people who contracted the disease while traveling abroad.

At the same time, COVID-19 had spread to 114 countries worldwide, killing more than 4,000 people and infecting hundreds of thousands more. On March 11, the WHO made it official and declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

The World Shuts Down

New York City's famous Times Square is seen nearly empty due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 16, 2020.

Pandemics are expected in a globally interconnected world, so emergency plans were in place. In the United States, health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set in motion a national response plan developed for flu pandemics.

State by state and city by city, government officials took emergency measures to encourage “ social distancing ,” one of the many new terms that became part of the COVID-19 vocabulary. Travel was restricted. Schools and churches were closed. With the exception of “essential workers,” all offices and businesses were shuttered. By early April 2020, more than 316 million Americans were under a shelter-in-place or stay-at-home order.

With more than 1,000 deaths and nearly 100,000 cases, it was clear by April 2020 that COVID-19 was highly contagious and virulent. What wasn’t clear, even to public health officials, was how individuals could best protect themselves from COVID-19. In the early weeks of the outbreak, the CDC discouraged people from buying face masks, because officials feared a shortage of masks for doctors and hospital workers.

By April 2020, the CDC revised its recommendations, encouraging people to wear masks in public, to socially distance and to wash hands frequently. President Donald Trump undercut the CDC recommendations by emphasizing that masking was voluntary and vowing not to wear a mask himself. This was just the beginning of the political divisions that hobbled the COVID-19 response in America.

Global Financial Markets Collapse

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with billions of people worldwide out of work, stuck at home, and fretting over shortages of essential items like toilet paper , global financial markets went into a tailspin.

In the United States, share prices on the New York Stock Exchange plummeted so quickly that the exchange had to shut down trading three separate times. The Dow Jones Industrial Average eventually lost 37 percent of its value, and the S&P 500 was down 34 percent.

Business closures and stay-at-home orders gutted the U.S. economy. The unemployment rate skyrocketed, particularly in the service sector (restaurant and other retail workers). By May 2020, the U.S. unemployment rate reached 14.7 percent, the highest jobless rate since the Great Depression .

All across America, households felt the pinch of lost jobs and lower wages. Food insecurity reached a peak by December 2020 with 30 million American adults—a full 14 percent—reporting that their families didn’t get enough to eat in the past week.

The economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, like its health effects, weren’t experienced equally. Black, Hispanic and Native Americans suffered from unemployment and food insecurity at significantly higher rates than white Americans.

Congress tried to avoid a complete economic collapse by authorizing a series of COVID-19 relief packages in 2020 and 2021, which included direct stimulus checks for all American families.

The Race for a Vaccine

A new vaccine typically takes 10 to 15 years to develop and test, but the world couldn’t wait that long for a COVID-19 vaccine. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Trump administration launched “ Operation Warp Speed ,” a public-private partnership which provided billions of dollars in upfront funding to pharmaceutical companies to rapidly develop vaccines and conduct clinical trials.

The first clinical trial for a COVID-19 vaccine was announced on March 16, 2020, only days after the WHO officially classified COVID-19 as a pandemic. The vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer were the first ever to employ messenger RNA, a breakthrough technology. After large-scale clinical trials, both vaccines were found to be greater than 95 percent effective against infection with COVID-19.

A nurse from New York officially became the first American to receive a COVID-19 vaccine on December 14, 2020. Ten days later, more than 1 million vaccines had been administered, starting with healthcare workers and elderly residents of nursing homes. As the months rolled on, vaccine availability was expanded to all American adults, and then to teenagers and all school-age children.

By the end of the pandemic in early 2023, more than 670 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in the United States at a rate of 203 doses per 100 people. Approximately 80 percent of the U.S. population received at least one COVID-19 shot, but vaccination rates were markedly lower among Black, Hispanic and Native Americans.

COVID-19 Deaths Heaviest Among Elderly and People of Color

In America, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted everyone’s lives, but those who died from the disease were far more likely to be older and people of color.

Of the more than 1.1 million COVID deaths in the United States, 75 percent were individuals who were 65 or older. A full 93 percent of American COVID-19 victims were 50 or older. Throughout the emergence of COVID-19 variants and the vaccine rollouts, older Americans remained the most at-risk for being hospitalized and ultimately dying from the disease.

Black, Hispanic and Native Americans were also at a statistically higher risk of developing life-threatening COVID-19 systems and succumbing to the disease. For example, Black and Hispanic Americans were twice as likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 than white Americans. The COVID-19 pandemic shined light on the health disparities between racial and ethnic groups driven by systemic racism and lower access to healthcare.

Mental health also worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The anxiety of contracting the disease, and the stresses of being unemployed or confined at home, led to unprecedented numbers of Americans reporting feelings of depression and suicidal ideation.

A Time of Social & Political Upheaval

Thousands gather for the ''Get Your Knee Off Our Necks'' march in Washington DC USA, on August 28, 2020.

In the United States, the three long years of the COVID-19 pandemic paralleled a time of heightened political contention and social upheaval.

When George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, it sparked nationwide protests against police brutality and energized the Black Lives Matter movement. Because so many Americans were out of work or home from school due to COVID-19 shutdowns, unprecedented numbers of people from all walks of life took to the streets to demand reforms.

Instead of banding together to slow the spread of the disease, Americans became sharply divided along political lines in their opinions of masking requirements, vaccines and social distancing.

By March 2024, in signs that the pandemic was waning, the CDC issued new guidelines for people who were recovering from COVID-19. The agency said those infected with the virus no longer needed to remain isolated for five days after symptoms. And on March 10, 2024, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped collecting data for its highly referenced COVID-19 dashboard.

Still, an estimated 17 percent of U.S. adults reported having experienced symptoms of long COVID, according to the Household Pulse Survey. The medical community is still working to understand the causes behind long COVID, which can afflict a patient for weeks, months or even years.

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“CDC Museum COVID Timeline.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . “Coronavirus: Timeline.” U.S. Department of Defense . “COVID-19 and Related Vaccine Development and Research.” Mayo Clinic . “COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by Race/Ethnicity: Current Data and Changes Over Time.” Kaiser Family Foundation . “Number of COVID-19 Deaths in the U.S. by Age.” Statista . “The Pandemic Deepened Fault Lines in American Society.” Scientific American . “Tracking the COVID-19 Economy’s Effects on Food, Housing, and Employment Hardships.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . “U.S. Confirmed Country’s First Case of COVID-19 3 Years Ago.” CNN .

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I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

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But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.” Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.” Prospects 49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.” BioRxiv (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.” Jama 323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

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Essay On Covid-19: 100, 200 and 300 Words

Updated on
Apr 30, 2024

COVID-19, also known as the Coronavirus, is a global pandemic that has affected people all around the world. It first emerged in a lab in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and quickly spread to countries around the world. This virus was reportedly caused by SARS-CoV-2. Since then, it has spread rapidly to many countries, causing widespread illness and impacting our lives in numerous ways. This blog talks about the details of this virus and also drafts an essay on COVID-19 in 100, 200 and 300 words for students and professionals.

Table of Contents

1 Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words
2 Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words
3 Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words
4 Short Essay on Covid-19

Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a global pandemic. It started in late 2019 and has affected people all around the world. The virus spreads very quickly through someone’s sneeze and respiratory issues.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our lives, with lockdowns, travel restrictions, and changes in daily routines. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we should wear masks, practice social distancing, and wash our hands frequently.

People should follow social distancing and other safety guidelines and also learn the tricks to be safe stay healthy and work the whole challenging time.

Also Read: National Safe Motherhood Day 2023

Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words

COVID-19 also known as coronavirus, became a global health crisis in early 2020 and impacted mankind around the world. This virus is said to have originated in Wuhan, China in late 2019. It belongs to the coronavirus family and causes flu-like symptoms. It impacted the healthcare systems, economies and the daily lives of people all over the world.

The most crucial aspect of COVID-19 is its highly spreadable nature. It is a communicable disease that spreads through various means such as coughs from infected persons, sneezes and communication. Due to its easy transmission leading to its outbreaks, there were many measures taken by the government from all over the world such as Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and wearing masks.

There are many changes throughout the economic systems, and also in daily routines. Other measures such as schools opting for Online schooling, Remote work options available and restrictions on travel throughout the country and internationally. Subsequently, to cure and top its outbreak, the government started its vaccine campaigns, and other preventive measures.

In conclusion, COVID-19 tested the patience and resilience of the mankind. This pandemic has taught people the importance of patience, effort and humbleness.

Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a serious and contagious disease that has affected people worldwide. It was first discovered in late 2019 in Cina and then got spread in the whole world. It had a major impact on people’s life, their school, work and daily lives.

COVID-19 is primarily transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets produced and through sneezes, and coughs of an infected person. It can spread to thousands of people because of its highly contagious nature. To cure the widespread of this virus, there are thousands of steps taken by the people and the government.

Wearing masks is one of the essential precautions to prevent the virus from spreading. Social distancing is another vital practice, which involves maintaining a safe distance from others to minimize close contact.

Very frequent handwashing is also very important to stop the spread of this virus. Proper hand hygiene can help remove any potential virus particles from our hands, reducing the risk of infection.

In conclusion, the Coronavirus has changed people’s perspective on living. It has also changed people’s way of interacting and how to live. To deal with this virus, it is very important to follow the important guidelines such as masks, social distancing and techniques to wash your hands. Getting vaccinated is also very important to go back to normal life and cure this virus completely.

Also Read: Essay on Abortion in English in 650 Words

Short Essay on Covid-19

Please find below a sample of a short essay on Covid-19 for school students:

Also Read: Essay on Women’s Day in 200 and 500 words

to write an essay on COVID-19, understand your word limit and make sure to cover all the stages and symptoms of this disease. You need to highlight all the challenges and impacts of COVID-19. Do not forget to conclude your essay with positive precautionary measures.

Writing an essay on COVID-19 in 200 words requires you to cover all the challenges, impacts and precautions of this disease. You don’t need to describe all of these factors in brief, but make sure to add as many options as your word limit allows.

The full form for COVID-19 is Corona Virus Disease of 2019.

Simran Popli

An avid writer and a creative person. With an experience of 1.5 years content writing, Simran has worked with different areas. From medical to working in a marketing agency with different clients to Ed-tech company, the journey has been diverse. Creative, vivacious and patient are the words that describe her personality.

