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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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life lessons that coronavirus taught us essay writing

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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What COVID-19 has taught us: lessons from around the globe

Adrian h. c. koh.

1 Eye & Retina Surgeons, #13-03 Camden Medical Centre, 1 Orchard Boulevard, Singapore, 248649 Singapore

Luke R. S. Koh

Shwu-jiuan sheu.

2 Kaohshiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Taiji Sakamoto

3 Kagoshima University, 8-35-1 Sakuragaoka, Kagoshima, 890-8520 Japan

“ In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity ” – Sun Tzu ( 544–496 BC ).

COVID-19 hit us without warning. What started out in December 2019 as an isolated outbreak of a respiratory illness, ostensibly transmitted from the horseshoe bat in a wet market in the city of Wuhan, China, led rapidly to a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020 and being declared a pandemic on 11 March by the World Health Organization (WHO) [ 1 ]. In a short span, it has affected almost 6 million people worldwide, resulting in more than 355,000 deaths [ 2 ]. The world has not seen such a widespread disease since the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009 [ 3 ] and the Spanish Flu in the early twentieth century [ 4 ].

The chaos of the COVID pandemic and its impact on ophthalmology

The impact of this current pandemic is much greater than more recent outbreaks such as SARS and Ebola because of globalization and ease of travel. Many countries instituted drastic and sometimes extreme quarantine measures (e.g., locking down over 60 million people in Hubei province, including the epicenter of the crisis, Wuhan) [ 5 ]. The alarming reports of ophthalmologists contracting the deadly illness from infected patients especially the 34-year-old Wuhan ophthalmologist, Li Wenliang, made ophthalmologists wary and nervous of spread of COVID through contact with their patients, either through close proximity with patients during the typical ophthalmic consultation or via diagnostic tests and surgical procedures through aerosolization and fomites [ 6 ].

COVID-19 is widespread in Asia, but mortality rates are much lower than in Western European countries and the USA. The Johns Hopkins University revealed that the death rate per 100,000 people was 82.56 in Belgium, 10.25 in Germany, and 31.42 in the USA. Across Asia, the rates were 0.33 in China, 0.7 in Japan, 0.52 in South Korea, 0.04 in Singapore, and 0.03 in Taiwan [ 2 ]. The enigma of lower death rates in East Asia cannot be explained easily. Researchers are examining many factors, including differences in genetics and immune system responses, separate virus strains, and regional contrasts in obesity levels and general health, but the results have been inconclusive so far [ 7 ].

The Taiwan experience

Taiwan has been hailed as the most successful model in the fight against COVID-19. Owing to the painful experience of SARS 17 years ago, Taiwan started advance deployment. Travel and exposure history was registered in the National Health Insurance system so that hospitals could trace and triage high-risk patients. Even though a surgical mask is not fool-proof in filtering out the virus completely, the protective effect doubled when everyone wore masks. Physicians had been asked to wear masks when checking the patients since SARS in 2003 and are now asked to wear a mask all the time inside the hospital. To facilitate the quarantine process, the hospitals developed an Integrated Hospital Quarantine System (IHQS). This was integrated with the NHI PharmaCloud System, which allowed thorough checks on the travel and medical history of pre-registered patients for all outpatient clinic visits, day surgery, scheduled examinations, or hospital admissions in advance [ 8 ].

The precautions taken were necessary because ophthalmologists are vulnerable to contracting infectious diseases such as COVID-19. In Taiwan, physicians consider all patients as potential COVID carriers. Measures in the clinic include plastic barrier shields mounted to slit lamps and machines; all staff are asked to wear cap, eye goggles, protective clothing, surgical mask, and glove during clinic; video calls to check the patients with fever and red eye but not yet diagnosed with COVID at the emergency department. Direct ophthalmoscopy was discouraged, and indirect ophthalmoscopy or non-mydriatic fundus photo was used as much as possible. If the surgery machine was used in a confirmed case, it needs to be sterilized overnight.

Social distancing measures and wearing of masks were the most vital measures implemented very soon after the outbreak, which have helped Taiwan beat the virus so successfully, with the help of digital and telecommunications technologies as well as discipline and wisdom. Fortuitously, COVID-19 has also opened the door to tele-ophthalmology.