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8 Lessons We Can Learn From the COVID-19 Pandemic

BY KATHY KATELLA May 14, 2021

Rear view of a family standing on a hill in autumn day, symbolizing hope for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic

Note: Information in this article was accurate at the time of original publication. Because information about COVID-19 changes rapidly, we encourage you to visit the websites of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and your state and local government for the latest information.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it—and it may have changed us individually as well, from our morning routines to our life goals and priorities. Many say the world has changed forever. But this coming year, if the vaccines drive down infections and variants are kept at bay, life could return to some form of normal. At that point, what will we glean from the past year? Are there silver linings or lessons learned?

“Humanity's memory is short, and what is not ever-present fades quickly,” says Manisha Juthani, MD , a Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist. The bubonic plague, for example, ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages—resurfacing again and again—but once it was under control, people started to forget about it, she says. “So, I would say one major lesson from a public health or infectious disease perspective is that it’s important to remember and recognize our history. This is a period we must remember.”

We asked our Yale Medicine experts to weigh in on what they think are lessons worth remembering, including those that might help us survive a future virus or nurture a resilience that could help with life in general.

Lesson 1: Masks are useful tools

What happened: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed its masking guidance for those who have been fully vaccinated. But when the pandemic began, it necessitated a global effort to ensure that everyone practiced behaviors to keep themselves healthy and safe—and keep others healthy as well. This included the widespread wearing of masks indoors and outside.

What we’ve learned: Not everyone practiced preventive measures such as mask wearing, maintaining a 6-foot distance, and washing hands frequently. But, Dr. Juthani says, “I do think many people have learned a whole lot about respiratory pathogens and viruses, and how they spread from one person to another, and that sort of old-school common sense—you know, if you don’t feel well—whether it’s COVID-19 or not—you don’t go to the party. You stay home.”

Masks are a case in point. They are a key COVID-19 prevention strategy because they provide a barrier that can keep respiratory droplets from spreading. Mask-wearing became more common across East Asia after the 2003 SARS outbreak in that part of the world. “There are many East Asian cultures where the practice is still that if you have a cold or a runny nose, you put on a mask,” Dr. Juthani says.

She hopes attitudes in the U.S. will shift in that direction after COVID-19. “I have heard from a number of people who are amazed that we've had no flu this year—and they know masks are one of the reasons,” she says. “They’ve told me, ‘When the winter comes around, if I'm going out to the grocery store, I may just put on a mask.’”

Lesson 2: Telehealth might become the new normal

What happened: Doctors and patients who have used telehealth (technology that allows them to conduct medical care remotely), found it can work well for certain appointments, ranging from cardiology check-ups to therapy for a mental health condition. Many patients who needed a medical test have also discovered it may be possible to substitute a home version.

What we’ve learned: While there are still problems for which you need to see a doctor in person, the pandemic introduced a new urgency to what had been a gradual switchover to platforms like Zoom for remote patient visits.

More doctors also encouraged patients to track their blood pressure at home , and to use at-home equipment for such purposes as diagnosing sleep apnea and even testing for colon cancer . Doctors also can fine-tune cochlear implants remotely .

“It happened very quickly,” says Sharon Stoll, DO, a neurologist. One group that has benefitted is patients who live far away, sometimes in other parts of the country—or even the world, she says. “I always like to see my patients at least twice a year. Now, we can see each other in person once a year, and if issues come up, we can schedule a telehealth visit in-between,” Dr. Stoll says. “This way I may hear about an issue before it becomes a problem, because my patients have easier access to me, and I have easier access to them.”

Meanwhile, insurers are becoming more likely to cover telehealth, Dr. Stoll adds. “That is a silver lining that will hopefully continue.”

Lesson 3: Vaccines are powerful tools

What happened: Given the recent positive results from vaccine trials, once again vaccines are proving to be powerful for preventing disease.

What we’ve learned: Vaccines really are worth getting, says Dr. Stoll, who had COVID-19 and experienced lingering symptoms, including chronic headaches . “I have lots of conversations—and sometimes arguments—with people about vaccines,” she says. Some don’t like the idea of side effects. “I had vaccine side effects and I’ve had COVID-19 side effects, and I say nothing compares to the actual illness. Unfortunately, I speak from experience.”

Dr. Juthani hopes the COVID-19 vaccine spotlight will motivate people to keep up with all of their vaccines, including childhood and adult vaccines for such diseases as measles , chicken pox, shingles , and other viruses. She says people have told her they got the flu vaccine this year after skipping it in previous years. (The CDC has reported distributing an exceptionally high number of doses this past season.)

But, she cautions that a vaccine is not a magic bullet—and points out that scientists can’t always produce one that works. “As advanced as science is, there have been multiple failed efforts to develop a vaccine against the HIV virus,” she says. “This time, we were lucky that we were able build on the strengths that we've learned from many other vaccine development strategies to develop multiple vaccines for COVID-19 .”

Lesson 4: Everyone is not treated equally, especially in a pandemic

What happened: COVID-19 magnified disparities that have long been an issue for a variety of people.

What we’ve learned: Racial and ethnic minority groups especially have had disproportionately higher rates of hospitalization for COVID-19 than non-Hispanic white people in every age group, and many other groups faced higher levels of risk or stress. These groups ranged from working mothers who also have primary responsibility for children, to people who have essential jobs, to those who live in rural areas where there is less access to health care.

“One thing that has been recognized is that when people were told to work from home, you needed to have a job that you could do in your house on a computer,” says Dr. Juthani. “Many people who were well off were able do that, but they still needed to have food, which requires grocery store workers and truck drivers. Nursing home residents still needed certified nursing assistants coming to work every day to care for them and to bathe them.”

As far as racial inequities, Dr. Juthani cites President Biden’s appointment of Yale Medicine’s Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS , as inaugural chair of a federal COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. “Hopefully the new focus is a first step,” Dr. Juthani says.

Lesson 5: We need to take mental health seriously

What happened: There was a rise in reported mental health problems that have been described as “a second pandemic,” highlighting mental health as an issue that needs to be addressed.

What we’ve learned: Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh, MD, PhD , a behavioral neurologist and neuropsychiatrist, believes the number of mental health disorders that were on the rise before the pandemic is surging as people grapple with such matters as juggling work and childcare, job loss, isolation, and losing a loved one to COVID-19.

The CDC reports that the percentage of adults who reported symptoms of anxiety of depression in the past 7 days increased from 36.4 to 41.5 % from August 2020 to February 2021. Other reports show that having COVID-19 may contribute, too, with its lingering or long COVID symptoms, which can include “foggy mind,” anxiety , depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder .

“We’re seeing these problems in our clinical setting very, very often,” Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “By virtue of necessity, we can no longer ignore this. We're seeing these folks, and we have to take them seriously.”

Lesson 6: We have the capacity for resilience

What happened: While everyone’s situation is different (and some people have experienced tremendous difficulties), many have seen that it’s possible to be resilient in a crisis.

What we’ve learned: People have practiced self-care in a multitude of ways during the pandemic as they were forced to adjust to new work schedules, change their gym routines, and cut back on socializing. Many started seeking out new strategies to counter the stress.

“I absolutely believe in the concept of resilience, because we have this effective reservoir inherent in all of us—be it the product of evolution, or our ancestors going through catastrophes, including wars, famines, and plagues,” Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “I think inherently, we have the means to deal with crisis. The fact that you and I are speaking right now is the result of our ancestors surviving hardship. I think resilience is part of our psyche. It's part of our DNA, essentially.”

Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh believes that even small changes are highly effective tools for creating resilience. The changes he suggests may sound like the same old advice: exercise more, eat healthy food, cut back on alcohol, start a meditation practice, keep up with friends and family. “But this is evidence-based advice—there has been research behind every one of these measures,” he says.

But we have to also be practical, he notes. “If you feel overwhelmed by doing too many things, you can set a modest goal with one new habit—it could be getting organized around your sleep. Once you’ve succeeded, move on to another one. Then you’re building momentum.”

Lesson 7: Community is essential—and technology is too

What happened: People who were part of a community during the pandemic realized the importance of human connection, and those who didn’t have that kind of support realized they need it.

What we’ve learned: Many of us have become aware of how much we need other people—many have managed to maintain their social connections, even if they had to use technology to keep in touch, Dr. Juthani says. “There's no doubt that it's not enough, but even that type of community has helped people.”

Even people who aren’t necessarily friends or family are important. Dr. Juthani recalled how she encouraged her mail carrier to sign up for the vaccine, soon learning that the woman’s mother and husband hadn’t gotten it either. “They are all vaccinated now,” Dr. Juthani says. “So, even by word of mouth, community is a way to make things happen.”

It’s important to note that some people are naturally introverted and may have enjoyed having more solitude when they were forced to stay at home—and they should feel comfortable with that, Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “I think one has to keep temperamental tendencies like this in mind.”

But loneliness has been found to suppress the immune system and be a precursor to some diseases, he adds. “Even for introverted folks, the smallest circle is preferable to no circle at all,” he says.

Lesson 8: Sometimes you need a dose of humility

What happened: Scientists and nonscientists alike learned that a virus can be more powerful than they are. This was evident in the way knowledge about the virus changed over time in the past year as scientific investigation of it evolved.

What we’ve learned: “As infectious disease doctors, we were resident experts at the beginning of the pandemic because we understand pathogens in general, and based on what we’ve seen in the past, we might say there are certain things that are likely to be true,” Dr. Juthani says. “But we’ve seen that we have to take these pathogens seriously. We know that COVID-19 is not the flu. All these strokes and clots, and the loss of smell and taste that have gone on for months are things that we could have never known or predicted. So, you have to have respect for the unknown and respect science, but also try to give scientists the benefit of the doubt,” she says.

“We have been doing the best we can with the knowledge we have, in the time that we have it,” Dr. Juthani says. “I think most of us have had to have the humility to sometimes say, ‘I don't know. We're learning as we go.’"

Information provided in Yale Medicine articles is for general informational purposes only. No content in the articles should ever be used as a substitute for medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician. Always seek the individual advice of your health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition.

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Covid 19 — My Experience during the COVID-19 Pandemic

My Experience During The Covid-19 Pandemic

Categories: Covid 19

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Words: 440 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 440 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Introduction, physical impact, mental and emotional impact, social impact.

World Health Organization. (2021). Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/
American Psychiatric Association. (2020). Mental health and COVID-19. https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2020/03/mental-health-and-covid-19
The New York Times. (2020). Coping with Coronavirus Anxiety. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/well/family/coronavirus-anxiety-mental-health.html

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The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld senior research scientist - nwea @megankuhfeld jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea @jsoland karyn lewis , and karyn lewis director, center for school and student progress - nwea @karynlew emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea @emily_r_morton.