Why tele-ophthalmology?

Tele-ophthalmology refers to the practice of caring for patients remotely when the ophthalmologist and patient are not physically present with each other [ 9 ]. The fact is, telemedicine has been proposed and discussed for several decades before the COVID pandemic, but the current situation where many countries have imposed lockdowns and restrictions to travel to clinics and hospitals has greatly accelerated its use and implementation [ 10 ]. This is especially important for patients at higher risk of contracting the virus, such as elderly patients, and those who are immunocompromised such as diabetic patients. On the other hand, ophthalmologists and eye care staff often need to be in close proximity to patients, whether at the slit lamp, during air puff tonometry, or performing fundus photography or an OCT. Hence, tele-ophthalmology is a logical and effective solution to reducing face-to-face encounters during this period of social distancing and self-isolation [ 11 ].

Tele-ophthalmology affords many opportunities

Tele-ophthalmology is a great tool for forward triage—sorting and prioritizing patients’ needs before they actually present themselves to the clinic or hospital. But for safe and effective forward triage to happen, the following elements are required: clinical history, visual acuity, intraocular pressure, and imaging (e.g., anterior and posterior segment photographs, OCT, and visual fields). Triage protocols may be optimized by automated decision trees such as Big Picture Medical, a cloud-based telemedicine platform linking optometrists in the community to ophthalmologists at Moorfields Eye Hospital. [ 12 ] Video eye consults suit some subspecialties more than others. Examples would be oculoplastics, strabismus, and screening for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and diabetic retinopathy [ 13 – 15 ]. Live slit lamp examination can now be streamed from a primary care facility to a tertiary level hospital for more complex cases [ 16 ]. Patients may still be required to come in for specific tests such as orthoptic assessment, biometry, perimetry, and ultrasonography, but these visits may significantly reduce time in contact with staff and other patients [ 17 ].

Barriers and pitfalls

Several important barriers to tele-ophthalmology need to be overcome as follows:

Lack of technology or knowledge or reluctance to use it

The widespread availability of mobile devices and ease of handphone use, even among the elderly, is making telemedicine accessible to more people. The cell phone has been called the “great equalizer.” While older adults might at first be leery of telehealth, once they try it, they often become enthusiastic about it after overcoming their initial fears [ 10 ].

2. Familiarity with the regulations and laws governing the use of telemedicine in individual countries or states

Many states and countries have recognized the need for implementation of telemedicine during the COVID crisis and have thus accelerated amendments to laws governing telemedicine [ 18 ].

3. Informed consent and proper documentation

It is vital to obtain explicit permission to conduct a virtual consultation. If a commercial system is used, this consent should be a requisite for entrance into the virtual waiting room. Along with this should be clear posting of charges. Clinical note taking and entry into an electronic medical records system can ensure that the whole process and workflow may be maintained, albeit in a virtual environment [ 19 ].

4. Worries about privacy and data protection

Using platforms which use encryption technology such as Skype, FaceTime, and WhatsApp have good track records of security can help allay fears of hacking and loss of personal data [ 20 ].

5. Proper etiquette and setting for virtual clinic

It is important to maintain a professional backdrop and environment for any virtual consultation. This would include details such as the attire of the physician, having a suitable backdrop, adequate privacy and confidentiality, preventing intrusions, good lighting, optimal positioning of the camera, looking directly at the camera, and speaking slowly and clearly [ 21 ].

6. Malpractice and litigation

The Singapore Medical Council’s Ethical Code and Guidelines states clearly: “if doctors engage in telemedicine they must endeavor to provide the same quality and standard of care as in-person medical care; doctors should give patients sufficient information about telemedicine for them to consent to it and ensure that the patient understands the limitations of telemedicine that may affect the quality of their care….” [ 22 ].

7. Lack of personal touch and feeling disconnected

Ultimately, the doctor-patient relationship is based on trust and the personal touch. Having doctors face the camera during the video consult actually gives the physician an opportunity for patients to see their doctors in a better, more favorable light. Even in the absence of physical touch, some interaction might be better than none at all. More importantly, the reassurance that doctors can give their patients in their time of need is priceless.

Welcome to the (near) future

It would be a shame if the lessons learnt during this crisis are quickly forgotten, and we end up returning to our old habit of doing things [ 23 – 25 ]. As Paul Testa MD, chief medical information officer at NYU Langone Health in New York City, said, “there will be a transition period of months and maybe a year. People will have blended care” in which telehealth is combined with in-person office visits when needed . We have an unprecedented opportunity to learn from the current experience and draw lessons for the future, including the design of optimal systems of care that enhance access and quality of care as well as contain cost. Telemedicine offers capabilities to utilize these advances within networks that transcend geography. Indeed, the words of Sun Tzu, the military strategist and philosopher who lived in the Eastern Zhou period of ancient China, ring true: In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.

This article is part of a topical collection on Perspectives on COVID-19

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Adrian H. C. Koh, Email: moc.oohay@hokcha .

Luke R. S. Koh, Email: [email protected] .

Shwu-Jiuan Sheu, Email: moc.liamg@uehsnauijs .

Taiji Sakamoto, Email: pj.ca.u-amihsogak.mfuk.3m@tomakast .

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.

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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.

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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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Ongoing lessons from a long pandemic

What COVID-19 has taught—and continues to teach—us two years in.

FOR ALMOST TWO YEARS, the coronavirus has battered the world, with millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of cases. This winter’s omicron variant surge is just the latest example of the pandemic’s unpredictable trajectory. It has resulted in personal tragedy for many. It has left survivors with long-COVID-19 symptoms, and it has overwhelmed health care systems and caused burnout among health workers. It has changed our behavior, acquainting people with mask wearing and social distancing. It has changed the way we work, forcing the fortunate to work remotely and resulting in furloughs or layoffs or constant risk of exposure for the less fortunate. And it has been an impetus to scientific innovation, with effective vaccines created and distributed at a historic pace.

The world is a different place from what it was two years ago, and we are still learning to live with all the sorrow and change the pandemic has brought. At the same time, COVID-19 has taught us a lot. Through the global crisis, we have reevaluated aspects of our societies and examined what is working—and what isn’t.

Here HKS faculty members and other experts examine lessons learned during the pandemic.

Matthew Baum and John Della Volpe: National suffering and solidarity
Hannah Riley Bowles: Understanding the “Shecession”
David Eaves: Lessons from digital government
Debra Iles: Executive education will never be the same
Anders Jensen: A time to rethink tax systems
Asim Khwaja: Prioritizing process to prepare for the next shock
Dan Levy: Thinking outside—and inside—the Zoom box

National suffering and solidarity

Matthew baum and john della volpe.

It is difficult to conceive of anything good borne of COVID-19. As of this writing, in the United States, more than 700,000 are dead; 5 million have fallen worldwide. Millions of us grieve the untimely loss of a family member, a loved one, or a friend. And while our team of researchers from the Covid States Project has charted the extreme stress, anxiety, and depression so many Americans are facing, we also have found reason for optimism.

Partnership between the public and private sectors has spurred tremendous innovation in vaccine development and distribution logistics, which will likely prove enormously beneficial in the future, both with routine vaccines and with future pandemics. COVID-19 has also provided a rare real-time window into the workings of science, which while not universally helpful, provides valuable education for many people. Life-saving developments like these are probably why the public’s trust in science has largely remained intact while trust in other institutions has fallen since we began tracking such measures in April 2020. In a recent wave of more than 21,000 interviews across 50 states and the District of Columbia, we found that 92% of American adults trust doctors and hospitals, nearly 90% trust scientists and researchers, 78% trust the CDC, 74% trust pharmaceutical companies, and 68% trust Dr. Anthony Fauci on how best to deal with the coronavirus. Although overall levels of confidence in the scientific community remain very strong in general, evidence suggests that trust has eroded somewhat over the past 18 months and bears watching.

“While our country and many communities feel as divided as they have ever been in our lifetimes, the bonds of family (whether nuclear or chosen) are stronger.”

Matt baum and john della volpe.