March 3, 2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns, academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents. In addition to surging COVID-19 cases at the end of 2021, schools have faced severe staff shortages , high rates of absenteeism and quarantines , and rolling school closures . Furthermore, students and educators continue to struggle with mental health challenges , higher rates of violence and misbehavior , and concerns about lost instructional time .

As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8. We focused on test scores from immediately before the pandemic (fall 2019), following the initial onset (fall 2020), and more than one year into pandemic disruptions (fall 2021).

Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina—math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees .

Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15% in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

These numbers are alarming and potentially demoralizing, especially given the heroic efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. From our perspective, these test-score drops in no way indicate that these students represent a “ lost generation ” or that we should give up hope. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic, and there is so much we don’t know about students’ capacity for resiliency in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are we suggesting that teachers are somehow at fault given the achievement drops that occurred between 2020 and 2021; rather, educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.

Clearly, however, there’s work to do. School districts and states are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to mitigate the learning declines during the last two years. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) investments from the American Rescue Plan provided nearly $200 billion to public schools to spend on COVID-19-related needs. Of that sum, $22 billion is dedicated specifically to addressing learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “ disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups. ” Reviews of district and state spending plans (see Future Ed , EduRecoveryHub , and RAND’s American School District Panel for more details) indicate that districts are spending their ESSER dollars designated for academic recovery on a wide variety of strategies, with summer learning, tutoring, after-school programs, and extended school-day and school-year initiatives rising to the top.

Comparing the negative impacts from learning disruptions to the positive impacts from interventions

To help contextualize the magnitude of the impacts of COVID-19, we situate test-score drops during the pandemic relative to the test-score gains associated with common interventions being employed by districts as part of pandemic recovery efforts. If we assume that such interventions will continue to be as successful in a COVID-19 school environment, can we expect that these strategies will be effective enough to help students catch up? To answer this question, we draw from recent reviews of research on high-dosage tutoring , summer learning programs , reductions in class size , and extending the school day (specifically for literacy instruction) . We report effect sizes for each intervention specific to a grade span and subject wherever possible (e.g., tutoring has been found to have larger effects in elementary math than in reading).

Figure 1 shows the standardized drops in math test scores between students testing in fall 2019 and fall 2021 (separately by elementary and middle school grades) relative to the average effect size of various educational interventions. The average effect size for math tutoring matches or exceeds the average COVID-19 score drop in math. Research on tutoring indicates that it often works best in younger grades, and when provided by a teacher rather than, say, a parent. Further, some of the tutoring programs that produce the biggest effects can be quite intensive (and likely expensive), including having full-time tutors supporting all students (not just those needing remediation) in one-on-one settings during the school day. Meanwhile, the average effect of reducing class size is negative but not significant, with high variability in the impact across different studies. Summer programs in math have been found to be effective (average effect size of .10 SDs), though these programs in isolation likely would not eliminate the COVID-19 test-score drops.

Figure 1: Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

$Figure 1 – Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions$

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) Table 2; summer program results are pulled from Lynch et al (2021) Table 2; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span; Figles et al. and Lynch et al. report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. We were unable to find a rigorous study that reported effect sizes for extending the school day/year on math performance. Nictow et al. and Kraft & Falken (2021) also note large variations in tutoring effects depending on the type of tutor, with larger effects for teacher and paraprofessional tutoring programs than for nonprofessional and parent tutoring. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

Figure 2 displays a similar comparison using effect sizes from reading interventions. The average effect of tutoring programs on reading achievement is larger than the effects found for the other interventions, though summer reading programs and class size reduction both produced average effect sizes in the ballpark of the COVID-19 reading score drops.

Figure 2: Reading COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; extended-school-day results are from Figlio et al. (2018) Table 2; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) ; summer program results are pulled from Kim & Quinn (2013) Table 3; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: While Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span, Figlio et al. and Kim & Quinn report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

There are some limitations of drawing on research conducted prior to the pandemic to understand our ability to address the COVID-19 test-score drops. First, these studies were conducted under conditions that are very different from what schools currently face, and it is an open question whether the effectiveness of these interventions during the pandemic will be as consistent as they were before the pandemic. Second, we have little evidence and guidance about the efficacy of these interventions at the unprecedented scale that they are now being considered. For example, many school districts are expanding summer learning programs, but school districts have struggled to find staff interested in teaching summer school to meet the increased demand. Finally, given the widening test-score gaps between low- and high-poverty schools, it’s uncertain whether these interventions can actually combat the range of new challenges educators are facing in order to narrow these gaps. That is, students could catch up overall, yet the pandemic might still have lasting, negative effects on educational equality in this country.

Given that the current initiatives are unlikely to be implemented consistently across (and sometimes within) districts, timely feedback on the effects of initiatives and any needed adjustments will be crucial to districts’ success. The Road to COVID Recovery project and the National Student Support Accelerator are two such large-scale evaluation studies that aim to produce this type of evidence while providing resources for districts to track and evaluate their own programming. Additionally, a growing number of resources have been produced with recommendations on how to best implement recovery programs, including scaling up tutoring , summer learning programs , and expanded learning time .

Ultimately, there is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators, and parents are considerable. But this may be a moment when decades of educational reform, intervention, and research pay off. Relying on what we have learned could show the way forward.

Mental health improvement after the COVID-19 pandemic in individuals with psychological distress

Mario Reutter 1 ,
Katharina Hutterer 2 ,
Marthe Gründahl 3 ,
Dominik Gall 1 ,
Udo Dannlowski 4 ,
Katharina Domschke 5 , 13 ,
Elisabeth J. Leehr 4 ,
Tina B. Lonsdorf 6 , 7 ,
Ulrike Lueken 8 , 13 ,
Andreas Reif 9 , 10 ,
Miriam A. Schiele 5 ,
Peter Zwanzger 11 , 12 ,
Paul Pauli 1 ,
Grit Hein 3 na1 &
Matthias Gamer 1 na1

Scientific Reports volume 14 , Article number: 5685 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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The COVID-19 pandemic and associated countermeasures had an immensely disruptive impact on people’s lives. Due to the lack of systematic pre-pandemic data, however, it is still unclear how individuals’ psychological health has been affected across this incisive event. In this study, we analyze longitudinal data from two healthy samples ( N = 307) to provide quasi-longitudinal insight into the full trajectory of psychological burden before (baseline), during the first peak, and at a relative downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our data indicated a medium rise in psychological strain from baseline to the first peak of the pandemic ( d = 0.40). Surprisingly, this was overcompensated by a large decrease of perceived burden until downturn ( d = − 0.93), resulting in a positive overall effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health ( d = 0.44). Accounting for this paradoxical positive effect, our results reveal that the post-pandemic increase in mental health is driven by individuals that were already facing psychological challenges before the pandemic. These findings suggest that coping with acute challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic can stabilize previously impaired mental health through reframing processes.

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Introduction.

The world has been significantly changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Until Nov 17th 2023, there have been over 771 million confirmed infections with COVID-19 and almost 7 million associated deaths 1 . The nations of the world reacted in different ways to this public threat, with many governments issuing recommendations for physical distancing and even legally enforcing lockdowns 2 . In Germany, for example, the trajectory of the pandemic is frequently divided into a total of four waves of quickly rising cases in spring 2020, winter 2020/2021, spring 2021, and winter 2021/22 3 , 4 . The German government responded to the first two waves with nationwide lockdowns 5 , 6 , which were replaced by local measures during the third wave depending on the number of infections per time within a region 7 . Prior to and during the fourth wave, citizens were obliged to provide a certificate of vaccination against, recovery from, or a negative test of COVID-19 in order to participate in public activities and even working life 8 .

In addition to physical danger from infections, the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a threat for mental health due to ongoing stress and uncertainty. Researchers attribute an increase of more than 25% in depressive and anxiety symptoms to the pandemic, with local infection rates and restrictions in personal mobility exhibiting the largest predictive power 9 . This rise in psychological distress also affected healthy individuals 10 , albeit to a lesser degree ( 11 ; but see 12 ). Risk was found to be higher in females and young individuals 9 , 13 , 14 , which was reflected in these groups exhibiting most frequent help seeking behavior 15 . Also at jeopardy were people with financial insecurity 13 , 14 , 16 and inadequate physical space during periods of lockdown isolation 17 . Moreover, individuals with a COVID-19 diagnosis within their social environment during the first wave 18 or those who perceived the danger of COVID-19 to be higher 19 reported elevated anxiety during the pandemic. On the other hand, social contacts (especially offline but also online) were identified as a buffer against deprivations of mental health 16 , 17 because they reduce loneliness 20 , 21 . Also, certain stress appraisals and coping strategies have been identified as protectors of mental well-being during the pandemic 22 .

Adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health were particularly pronounced in individuals who already suffered from mental impairments before the outbreak of the pandemic 11 , 13 , 15 . For example, a lack of exposure to social situations may have contributed to the maintenance of symptomatology within individuals suffering from social anxiety 19 , 23 , 24 . Previous experiences of childhood trauma and other threatening events can also increase an individual’s vulnerability for the negative effects of subsequent adverse events 25 , 26 such as the COVID-19 pandemic 27 , 28 . Note that the individual response to adverse life events can be positively affected by coping and emotion-regulatory strategies 26 , including self-efficacy 29 , 30 and the use of adaptive (e.g., cognitive reappraisal) rather than maladaptive (e.g., suppression) cognitive emotion regulation strategies 15 , 31 , 32 , 33 . In summary, the COVID-19 pandemic and its countermeasures exuded a complex pattern of effects on physical and mental health, and factors shaping human stress resilience during the pandemic in the short and long run constitute a central research focus 34 , 35 .

One aspect that complicates research on the psychological burden of the COVID-19 pandemic is its sudden onset. Consequently, there are only few longitudinal studies with pre-pandemic baselines (for an overview, see 36 ; for more recent studies with pre-pandemic baselines and longer follow-up periods, see 16 , 22 , 37 ). Thus, it is difficult to assess the influence of the pandemic on people’s mental health since effects from before and during this period are conflated. Even studies with baselines in early 2020, i.e., prior to local hotspots and lockdowns in most countries, face the problem that the virus was already on the news, instilling worry for some individuals while others may have been completely unaffected by a threat that seemed still latent at the time. This uncertainty of individual pre-pandemic burden may explain inconsistencies between different studies with respect to the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: While average effects were described as relatively small in a meta-analysis by Prati and Mancini 36 , the authors noted that there is substantial heterogeneity between different investigations with respect to mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression that could not be explained by various moderators such as local death rate, extent of lockdowns, or sample demographics.