Additionally, the coronavirus has provided oxygen for many of us to reevaluate priorities and life choices, including family, work, and career. The racial reckoning that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020 would most likely not have been as profound if tens of millions of American families had not been locked down, watching the gruesome news coverage, and pressured by often younger family members to confront and discuss systemic racism and the sins of America’s past that led to the murder and civil unrest.

Today, millions of Americans, especially Millennials and Generation Z, are reconsidering what it means to be happy and live a fulfilling and purposeful life. The effects of their decisions are now recognized by economists and businesses in need of labor, but the values leading to workforce changes have been developing for more than a decade, only to be supercharged during the pandemic. While our country and many communities feel as divided as they have ever been in our lifetimes, the bonds of family (whether nuclear or chosen) are stronger.

More than 18 months ago, Amanda Gorman offered comfort to a nation that was unaware of the inordinate loss soon headed its way. She said, in part:

We ignite not in the light, but in lack thereof, For it is in loss that we truly learn to love. In this chaos, we will discover clarity. In suffering, we must find solidarity.

As science leads us to a brighter 2022, let’s hope that through our national suffering we can once again discover what’s important, not just for ourselves but for the nation.

Matthew Baum , the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications, and John Della Volpe , director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, are among the team involved with the Covid States Project, a multi-university collaboration of researchers in a range of fields, who have examined behaviors and outcomes across the United States since March 2020.

Understanding the “Shecession”

Hannah riley bowles .

Q: How is the intersection of race and gender at play for working mothers during the COVID-19 recovery phase?

The most detailed data we have is from a survey conducted by Women and Public Policy Program Fellow Alicia Modestino, which consisted of a national panel of 2,500 working parents between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day (May 10 to June 21) of 2020. These data, collected at the onset of the pandemic, indicated that women accounted for more than half of unemployed workers (consonant with other economic studies), with Black and Hispanic women suffering outsize job losses at 9.5% and 8.3%, respectively. This gender disparity in labor market outcomes, often dubbed the “She-cession,” reflected the disproportionate toll on female workers, who were more likely to hold in-person jobs in affected industries such as hospitality, childcare, and health care.

A distinctive strength of this survey was that it collected information on whether childcare conflicts directly contributed to job losses. In contrast, other studies could only infer why women with children were displaced from the labor market. Modestino and colleagues found that 26% of unemployed mothers reported a lack of childcare as the reason for losing their jobs, compared with 14% of unemployed fathers. Their time-use data confirm that COVID-19 made work-life balance disproportionately difficult for women, with significant increases in time spent on schoolwork and playing with children as well as cooking and cleaning. In comparison, men reported only small increases in basic household chores. Women of color were more likely to have those experiences. For example, the survey showed that 23% of Black women—versus 15% of non-Black women—reported that their hours were reduced due to a lack of childcare.

Thanks to a gift to WAPPP from the Jessica Hoffman Brennan Gender Inequality and COVID-19 Pandemic Recovery Research Fund for research on the effects of the pandemic on women’s labor-market participation, Modestino and I are launching a study to explore working mothers’ experiences during the COVID-19 recovery phase from an intersectional perspective, disaggregating data by race, income, education, and other demographics. We also seek to investigate the role of negotiations in “shock resilience”—namely, how negotiating with partners, employers, coworkers, immediate and extended family members, friends, and others who make up formal and informal support systems can help women manage family and paid labor.

“With the closure of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, household dynamics became a significant factor in determining labor outcomes for women.”

Hannah riley bowles.

Q: How has the shock to childcare during COVID-19 varied among women with different household dynamics?

With the closure of schools during the pandemic, household dynamics became a significant factor in determining labor outcomes for women. In Modestino’s survey, women were more likely to report losses in work status if they were single, divorced, separated, or widowed (22% for not married versus 15% for married). Women living in households with annual incomes below $75,000 were also significantly more likely to report that difficulties with childcare had had an adverse effect on their labor-market participation. This effect was more acute for women with small children and those holding in-person jobs.

Q: Working mothers have been hit hard. How can policy support them?

The Modestino survey data suggest that access to paid family leave, remote-work arrangements, and childcare subsidies were the most important policies in enabling women to remain fully employed. Equally or even more important was the support of managers and coworkers—suggesting that formal policies and practices need to be backed up by family-friendly work cultures.