To overcome this problem of sparse longitudinal data on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, we used a novel approach to combine two different samples to reconstruct a (quasi-)longitudinal trajectory of psychological burden, which was calculated from questionnaires assessing different symptoms related to anxiety, worry, and depression. Using this aggregated outcome measure, we investigate the role of pre-pandemic strain on changes in mental health from before the COVID-19 pandemic across its first peak to a relative downturn in fall 2021. This approach allows to characterize the impact of the pandemic on psychological burden and to identify protective and risk factors on individual trajectories. Relative to the pre-pandemic baseline, we expected psychological burden to increase during the first pandemic peak and to partially recover at pandemic downturn. Furthermore, we hypothesized that protective factors (self-efficacy and adaptive emotion regulation strategies) would dampen this trajectory while risk factors (social anxiety, maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, and traumatic or adverse life events) would aggravate it.

Pre-pandemic burden

Before pandemic onset, anxiety sensitivity averaged to 13.8 ( SD = 8.81, range = 0–48), worry to 41.8 ( SD = 10.5, range = 16–77), and trait anxiety to 35.2 ( SD = 8.62, range = 20–66). Social anxiety was comparably low ( mean ± SD : SPAI = 35.4 ± 16.7; LSAS = 23.5 ± 15.3) and self-efficacy was average ( GSE = 29.6 ± 3.63; cf. 38 ). Concerning emotion regulation, we observed a mean of 18.1 ( SD = 4.60, possible values from 8 to 40) for maladaptive strategies, 26.4 ( SD = 5.03, possible values from 8 to 40) for adaptive strategies, and 7.21 ( SD = 1.96, possible values from 2 to 10) for acceptance. Of our sample, 12.1% reported (at least moderate) childhood trauma 39 with an average of 1.34 ( SD = 1.27) threatening experiences and 9.38 ( SD = 10.8) adverse life events. None of these values were significantly different from individuals who stopped participation during pandemic downturn (| t |s ≤ 1.06, p s ≥ 0.288, d s ≤ 0.07), indicating no selective attrition 40 .

Group-level trajectory

To investigate the general trajectory of psychological strain across the COVID-19 pandemic, we calculated a mixed effects ANOVA with time (pre, peak, downturn) as within-subject factor and the between-subject predictors gender , age , and gap (between the first and last assessment). The effect of time was highly significant ( F (1.77, 529.13) = 54.54, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.15) and is described by a significant rise in strain from pre to peak pandemic ( t (306) = 7.07, p < 0.001, d = 0.40 [0.29; 0.52]), which was followed by an even sharper decline from peak to downturn ( t (306) = − 16.23, p < 0.001, d = − 0.93 [− 1.06; − 0.79]) that resulted in values even below the pre-pandemic baseline ( t (306) = − 7.73, p < 0.001, d = − 0.44 [− 0.56; − 0.32]). We also found a significant effect of gender ( F (1, 299) = 5.50, p = 0.020, η p 2 = 0.02) with higher strain being reported across all assessments by females ( z = 0.14) compared to males ( z = − 0.20). Other effects did not reach statistical significance ( F s ≤ 2.46, p s ≥ 0.117). The extent of psychological strain in females and males at the different time points is depicted in Fig. 1 .

Trajectories of psychological strain as a function of time and gender. Trajectories of psychological strain are shown for females (red, N = 230) and males (blue, N = 77) before, at the peak, and during abatement of the COVID-19 pandemic. All values were z -standardized using the pre-pandemic mean and standard deviation. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals of between-subject estimates. Boxplots denote 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quartiles with whiskers extending 1.5 inter-quartile ranges or until the most extreme data point has been reached. Data points beyond the whiskers are plotted individually.

In subsequent analyses, we tested the influence of different pre-pandemic risk factors (social anxiety, childhood trauma, and life events) and resources (self-efficacy and coping strategies) on the trajectory of self-reported psychological strain.

Social anxiety

Considering social anxiety as a risk factor, we found almost identical effects for the SPAI and LSAS , presumably due to the high correlation between questionnaires ( r = 0.76, p < 0.001). Social anxiety showed a significant main effect ( SPAI : F (1, 291) = 42.20, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.13; LSAS : F (1, 291) = 53.44, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.16), which denotes a positive correlation between social anxiety and strain at all time points ( SPAI : r s ≥ 0.304; LSAS : r s ≥ 0.299). The interaction of social anxiety and time was also significant ( SPAI : F (1.77, 515.44) = 12.02, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.04; LSAS : F (1.78, 518.08) = 9.75, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.03): The pre-pandemic strain was higher for participants who also reported stronger symptoms of social anxiety ( SPAI : r = 0.68, p < 0.001; LSAS : r = 0.67, p < 0.001). Individuals with greater social anxiety, however, experienced a less pronounced rise in strain until the peak of the pandemic ( SPAI : r = − 0.27; LSAS : r = − 0.26) followed by a decline to the relative downturn that was independent of social anxiety ( SPAI : r = 0.00; LSAS : r = 0.03; see Fig. 2 a,b). Only for the SPAI , we additionally observed a small but significant interaction with gender ( F (1, 291) = 5.21, p = 0.023, η p 2 = 0.02) that was driven by the correlation between SPAI and the average strain across all time points being higher for women ( r = 0.59, p < 0.001) than for men ( r = 0.38, p < 0.001). Other interactions did not reach statistical significance ( SPAI : F s ≥ 1.43, p s ≤ 0.233; LSAS : F s ≥ 1.74, p s ≤ 0.189).

Risk factors exhibiting similar impact on the trajectory of psychological strain. Risk factors include high social anxiety ( a,b ), low self-efficacy ( c ), and high maladaptive emotion regulation strategies ( d ). All risk factors were associated with elevated baseline strain prior to pandemic onset but also with a less severe increase until pandemic peak. Nevertheless, people with elevated risk factors reported consistently greater strain across all time points. Risk factors were analyzed as continuous variables but are depicted as median splits for simplicity. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals of between-subject estimates. Boxplots denote 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quartiles with whiskers extending 1.5 inter-quartile ranges or until the most extreme data point has been reached. Data points beyond the whiskers are plotted individually.

Self-efficacy

For self-efficacy ( GSE ), similar results as for social anxiety were observed (Fig. 2 c). We found a main effect of GSE ( F (1, 290) = 28.22, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.09), reflecting an increase in strain with decreasing self-efficiency across all time points ( r s ≤ − 0.21). Additionally, an interaction of GSE and time was found ( F (1.78, 515.76) = 9.89, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.03). Pre-pandemic strain was greater for individuals with less self-efficacy ( r = 0.56, p < 0.001) but they also experienced a smaller increase during pandemic peak ( r = 0.26, p < 0.001). The change from peak to downturn, however, was independent of self-efficacy ( r = − 0.06, p = 0.261).

Emotion regulation

Maladaptive emotion regulation strategies ( CERQ-mal ) showed the same pattern as the previous risk factors (Fig. 2 d). There was a main effect of CERQ-mal ( F (1, 291) = 38.34, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.12) that was reflected by positive associations with strain across all time points ( r s ≥ 0.23). We also observed an interaction with time ( F (1.80, 523.46) = 11.47, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.04): While baseline strain was elevated for participants with maladaptive emotion regulation strategies ( r = 0.62, p < 0.001), the rise during the first pandemic peak was less pronounced for these individuals ( r = − 0.29, p < 0.001). The following decline until downturn was yet again independent of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies ( r = 0.08, p = 0.145).

For adaptive emotion regulation strategies ( CERQ-adapt ), we found a small but significant main effect of time ( F (1, 291) = 5.61, p = 0.019, η p 2 = 0.02), which was due to participants with less elaborated adaptive emotional regulation strategies experiencing stronger psychological strain ( r s ≤ − 0.05). Beyond this main effect, we could reveal a three-way interaction of CERQ-adapt , time , and gap ( F (1.77, 516.14) = 3.41, p = 0.039, η p 2 = 0.01), which in turn was superseded by a four-way interaction with gender ( F (1.77, 516.14) = 3.26, p = 0.045, η p 2 = 0.01). Clarifying the four-way interaction, further analyses revealed that the three-way interaction of CERQ-adapt , time , and gap was only significant for male ( F (1.79, 123.75) = 3.38, p = 0.042, η p 2 = 0.05) but not for female participants ( F (1.76, 391.25) = 0.54, p = 0.560, η p 2 < 0.01). As can be seen in Fig. 3 a, men with elevated adaptive emotion regulation strategies seemed to be able to buffer against psychological strain during pandemic onset only if the gap between assessments was high ( M = 6.7 years, SD = 1.2 years: r = − 0.36, p = 0.019) but not if it was low ( M = 2.9 years, SD = 0.7 years: r = 0.17, p = 0.347). The baseline difference in strain between males with low compared to high adaptive emotion regulation strategies did not significantly vary as a function of gap ( r = − 0.18, p = 0.119).

Interactive effects of emotion regulation and gender on psychological strain. For adaptive emotion regulation strategies ( a ), men with higher values experienced a smaller rise in strain until pandemic peak but only if the time gap between first and second assessment was also comparably high (blue line in top right subplot). Acceptance ( b ) also only had a protective effect on males. Importantly, these gender effects need to be considered with caution due to unequal group size (230 females vs. only 77 males). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals of between-subject estimates. Boxplots denote 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quartiles with whiskers extending 1.5 inter-quartile ranges or until the most extreme data point has been reached. Data points beyond the whiskers are plotted individually.

Acceptance was treated as a separate predictor of the CERQ and did not show a significant main effect on psychological strain ( F (1, 291) = 1.81, p = 0.180, η p 2 < 0.01). However, a three-way interaction of acceptance, time , and gender emerged ( F (1.77, 514.98) = 3.98, p = 0.024, η p 2 = 0.01). As can be seen in Fig. 3 b, only men seemed to benefit from acceptance, which buffered against the rise in strain that was observed in the whole sample during the first peak of the pandemic.