Access to backup childcare was another important factor that varied across communities, with lower-income families more likely to rely on family support networks. However, although 24% of working parents reported having access to paid family leave, only 4% had used it during the pandemic. Even worse, working parents who identify as Black or Hispanic are less likely to work in jobs that offer paid sick time and medical leave or to have COVID-19 policies available to them such as backup childcare subsidies and working from home.

Again, looking forward, we seek to understand what critical factors enable working mothers to recover from the pandemic, including formal and informal supports for managing work and family.

Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management Hannah Riley Bowles is a codirector of the Center for Public Leadership and the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP). Her research focuses on gender, negotiation, career advancement, and work-family conflict.

Lessons from digital government

David eaves.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital service groups and digital government experts around the world started to codify what a good digital crisis response could look like. These efforts have resulted in documents such as the California Digital Crisis Standard , developed by the state’s COVID-19 response team. Another example comes from Ontario, where the digital service group leveraged previous work in Alberta to quickly deploy a COVID-19 self-assessment in days, helping lower call volumes to government help desks and reducing stress for citizens.

The broad takeaway is that in a crisis, tried-and-true practices become even more critical to executing digital service delivery. The experiences of California and Ontario tell us that:

Working in the open enables learning In a national emergency, working in the open allows multiple service providers—within the same governing system or outside it—to learn from one another, accelerating development timelines and surfacing creative solutions. The California Digital Crisis Standard was made possible by work that was shared, while the story of Alberta and Ontario demonstrates that leveraging others’ work can radically reduce the cost and time to deploy government services.
There is always time for user testing While some may view user testing as a time-consuming luxury that has no place in rapid crisis response, the experiences of California and Ontario highlight the importance of prioritizing user needs. If anything, user testing is more important in a crisis, because the consequences are more serious if services do not work for users.
Clear communication is essential Both examples underscore the importance of communicating simply and clearly with users of digital services. Doing so can reduce panic and confusion while creating trust between users and the government agencies managing the services.

Looking Ahead The experiences of California and Ontario don’t hold all the answers for an effective digital crisis response. No two crises are the same, and some degree of improvisation will always be necessary. But taking time to develop a framework for response—to understand how normal working processes might change or stay the same—helps mitigate the pressure teams face while handling any crisis. More important, the work that California and Ontario appeared to do “on the fly” was really the result of years of capacity building, changing policies, and acquiring the right talent to change how government works. The crisis just made the value of those new ways of working more apparent.

Digital service groups need to think proactively about how crises affect the development and deployment of digital technologies in the public realm and build a standard that draws on the elements of impactful crisis responses like those in California and Ontario.

Lecturer in Public Policy David Eaves, with coeditor Lauren Lombardo MPP 2021, produced a policy brief titled “2020 State of Digital Transformation,” with lessons from digital government service units that responded quickly and effectively to the pandemic. The excerpt above is an adaptation of material from this brief.

Executive education will never be the same

Only six weeks after we shuttered our offices due to the onset of COVID-19, in April 2020, HKS Executive Education brought together participants for our first pivoted online program in April 2020. Six weeks after that, we hosted our first free faculty-led webinar, which focused on helping our global community respond to the repercussions of the health crisis.

Before the pandemic, we had a few online programs. In general, though, our faculty and participants preferred being together in person and on campus. We stuck with that model because we knew it worked. We needed a crisis to embrace online learning.

And as was true for many during the pandemic, we learned a few things—fast. It turns out that online executive education can be excellent. Everyone is in the front row. The cost of travel has evaporated. Classroom diversity is enhanced. Different learning styles are welcomed, and extended program lengths allow people to test what they are learning in their jobs in real time. Deeply interactive discussions between faculty members and learners, a cornerstone of our in-person programs, came alive online.

“It turns out online executive education can be excellent. Everyone is in the front row.”

We also learned, through a difficult year, about the resilience of the Kennedy School team. The HKS faculty pulled together, building momentum and encouraging one another to move forward and revamp the curriculum for remote learning. The members of our staff rallied, expanding their skills to enable each program participant to be truly present in this new virtual world. Together, the faculty and the staff managed polls and chats, posted new video and audio materials, curated virtual study groups, and reviewed participants’ progress at every step.