Childhood trauma

Childhood trauma ( CTQ ) revealed similar effects as the risk factors described in Fig. 2 . The main effect of the CTQ ( F (1, 291) = 5.57, p = 0.019, η p 2 = 0.02) denotes a generally positive association between childhood trauma severity and psychological strain but we also observed an interaction with time ( F (1.79, 521.86) = 5.27, p = 0.007, η p 2 = 0.02) that was driven by a baseline difference ( r = 0.29, p < 0.001) followed by a reduced increase in individuals with higher CTQ ( r = − 0.25, p < 0.001), resulting in similar strain for all participants during peak pandemic that was independent of childhood trauma ( r = − 0.01, p = 0.913). The decrease in strain until pandemic downturn, however, was also smaller with increasing CTQ values ( r = 0.12, p = 0.043) such that individuals showed small but significant differences in strain during the last assessment that could be predicted by childhood trauma severity ( r = 0.12, p = 0.040; see Fig. 4 ).

Effect of childhood trauma on psychological strain. Childhood trauma severity was associated with greater baseline strain and less increase until pandemic peak. Notably, compared to other risk factors (see Fig. 2 ), psychological strain during pandemic peak was independent of childhood trauma. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals of between-subject estimates. Boxplots denote 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quartiles with whiskers extending 1.5 inter-quartile ranges or until the most extreme data point has been reached. Data points beyond the whiskers are plotted individually.

Life events

Prior experience of threatening events ( LTE ) had no modulatory effects on the group-level results reported in Fig. 1 ( F s ≤ 1.58, p s ≥ 0.210). Considering adverse life events ( ALE ), there were also no effects except for an unexpected and relatively weak five-way interaction of ALE × time × gender × age × gap ( F (1.77, 515.81) = 3.22, p = 0.047, η p 2 = 0.01). A description of this effect can be found in the Supplementary Materials .

In this (quasi-)longitudinal investigation of psychological burden across the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, we found a medium negative effect on psychological wellbeing from before to the first peak of the pandemic ( d = − 0.40). Interestingly, this effect was counteracted by a large recovery during the relative downturn of the pandemic in fall 2021 ( d = 0.93), which resulted in an overall positive effect of medium size compared to the pre-pandemic baseline ( d = 0.44). This general pattern was moderated by social anxiety, childhood trauma, self-efficacy, and emotion regulation strategies: Participants with higher risk or lower protective factors experienced greater strain before the pandemic but also a smaller increase during its peak. Compared to men, female participants showed generally increased psychological burden independent of the pandemic and seemed to not benefit as much from adaptive emotion regulation strategies or acceptance. There were no clear patterns for threatening or adverse life events. Taken together, we obtained two unexpected results: There was an overall positive effect on psychological strain across the pandemic and a smaller initial increase for participants with higher pre-pandemic burden.

The first effect is in line with current research that found improvements in happiness 16 and full recovery of life satisfaction 22 across similar time frames throughout the pandemic. More specifically, our results were predominantly driven by participants with higher risk factors (social anxiety, low self-efficacy, maladaptive coping strategies; cf. Fig. 2 ) and could be explained by a shifting frame of reference in response to such an incisive event as a pandemic. These kinds of transformative challenges have already been described within survivors of (other) traumatic events. Calhoun and Tedeshi 41 divide transformations of posttraumatic growth into three categories: changes in the perception of the self (strengths and new possibilities), experience of relationship with others, and one’s general philosophy of life (priorities, appreciation, and spirituality). Thus, in our case, individuals may have learned to appreciate the regained freedom again that they had taken for granted before lockdowns. Importantly, this change of reference due to incisive events seems to be independent of adaptive emotion regulation strategies (including reappraisal) since we did not observe clear effects for this moderator. Alternatively, the pandemic could have also stimulated social affiliation 42 . This perspective is consistent with improvements in perceived social support and interpersonal resources after having survived a mass shooting, which also predominantly occurred for individuals with elevated anxiety before the incident 43 . Crucially, it is currently unknown how persistent these outcomes will be. Future research should determine if such effects wear off quickly or change the perspective of individuals more sustainably.

Secondly, it appeared that risk factors of mental health impairments protected participants from an increase in psychological strain during the first peak of the pandemic to a certain extent. These results are in accordance with dampened responses in general distress and anhedonia-apprehension within individuals with higher neuroticism 37 . The interpretation of such results, however, is complicated by baseline differences in pre-pandemic burden, which are confounded with the prevalence of risk factors. Hence, it could be that the observed effect is simply a consequence of methodological particularities such as “regression to the mean”, the phenomenon that extreme values will likely be closer to the population average when measured again 44 . Keeping in mind that we acquired a nonclinical sample, however, it may also well be that relatively more strongly strained healthy individuals (in contrast to patients, cf. 11 , 13 ) were better equipped to cope with the burden posed by the pandemic and thus experienced some kind of “home field advantage”. This interpretation is consistent with the mismatch hypothesis 45 , 46 , 47 , which states that individuals flourish best under circumstances that they are used to, even if these environments are adverse.

The main strength of the current study is the (quasi-)longitudinal examination of a relatively large and well-characterized cohort across the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany including a pre-pandemic baseline. However, some limitations also need to be acknowledged. First, we did not assess a single cohort throughout the pandemic but combined two samples to create a quasi-longitudinal trajectory (cf. 48 ). Importantly, we only imputed the value during the first pandemic peak with the help of our second sample while the surprising effect of psychological strain dropping below the pre-pandemic baseline during pandemic downturn is comprised of true longitudinal observations. Hence, while the results with respect to the first pandemic peak may be affected by the quasi-longitudinal matching procedure, this is not the case for differences between before the pandemic and its downturn. Second, our sample exhibits a great variety with respect to the time when the first assessment was issued: The first participant was recruited in the middle of 2013 and the last one in the beginning of 2020. While the timing of assessment entails a trade-off between timeliness of pre-pandemic strain and contamination by first pandemic influences (e.g., news articles), we statistically controlled for potential effects of the time gap and only found interactions in combination with adaptive emotion regulation strategies as well as adverse life events. These effects, however, were very small in magnitude and just barely passed the alpha error threshold ( p s ≥ 0.039, η p 2 ≤ 0.01). On the other hand, this diversity in time gaps has the advantage that systematic influences of specific pre-pandemic events have been averaged out across participants, making our group-level estimate of pre-pandemic burden even more robust. Third, a problem for generalizability is posed by potential self-selection of participants. It can be expected that individuals with greater trust in the government and its regulations also showed more willingness to participate in a study conducted by a university. This subgroup may also have experienced less burden by the pandemic and associated governmental regulations. Such bias may be reflected by the relatively high number of 91% fully vaccinated individuals in our sample (compared to approximately 69% in the general population at that time 49 , 50 ). Also, students were overrepresented at a fraction of 42%. Importantly, they may have retained more flexibility in following their occupation from home than employed individuals, which in turn may have positively influenced psychological wellbeing. Similarly, our sample was relatively young ( M = 28.2 years) and due to the strict inclusion criteria free from mental disorders at the pre-pandemic time point. It might therefore be speculated that the current sample was more resilient than a representative community sample but it should be noted that we still observed large variability in psychological strain even in the current rather healthy participants and it has also been shown that younger populations seem to exhibit greater risk for psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic 9 , 13 , 14 . Lastly, females were overrepresented at 75%, which is why gender effects (especially higher order interactions for adaptive emotion regulation strategies or acceptance, cf. Fig. 3 , but also the main effect over time, cf. Fig. 1 ) should be interpreted with caution. Taken together, since we observed no evidence for selective attrition, this lack of representation does not seem specific for the current research topic.

In summary, we found no evidence of long-lasting negative effects of the pandemic on the average trajectory of healthy people’s psychological strain. Individuals reporting low levels in known risk factors for mental health impairments or high levels in protective factors only showed short-lasting negative effects of medium size during pandemic peak. Pre-stressed participants, however, experienced a smaller decline of their psychological health that was even followed by a positive overcompensation during pandemic downturn. This indicates that healthy participants, on average, lived through the pandemic without permanent damage. Future research should evaluate the persistence of such compensatory relief effects in more detail.

Materials and methods

Participants.

Two independent samples were combined to allow for longitudinal inferences about the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health (see Fig. 5 for an overview). The first sample consisted of 987 individuals and was acquired prior to the COVID-19 outbreak between 2013 and the beginning of 2020 and had no current mental health diagnosis 51 , 52 , 53 . The second cohort was assessed during the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany during April 2020 and included 5297 participants 54 . Since both samples granted permission to be contacted again for future studies, all individuals were invited to participate in a final survey during a relative downturn of the pandemic in fall 2021 (after the first wave of vaccinations had been rolled out 55 ) in exchange for a 5% chance to win 50 €. Of the first sample, 398 individuals (40.3%) participated in the follow-up assessment, while 1779 individuals (33.6%) of the second sample accepted our invitation. After matching of participants (see details on the quasi-longitudinal matching below), 307 cases could be retained for analysis. The final sample consisted of 230 individuals who identified as female and 77 who identified as male. During the last assessment, mean age was 28.2 years ( SD = 5.41 years, range = 18–50). All participants gave written informed consent. The study was approved by the local ethics committee of the Department of Psychology at the University of Würzburg and was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Overview of the acquired samples and analytical strategy. Sample 1 was assessed during the pre-pandemic baseline between June 2013 and March 2020 and a relative downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic in September and October 2021. Sample 2 was measured during the first peak of the pandemic in April 2020 and during the relative downturn in fall 2021. During all examinations, psychological strain was measured via a compound measure of the ASI-3, PSWQ, and STAI-T (cf. “ Questionnaires ” section). During the common measurement at the relative pandemic downturn, statistical twins were created (see Quasi-longitudinal Matching in “ Data processing ” section). The data of the twin from sample 2 was then used to impute the psychological strain during pandemic peak into the trajectory of the twin from sample 1, thus creating a quasi-longitudinal data set. For the main analysis, changes in psychological strain over time were analyzed relative to pre-pandemic moderators comprised of questionnaire sum scores for social anxiety (SPAI & LSAS), self-efficacy (GSE), emotion regulation strategies (CERQ), traumatic childhood experience (CTQ), and adverse life events (LTE & ALE).

Questionnaires

Psychological strain.

During every assessment, we asked participants to fill out the German versions of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-3 (ASI-3 56 , 57 ), the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ 58 , 59 ), and the trait version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T 60 , 61 ). Cronbach’s α values were excellent (0.903, 0.927, and 0.937 respectively during the last assessment). To compute a composite outcome variable of psychological strain, we z -standardized all values of the ASI-3, PSWQ, and STAI-T (see Supplementary Materials for an exploratory factor analysis) to their mean and standard deviation of the pre-pandemic baseline and averaged the resulting z -scores into one index per participant and time point. This procedure has the advantage that the questionnaires provide equal contribution to the composite score while changes across the pandemic can be directly interpreted relative to pre-pandemic values. In summary, our measurement of psychological strain focusses on anxiety and depressive symptoms (cf. 62 , 63 ).

To predict how the trajectory of psychological strain was moderated by different protective and risk factors, we used the following questionnaires, which were only acquired during the pre-pandemic assessment: Social anxiety (cf. 19 , 23 , 24 ) via the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI 64 , 65 ) and the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS 66 , 67 ); the Generalized Self-Efficacy scale (GSE 68 , 69 ; cf. 29 , 30 ); the short version of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ-short 70 , 71 ; cf. 31 , 32 , 33 ) separated into maladaptive (CERQ-mal) and adaptive strategies (CERQ-adapt) as well as acceptance as a separate predictor (due to scientific disagreement about its classification; cf. 72 , 73 ); and prior experience of adverse events (cf. 27 , 28 ) via the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ 74 , 75 ), the List of Threatening Experiences (LTE 76 ), and Adverse Life Events (ALE 39 ) taken from the modified version of the Life History Calendar 77 , 78 . We initially aimed to explore further moderators from the last assessment like vaccination status, risk group membership, or previous COVID-19 infections but observed far too little variance for a systematic investigation: More than 90% of participants gave the same answer to these questions (cf. “ Discussion ” section on self-selection).

Data processing

Longitudinal matching.

For sample 1, 368 (92.5%) data sets could be retained. Twenty-nine (7.3%) subjects did not complete the questionnaire and for one participant, no pre-pandemic data had been acquired (i.e., a human error occurred when sending out invitations to the last assessment). For sample 2, 1604 (90%) data sets could be retained. The loss was caused by duplicates and inconsistencies in the provided anonymized code words. We checked unmatched codes for resemblance and manually rematched 290 data sets at face validity (see Supplementary Materials ).

Quasi-longitudinal matching

Since the data before pandemic onset and during its first peak originated from independent samples (cf. Fig. 5 ), cases had to be united to provide an estimate for the full longitudinal trajectory of psychological strain across the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, we created statistical twins based on the survey of both samples during the pandemic downturn using multivariate matching (for an overview, see 79 , 80 ). The data of the twin from sample 2 was then used to impute the data during pandemic peak into the data from its twin in sample 1, thus creating a quasi-longitudinal data set (cf. 48 ).

To determine which variables are best suited for twin matching, we took an elastic net approach, which has been proven especially useful when relying on many predictors with an unknown covariance structure 81 . Critically, the elastic net balances model complexity and predictive performance by favoring variables that uniquely explain variance of the criterion. The result is a manageable set of distinctively meaningful predictors (cf. 54 ). Data from sample 1 were subjected to the elastic net to predict the change from pre-pandemic strain to downturn by the multitude of variables acquired during the last assessment (see Supplementary Materials ). According to the results, the change in strain was best predicted by depressive symptomatology (ADS-K and PHQ-2), inhibitory intolerance of uncertainty (IUS-I), and a single item describing the perceived change in one’s emotional mental state due to the COVID-19 pandemic within the last 6 months (i.e., spring to fall 2021).

We then submitted these four predictors alongside age and gender as key demographic variables and psychological strain as outcome measure to the “Match” function in R’s Matching package version 4.10-2 82 , 83 . We defined the maximum acceptable distance within twins to be 0.7 standard deviations for all variables. As a result, 42 female (15%), 17 male (18%), and two nonbinary participants (100%) from sample 1 could not be matched to a statistical twin from sample 2, yielding our final sample for analysis ( N = 307; cf. Participants). Included participants showed high similarity to their statistical twins across matching variables ( r s ≥ 0.93) with z -standardized differences averaging to 0.15 ( SD = 0.18) for women and 0.18 ( SD = 0.20) for men.

Main analysis

To analyze our data, mixed effects ANOVAs were computed with psychological strain as dependent variable, time point as within-subject factor, and the between-subjects predictors (a) gender , (b) age at last assessment, and (c) time gap between first and last time point. Further pre-pandemic predictors were added to the analysis one at a time. All continuous predictors were z -standardized before submitting them into the models. The Greenhouse–Geisser procedure 84 was applied to correct for potential violations of the sphericity assumption in repeated-measures ANOVAs involving more than one degree of freedom in the numerator. Follow-up tests were performed two-sidedly at α = 5%, and corresponding effect sizes of Cohen’s d are reported with 95% confidence intervals around their point estimates. This procedure was not preregistered.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author: [email protected]. The data are not publicly available because participants did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly. Furthermore, the data contain sensitive, health-related information and enough information to potentially compromise the privacy of research participants.

Code availability

All R code for data analysis is available on Github: https://github.com/spressi/Covid_burden .

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Larissa Lenk for her assistance during participant acquisition and data preparation. They also thank Madita Schindler for her assistance during literature review as well as Anthony Mancini and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This work was funded by the VolkswagenStiftung (AZ 99451) and the German Research Foundation (DFG 44541416-TRR58). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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These authors contributed equally: Grit Hein and Matthias Gamer.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Psychology I, Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, Marcusstr. 9-11, 97070, Würzburg, Germany

Mario Reutter, Dominik Gall, Paul Pauli & Matthias Gamer

Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Clinical Anxiety Research, Center of Mental Health, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Katharina Hutterer

Translational Social Neuroscience Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Center of Mental Health, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Marthe Gründahl & Grit Hein

Institute for Translational Psychiatry, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

Udo Dannlowski & Elisabeth J. Leehr

Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, Medical Center – University of Freiburg, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

Katharina Domschke & Miriam A. Schiele

Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

Tina B. Lonsdorf

Department of Psychology, Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Ulrike Lueken

Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

Andreas Reif

Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, Frankfurt, Germany

kbo-Inn-Salzach-Klinikum, Clinical Center for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatic Medicine, Geriatrics and Neurology, Wasserburg/Inn, Germany

Peter Zwanzger

Department of Psychiatry, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Munich, Germany

German Center for Mental Health (DZPG), Partner Site Berlin/Potsdam, Berlin, Germany

Katharina Domschke & Ulrike Lueken

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The authors G.H. and M.G. contributed equally. M.R.: Data curation (lead), formal analysis (lead), methodology (lead), software (lead), visualization, writing—original draft (lead), writing—review & editing (lead); K.H.: Data curation, methodology, investigation, software, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing; M.G.: Data curation, investigation, methodology, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing; D.G.: Data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, software; U.D.: Funding acquisition, writing—review & editing; K.D.: Funding acquisition, writing—review & editing; E.J.L.: Writing—review & editing; T.B.L.: Funding acquisition, writing—review & editing; U.L.: Funding acquisition, writing—review & editing; A.R.: Funding acquisition, writing—review & editing; M.A.S.: Investigation, writing—review & editing; P.Z.: Funding acquisition, writing—review & editing; P.P.: Conceptualization, funding acquisition, project administration; G.H.: Conceptualization, funding acquisition, project administration, supervision, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing; M.G.: Conceptualization, funding acquisition, project administration, supervision, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing.

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Reutter, M., Hutterer, K., Gründahl, M. et al. Mental health improvement after the COVID-19 pandemic in individuals with psychological distress. Sci Rep 14 , 5685 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55839-3

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Virtual Listening During COVID-19 Essay (Article)

Brief summary, strengths and weaknesses, personal position, recommendations.

Many people report feeling unsteady when listening virtually, as if they were trying to dance backward on high heels. The spread of COVID-19 has made problems like this widespread in the business world. The article aims to improve virtual listening in the wake of a pandemic. Staff and management tend to exaggerate their listening abilities and minimize the significance of effective listening (Itzchakov & Grau, 2022). When people can communicate effectively, the company benefits from fewer miscommunications and more efficient use of its resources.

Subtle verbal and nonverbal responses, as well as an open, inquiring, and nonjudgmental attitude, are more characteristics of a good listener, as described in the article. There are three parts to a successful listening encounter: focus, understanding, and openness (Ngoma & Ntale, 2019). The concept of attention refers to the listener’s nonverbal behavior clues that show they are focused on the speaker (Itzchakov & Grau, 2022). The ability of a speaker to convey the sense that their audience has grasped the meaning of what they have said is a hallmark of good comprehension. What is meant by acceptance in the article is the listener’s overt inquiries, facial expressions, and internal monologues.

The ability to listen attentively is correlated favorably with achievement. Sales revenue is just one metric that benefits from attentive managers and a culture that encourages open communication and active participation from all employees. According to the article’s authors, training listeners to be flexible and adaptable so that they may adjust their listening habits to suit the speaker’s style is essential. Most managers rank listening as their top communication ability, and surveys of Fortune 500 businesses show that many of them provide training in the art of listening to their staff (Itzchakov & Grau, 2022). Employees who have received listening training report less social anxiety and a more optimistic outlook on workplace difficulties.

The article’s strengths lie in its attention to and provision of answers for the new challenges posed to workplace communication by COVID-19. A good listener is essential for resolving customer service communication problems in the workplace, and this article outlines some traits that make someone a good listener (Itzchakov & Grau, 2022). However, its weakness is the article’s need for hard numbers on how being a good listener affects customer relationships. Furthermore, the article only provides a single metric to demonstrate how having a good listener might benefit a business.

From my perspective, the Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly affected commercial activity worldwide. As businesses strive to get back on their feet following the epidemic, good listening skills are more important than ever to ensure that messages get over to coworkers and customers. The qualities of good listeners highlighted in the article are, therefore, essential for any company weathering the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. Consequently, I agree that every business’s success depends on having attentive employees.

Due to restrictions brought about by the pandemic leading customers and staff to meet virtually, I recommend that the staff always explore the camera setting options before the meeting. This will help keep the focus on the meeting and be helpful to the customer in case they experience any issues during the session (Abbas et al., 2018). Furthermore, I suggest that the personnel prioritizes understanding over politeness at all times. Understanding the speaker’s needs and desires may depend on those missing words. These two recommendations will ensure that a virtual meeting with a customer is successful and that they will purchase the organization’s products.

Abbas, M., Gao, Y., & Shah, S. (2018). CSR and customer outcomes: The mediating role of customer engagement . Sustainability , 10 (11), 4243. Web.

Itzchakov, G., & Grau, J. (2022). High-quality listening in the age of COVID-19 . Organizational Dynamics , 51 (2), 100820. Web.

Ngoma, M., & Ntale, P. D. (2019). Word of mouth communication: A mediator of relationship marketing and Customer Loyalty . Cogent Business & Management , 6 (1). Web.