Outside the classroom, we learned that many were eager to discover through our free webinars how COVID-19 was reshaping leadership, economics, and trade. We expanded what we thought was just a short-term offering to an ongoing series of faculty members sharing the latest research on racial justice, social justice, climate change, crisis, and new scholarship across the HKS spectrum. We’ve always known that the best leaders never stop learning, and thousands in our community showed up for this important content while they were facing some of the most extreme public challenges we’ve seen in decades.

Our mission has always been to bring HKS ideas and research to the broadest possible audience of senior-level leaders who are looking to apply new approaches to their work in real-time. Based on what we’ve learned this year, online learning’s expanded place in our programs is here to stay. Today we offer more than 60 online program sessions every year. And even when COVID-19 is behind us, we expect to stay 40% online.

Debra Iles is the senior associate dean for executive education at Harvard Kennedy School.

A time to rethink tax systems

Anders jensen.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to think about tax policy in an evidence-based way. It has put a lot of pressure on government budgets for unemployment benefits and other public goods, which means that the government must collect more taxes to provide them. But at the same time, the tax base has eroded owing to the various forms of lockdown that were necessary to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Tax policies for the post-pandemic recovery period will thus require governments to be resourceful and to look at underutilized policy tools. To that end, the COVID-19 recovery phase may present a strong opportunity for a deeper overhaul of tax systems to improve efficiency and—perhaps even more important—equity.

Anders Jensen is an assistant professor of public policy who studies tax policy with a particular focus on countries’ capacity to tax.

Prioritizing process to prepare for the next shock

Asim khwaja.

The pandemic led to massive losses in many countries—of life, of livelihoods, and more. The biggest lesson that I believe we can learn from these years of loss is that process matters. Shocks happen, and there is only so much a society can do to prepare for the worst kinds of shocks, such as COVID-19—one of the most devastating our world has experienced.

What this specific shock revealed to me is that we didn’t have processes in place to navigate it in a way that wasn’t reactionary or destructive. We didn’t have measurement systems to figure out the extent of the problem, and we didn’t have ways to adjudicate the effectiveness of our policy responses to the problem. We were lacking the evidence we desperately needed as we designed costly policies, assuming that they would lead to a benefit instead of a huge cost. In some places around the world, policymakers overdid it, and in others, policies such as lockdowns to limit the spread of the virus, proved successful. These instances of failure or success derived more from reactionary decisions than from any evidence-based process. We could only depend on the loudest voices and a panicked desire to do something quickly in our policy responses.

“What this specific shock revealed to me is that we didn’t have processes in place to navigate the shock in a way that wasn’t reactionary or destructive.”

I hope that we have now learned how critical it is to have effective response processes in place before the challenges that we will inevitably face in the future. Doing so will allow us to have a more thoughtful, evidence-driven, and conceptually valid response, as opposed to an immediate and desperate reaction.

Asim Khwaja is the director of the Center for International Development and the Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development.

Thinking outside—and inside—the Zoom box

Dan levy .

Q: How prepared was HKS for online learning when COVID-19 hit in March 2020?

Prior to COVID-19, the Kennedy School was already doing online learning, but it was mainly driven by a small number of faculty members and staff who strongly believed in its power to both expand reach and improve teaching and learning. There were many interesting initiatives in executive education. And there were pioneer faculty members, including Marshall Ganz and Matt Andrews. Teddy Svoronos, Pinar Dogan, I, and others were doing it as part of a blended learning approach. Then, a couple of years before the pandemic, a group of us started working on the Public Leadership Credential, which is the School’s flagship online learning initiative.

When we were forced by the pandemic to move to online learning, we were very fortunate to be able to leverage those previous efforts, and I think the School was better prepared for online learning because of them. That doesn’t mean it was easy to do, but it does mean that we had in-house expertise to help bring everyone into online teaching and learning.

Many of us had experience with asynchronous learning, whereby learners engage with online material but are not interacting live with teachers. So even some of us who had some experience had to adjust quickly to live online teaching. I think it’s fair to say that there were growing pains. It was not easy at first, and I commend the spirit of the faculty and staff members. They looked for ways to innovate and make things work for students and were very resourceful and creative. That, to me, is one of the silver linings of the pandemic: the unleashing of creativity and resourcefulness that those involved in teaching and learning were able to bring to the enterprise.