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Listening as an Essential Skill in Outsourcing
Personal Examination as a Listener and Communication Partner
Listening and Speaking Skills Course Evaluation
The Elaboration Likelihood Theory and the Social Judgment Theory
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Potential Barriers to a Communication Plan
The Apple Firm's Strategic Communications Plan
UN Global Compact's Executive Officers' Work

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Rise of drug-resistant superbugs could make Covid pandemic look ‘minor’, expert warns

Common infections will kill millions if drug resistance through misuse of antibiotics is not curbed, says England’s ex-chief medical officer

What is antimicrobial resistance and how big a problem is it?

The Covid-19 pandemic will “look minor” compared with what humanity faces from the growing number of superbugs resistant to current drugs, Prof Dame Sally Davies, England’s former chief medical officer, has warned.

Davies, who is now the UK’s special envoy on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), lost her goddaughter two years ago to an infection that could not be treated.

She paints a bleak picture of what could happen if the world fails to tackle the problem within the next decade, warning that the issue is “more acute” than climate change. Drug-resistant infections already kill at least 1.2 million people a year.

“It looks like a lot of people with untreatable infections, and we would have to move to isolating people who were untreatable in order not to infect their families and communities. So it’s a really disastrous picture. It would make some of Covid look minor,” said Davies, who is also the first female master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

An older white woman wearing glasses and a purple jacket sits in an old carved chair in a dark wood-panelled room with portraits on the wall behind her

AMR means that some infections caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites can no longer be treated with available medicines. Exposure to drugs allows the bugs to evolve the ability to resist them, and overuse of drugs such as antibiotics accelerates that process.

Widespread resistance would make much of modern medicine too risky, affecting treatments including caesarean sections, cancer interventions and organ transplantation.

“If we haven’t made good strides in the next 10 years, then I’m really scared,” Davies said.

Without the development of new treatments “it’ll grind on for decades and it won’t burn out. We know that with viruses, they burn out, you generally develop herd immunity, but this isn’t like that.”

Last week the UK government announced a national action plan on AMR, with commitments to reduce its use of antimicrobials in both humans and animals, strengthen surveillance of drug resistant infections, and incentivise industry to develop new drugs and vaccines.

Launching the plan, Maria Caulfield, the health minister, said: “In a world recovering from the profound impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, international collaboration and preparedness for global health challenges have taken on an unprecedented level of importance.”

Davies has spent more than a decade warning about the problem, but said it truly hit home when her “beautiful” goddaughter, Emily Hoyle , died of a drug-resistant infection aged 38.

Hoyle had cystic fibrosis and had undergone two lung transplants before she was infected by Mycobacteroides abscessus , which was resistant to treatment.

The team treating her “tried everything”, Davies said. “But I would think for me, looking back from the year before she died, I thought it was likely this would kill her.

Emily Hoyle, who died of a drug-resistant infection aged 38, smiling and holding a baby.

“And she knew about six months before she died that this was not going to be treatable and that she would probably die of it.

“She had a very beautiful death – she was very dignified, laughing, joking, making light of it to husband, family, all of us. She was very special.

“But she gave me permission to use her story as my goddaughter because, well, it got personal for me, the Christmas before last.”

Hoyle’s death has reinforced her determination to turn the tide, Davies said, describing it as a question of intergenerational fairness.

“My generation and older have used the antibiotics [and] we’re not replenishing them. We’re not making sure that our food is produced with as low usage as possible. And I owe it to my children and – if I have them – grandchildren and the next generations to do my best.”

Gloved hands holding two plates. One has small discs surrounded by darker areas; in the other, the darker areas around the discs are much smaller or non-existent

There are also issues of fairness in the present day, she said. One death in five caused by AMR is in a child aged under five , usually in sub-Saharan Africa, where Davies said the problem is “particularly prevalent and disastrous”.

Many of the countries are also being hit hard by the climate crisis and Davies said the two problems were interlinked.

“If we don’t control and mitigate AMR, then it will kill more people before climate change does,” she said.

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“Climate will play out in many ways, but think about flood water, think about sewage, think about displacement, think about storms and what they spread and the lack of clean water if you’ve got drought; infections do go up.”

There are global efforts to reduce inappropriate use of drugs such as antibiotics in medicine, although the Covid-19 pandemic stalled progress on many of those initiatives. Few new antibiotics have been created in recent years and the issue is “made more complicated” because it involves sectors such as farming as well as human health.

More than two-thirds of antibiotics go into farm animals , Davies said, usually to promote growth or prevent infections in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions rather than treat specific infections.

A young woman stands among metal pens holding a piglet under her arm while she injects it

Some Asian fish farms were “tipping antibiotics in with the fish food”, partly because it is cheaper, she said, but also because of a lack of research into which infections occur in local breeds of fish such as tilapia, and which vaccines might be needed.

“If you don’t have appropriate, careful use,” she said, “you’re risking it really getting out of control.”

Animals, including humans, excrete up to 80% of the antibiotics they take in, she points out, “contaminating the environment”. Factories producing antibiotics may not control their effluent, allowing “dramatic amounts” to enter water systems.

Despite her warnings, Davies insisted she is a “glass half-full” person, brimming with enthusiasm as she discusses projects that find a different approach. A major US poultry supplier has stopped using antibiotics, “so you can do it”, she said.

Breakthroughs such as genomics and artificial intelligence are “reinvigorating” the science of new antibiotics. She is also hopeful that programmes to incentivise pharmaceutical companies to create new antibiotics will bear fruit.

Ideally, such medicines should be held in reserve as a last resort if existing drugs fail to work, so bugs do not develop resistance to them. However, this makes it hard for companies to guarantee a return on investment in research and development.

A person looks through a microscope while a screen in the background displays a coloured image of bacteria on a red background

Various countries are exploring alternative means of funding, such as a subscription model by NHS England, paying a fixed annual fee for access to antimicrobials, regardless of volume used.

Davies is part of the UN Global Leaders Group on AMR . In September, the UN will hold a high-level meeting on the issue and the group is pushing for targets by 2030, including reducing global human deaths from AMR by 10%, cutting antimicrobial use in agriculture by at least 30%, and ending the use of “medically important antimicrobials for human medicine” in farming where they are not needed to treat disease.

While “honoured” to be part of the group, she said more formal structures were needed. “We need inter-country governance of some form, a bit like a COP for climate change,” Davies said.

Particularly important would be the establishment of an independent scientific panel similar to the IPCC , “otherwise, it’s academics saying, ‘oh, we need this target’. And however correct that is, if you haven’t taken the low- and middle-income countries on the journey, there’s no reason why they would accept those – or should accept them.”

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There’s a New Covid Variant. What Will That Mean for Spring and Summer?

Experts are closely watching KP.2, now the leading variant.

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A man wearing a mask coughs into his hand on a subway train.

By Dani Blum

For most of this year, the JN.1 variant of the coronavirus accounted for an overwhelming majority of Covid cases . But now, an offshoot variant called KP.2 is taking off. The variant, which made up just one percent of cases in the United States in mid-March, now makes up over a quarter.

KP.2 belongs to a subset of Covid variants that scientists have cheekily nicknamed “FLiRT,” drawn from the letters in the names of their mutations. They are descendants of JN.1, and KP.2 is “very, very close” to JN.1, said Dr. David Ho, a virologist at Columbia University. But Dr. Ho has conducted early lab tests in cells that suggest that slight differences in KP.2’s spike protein might make it better at evading our immune defenses and slightly more infectious than JN.1.

While cases currently don’t appear to be on the rise, researchers and physicians are closely watching whether the variant will drive a summer surge.

“I don’t think anybody’s expecting things to change abruptly, necessarily,” said Dr. Marc Sala, co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Covid-19 Center in Chicago. But KP.2 will most likely “be our new norm,’” he said. Here’s what to know.

The current spread of Covid

Experts said it would take several weeks to see whether KP.2 might lead to a rise in Covid cases, and noted that we have only a limited understanding of how the virus is spreading. Since the public health emergency ended , there is less robust data available on cases, and doctors said fewer people were using Covid tests.

But what we do know is reassuring: Despite the shift in variants, data from the C.D.C. suggests there are only “minimal ” levels of the virus circulating in wastewater nationally, and emergency department visits and hospitalizations fell between early March and late April.

“I don’t want to say that we already know everything about KP.2,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System. “But at this time, I’m not seeing any major indications of anything ominous.”

Protection from vaccines and past infections

Experts said that even if you had JN.1, you may still get reinfected with KP.2 — particularly if it’s been several months or longer since your last bout of Covid.

KP.2 could infect even people who got the most updated vaccine, Dr. Ho said, since that shot targets XBB.1.5, a variant that is notably different from JN.1 and its descendants. An early version of a paper released in April by researchers in Japan suggested that KP.2 might be more adept than JN.1 at infecting people who received the most recent Covid vaccine. (The research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.) A spokesperson for the C.D.C. said the agency was continuing to monitor how vaccines perform against KP.2.

Still, the shot does provide some protection, especially against severe disease, doctors said, as do previous infections. At this point, there isn’t reason to believe that KP.2 would cause more severe illness than other strains, the C.D.C. spokesperson said. But people who are 65 and older, pregnant or immunocompromised remain at higher risk of serious complications from Covid.

Those groups, in particular, may want to get the updated vaccine if they haven’t yet, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. The C.D.C. has recommended t hat people 65 and older who already received one dose of the updated vaccine get an additional shot at least four months later.

“Even though it’s the lowest level of deaths and hospitalizations we’ve seen, I’m still taking care of sick people with Covid,” he said. “And they all have one unifying theme, which is that they’re older and they didn’t get the latest shot.”

The latest on symptoms and long Covid

Doctors said that the symptoms of both KP.2 and JN.1 — which now makes up around 16 percent of cases — are most likely similar to those seen with other variants . These include sore throat, runny nose, coughing, head and body aches, fever, congestion, fatigue and in severe cases, shortness of breath. Fewer people lose their sense of taste and smell now than did at the start of the pandemic, but some people will still experience those symptoms.

Dr. Chin-Hong said that patients were often surprised that diarrhea, nausea and vomiting could be Covid symptoms as well, and that they sometimes confused those issues as signs that they had norovirus .

For many people who’ve already had Covid, a reinfection is often as mild or milder than their first case. While new cases of long Covid are less common now than they were at the start of the pandemic, repeat infections do raise the risk of developing long Covid, said Fikadu Tafesse, a virologist at Oregon Health & Science University. But researchers are still trying to determine by how much — one of many issues scientists are trying to untangle as the pandemic continues to evolve.

“That’s the nature of the virus,” Dr. Tafesse said. “It keeps mutating.”

Dani Blum is a health reporter for The Times. More about Dani Blum

Countries struggle to draft ‘pandemic treaty’ to avoid mistakes made during COVID

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After the COVID-19 pandemic triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions, leaders at the World Health Organization and worldwide vowed to do better in the future. Years later, countries are still struggling to come up with an agreed-upon plan for how the world might respond to the next global outbreak.

A ninth and final round of talks involving governments, advocacy groups and others to finalize a “pandemic treaty” ended Friday. The accord’s mission is to craft guidelines for how the WHO’s 194 member countries might stop future pandemics and better share scarce resources. But experts warn there are virtually no consequences for countries that don’t comply.

The WHO’s countries asked the United Nations health agency to oversee talks for a pandemic agreement in 2021 . Envoys have been working long hours in recent weeks to prepare a draft ahead of a self-imposed deadline later this month: ratification of the accord at WHO’s annual meeting. But deep divisions could derail it.

U.S. Republican senators wrote a letter to the Biden administration last week critical of the draft for focusing on issues like “shredding intellectual property rights” and “supercharging the WHO.” They urged President Biden not to sign off.

Britain’s department of health said it would only agree to an accord if it was “firmly in the U.K. national interest and respects national sovereignty.”

And many developing countries say it’s unfair that they might be expected to provide virus samples to help develop vaccines and treatments, but then be unable to afford them.

“This pandemic treaty is a very high-minded pursuit, but it doesn’t take political realities into account,” said Sara Davies, a professor of international relations at Griffith University in Australia.

For example, the accord is attempting to address the gap that occurred between COVID-19 vaccines in rich and poorer countries, which WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said amounted to “a catastrophic moral failure.”

President Joe Biden listens as he meets with Iraq's Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, April 15, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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Biden administration partners with 50 countries to stifle future pandemics

The U.S. is launching a program that will help 50 countries, most of them in Africa and Asia, identify and respond to infectious diseases.

April 16, 2024

The draft says the WHO should get 20% of the production of pandemic-related products like tests, treatments and vaccines and urges countries to disclose their deals with private companies.

“There’s no mechanism within WHO to make life really difficult for any countries that decide not to act in accordance with the treaty,” Davies said.

Adam Kamradt-Scott, a global health expert at Harvard University, said that similar to the global climate agreements, the draft pandemic treaty would at least provide a new forum for countries to try to hold each other to account, where governments will have to explain what measures they’ve taken.

The pandemic treaty “is not about anyone telling the government of a country what it can do and what it cannot do,” said Roland Driece, co-chair of the WHO’s negotiating board for the agreement.

There are legally binding obligations under the International Health Regulations, including quickly reporting dangerous new outbreaks. But those have been flouted repeatedly, including by African countries during Ebola outbreaks and China in the early stages of COVID-19.

Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at Geneva’s Graduate Institute, said it was critical to determine the expected role of the WHO during a pandemic and how outbreaks might be stopped before spreading globally.

“If we fail to seize this window of opportunity which is closing … we’ll be just as vulnerable as we were in 2019,” she warned.

Some countries appear to be moving on their own to ensure cooperation from others in the next pandemic.

Last month, the Biden administration said it would help 50 countries respond to new outbreaks and prevent global spread, giving the country leverage should it need critical information or materials in the future.

Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal and policy advisor at Doctors without Borders, said it’s unclear what might be different in the next pandemic, but hoped that focusing attention on some of the glaring errors that emerged in COVID-19 might help.

“We will mostly have to rely on countries to do better,” she said. “That is worrisome.”

Associated Press writer Cheng reported from London and Keaten from Geneva.

COVID-19 is no longer a global emergency, World Health Organization says

May 5, 2023

Kindergarten students at Jackson STEM Dual Language Magnet Academy in Altadena.

COVID is still a global emergency but may be nearing an ‘inflection point,’ WHO says

Jan. 30, 2023

FILE - State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, Nov. 2, 2022. The United States and Russia will soon hold talks on resuming suspended nuclear arms control inspections that had been put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic and languished after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the State Department said Tuesday, Nov. 8. Price said negotiations on the inspections would take place “in the near future” under the terms of the New START treaty and would not include any discussion of the conflict in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

U.S., Russia set to talk about resuming arms control inspections

Nov. 8, 2022

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Writing About COVID-19 in Your College Essay
This essay is an opportunity to share your pandemic experience and the lessons learned. The college admissions process has experienced significant changes as a result of COVID-19, creating new challenges for high school students. Since the onset of the pandemic, admissions officers have strongly emphasized a more holistic review process.
Persuasive Essay About Covid19
When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it's important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read: Covid-19 and its Impacts. Covid19, also known as Coronavirus, is an infectious disease that has had a major impact on the world. Since its ...
Covid 19 Essay in English
100 Words Essay on Covid 19. COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very ...
How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay
Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays. Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic. The global impact of COVID-19, the disease ...
The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic
In conclusion, this paper has highlighted the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy, social life, education, religion, and family units. Many countries and businesses had underestimated the disease's impact before they later suffered from the consequences. Therefore, international bodies, such as the World Health Organization, need ...
Writing about COVID-19 in a college essay GreatSchools.org
Students working on college admission essays often struggle to figure out how to write about their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic's impact. The different sections have differing goals.
12 moving essays about life during coronavirus
The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good ...
COVID-19 Pandemic
The outbreak of the infectious respiratory disease known as COVID-19 triggered one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history. COVID-19 claimed nearly 7 million lives worldwide. In the United ...
A Guide To Writing The Covid-19 Essay For The Common App
This year, students applying to college through the Common App will be able to submit an optional essay detailing their experiences (both positive and negative) during the Covid-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on social relationships and health
This essay examines key aspects of social relationships that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses explicitly on relational mechanisms of health and brings together theory and emerging evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to make recommendations for future public health policy and recovery. We first provide an overview of the pandemic in the UK context, outlining the ...
The COVID-19 pandemic as a scientific and social challenge in the 21st
The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, has spread around the globe with unprecedented consequences for the health of millions of people. While the pandemic is still in progress, with new incidents being reported every day, the resilience of the global society is constantly being challenged.
Preparing for the next pandemic: Early lessons from COVID-19
Even in the lead up to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. resource allocation for combating infectious diseases and developing biodefense was woefully inadequate. In 2014, the U.S. allocated $6 billion ...
Impact of COVID-19 on people's livelihoods, their health and our food
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic is devastating: tens of millions of people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty, while the number of ...
What We Learned About Ourselves During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. "The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry ...
Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic
Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic. Published: 2021/11/08. Number of words: 1220. As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the ...
Essay On Covid-19: 100, 200 and 300 Words
In conclusion, COVID-19 tested the patience and resilience of the mankind. This pandemic has taught people the importance of patience, effort and humbleness. Also Read: Essay on My Best Friend. Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words. COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a serious and contagious disease that has affected people worldwide.
An Introduction to COVID-19
COVID-19 has reached to more than 150 nations, including China, and has caused WHO to call the disease a worldwide pandemic. By the time of 2nd week of April 2020, this COVID-19 cases exceeded 18,738,58, although more than 1,160,45 deaths were recorded worldwide and United States of America became the global epicentre of coronavirus.
8 Lessons We Can Learn From the COVID-19 Pandemic
The CDC reports that the percentage of adults who reported symptoms of anxiety of depression in the past 7 days increased from 36.4 to 41.5 % from August 2020 to February 2021. Other reports show that having COVID-19 may contribute, too, with its lingering or long COVID symptoms, which can include "foggy mind," anxiety, depression, and post ...
My Experience During The Covid-19 Pandemic
Conclusion. In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on my life. It affected me physically, mentally, and emotionally and challenged my ability to cope with adversity. However, it also taught me valuable lessons and allowed me to grow as an individual. This is only a sample.
The COVID-19 pandemic and health inequalities
This essay examines the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for health inequalities. It outlines historical and contemporary evidence of inequalities in pandemics—drawing on international research into the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918, the H1N1 outbreak of 2009 and the emerging international estimates of socio-economic, ethnic and geographical inequalities in COVID-19 infection and ...
The complexity of managing COVID-19: How important is good ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of public health systems worldwide, casting a shadow that we could not have imagined even a year ago. As the fog of confusion lifts and we begin to ...
Insights into the impact on daily life of the COVID-19 pandemic and
1. Introduction. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to unprecedented changes in people's daily lives, with implications for mental health and well-being [1-4], both at the level of a given country's population, and when considering specific vulnerable groups [5-7].In order to mitigate the untoward impact of the pandemic (including lockdown) and support mental health ...
The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What ...
As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and ...
Temporal shifts in 24 notifiable infectious diseases in China ...
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, along with the implementation of public health and social measures (PHSMs), have markedly reshaped infectious disease transmission dynamics. We ...
Mental health improvement after the COVID-19 pandemic in ...
The COVID-19 pandemic and associated countermeasures had an immensely disruptive impact on people's lives. Due to the lack of systematic pre-pandemic data, however, it is still unclear how ...
Virtual Listening During COVID-19 Essay (Article)
The spread of COVID-19 has made problems like this widespread in the business world. The article aims to improve virtual listening in the wake of a pandemic. Staff and management tend to exaggerate their listening abilities and minimize the significance of effective listening (Itzchakov & Grau, 2022). When people can communicate effectively ...
Introduction: Pandemic TV, Then and Now
This essay serves as the introduction to TVNM's special issue on "Pandemic TV," an analysis of the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic affected principally anglophone television and television-watching in 2020 to 2021 (including television's response to corresponding events such as the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings and the fall 2020 U.S. presidential election).
Rise of drug-resistant superbugs could make Covid pandemic look 'minor
The Covid-19 pandemic will "look minor" compared with what humanity faces from the growing number of superbugs resistant to current drugs, Prof Dame Sally Davies, England's former chief ...
What to Know About New Covid Variants, 'FLiRT ...
Experts are closely watching KP.2, now the leading variant. By Dani Blum For most of this year, the JN.1 variant of the coronavirus accounted for an overwhelming majority of Covid cases. But now ...
Countries struggle with 'pandemic treaty' to avoid COVID-style errors
After the COVID-19 pandemic triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions, leaders at the World Health Organization and worldwide vowed to do better in the future ...