“The pandemic has taught us to think more carefully about how to design successful learning experiences and programs for our students. We need to be better at putting ourselves in their shoes.”

Q: You wrote a book about teaching with Zoom. How did that come about?

We went to online learning at the Kennedy School in March of 2020. By mid-May, I was seeing faculty members, both here and outside the School, use Zoom in creative ways. I started documenting those examples because I wanted to learn what they were doing—and I ended up putting together a book. I felt that people needed a one-stop place to learn how to teach effectively with Zoom, since that’s the platform most people were using. I hope the book is helpful, not only to colleagues at the Kennedy School and at Harvard but more broadly.

Q: What can we take from Zoom to the physical classroom?

Some aspects of teaching in the classroom are better—such as the magic that happens when people can engage in person. But it became clear to me that there are also some things we can do better online. Now that we’re transitioning back to in-person teaching, we can think about how to incorporate some of those advantages. The use of chat during live instruction on Zoom is an incredibly powerful tool for finding out quickly what’s on our students’ minds. As we return to classrooms, where we don’t have chat, we should think about alternative ways to get the same benefits. Another plus with teaching on Zoom is the breakout rooms, where you can put learners in groups. We’ve always done group work in classrooms, but on Zoom we experimented with having the groups use collaborative tools to document their work. Being able to better leverage group work for post-group discussions is something I hope we can bring into the physical classroom.

Q: What’s one lesson from teaching fully online during COVID-19 that you think we should not forget?

The pandemic has taught us to think more carefully about how to design successful learning experiences and programs for our students. We need to be better at putting ourselves in their shoes. That is a simple principle that should always guide teaching and learning, and it was especially evident over the past two years.

Dan Levy is a senior lecturer in public policy. He is the faculty director of the Public Leadership Credential , Harvard Kennedy School’s flagship online learning initiative, and the author of Teaching Effectively with Zoom: A Practical Guide to Engage Your Students and Help Them Learn .

The White House is seen as a backdrop as people visit the 'In America: Remember' public art installation near the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The installation commemorates all the Americans who have died due to COVID-19. Image by Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Inline images by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, Andrei Pungovschi/Bloomberg /Getty Images, and Liu Guanguan/China News Service/Getty Images

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15 Lessons the Coronavirus Pandemic Has Taught Us

What we've learned over the past 12 months could pay off for years to come.

sights from the pandemic people wearing masks a boy visiting his grandmother through a nursing home window a zoom meeting and a six foot distancing sign

For the past year, our country has been mired in not one deep crisis but three: a pandemic , an economic meltdown and one of the most fraught political transitions in our history. Interwoven in all three have been challenging issues of racial disparity and fairness. Dealing with all of this has dominated much of our energy, attention and, for many Americans, even our emotions.

But spring is nearly here, and we are, by and large, moving past the worst moments as a nation — which makes it a good time to take a deep breath and assess the changes that have occurred. While no one would be displeased if we could magically erase this whole pandemic experience, it's been the crucible of our lives for a year, and we have much to learn from it — and even much to gain.

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AARP asked dozens of experts to go beyond the headlines and to share the deeper lessons of the past year that have had a particular impact on older Americans. More importantly, we asked them to share how we can use these learnings to make life better for us as we recover and move forward. Here is what they told us.

Lesson 1: Family Matters More Than We Realized

"The indelible image of the older person living alone and having to struggle — we need to change that. You're going to see more older people home-sharing within families and cohousing across communities to avoid future situations of tragedy."

—Marc Freedman, CEO and president of Encore.org and author of How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations

Norman Rockwell would have needed miles of canvas to portray the American family this past year. You can imagine the titles: The Family That Zooms Together. Generations Under One Roof. Grandkids Outside My Window. The Shared Office . “Beneath the warts and complexities of all that went wrong, we rediscovered the interdependence of generations and how much we need each other,” Freedman says. Among the lessons:

Adult kids are OK. A Pew Research Center survey last summer found that 52 percent of the American population between ages 18 and 29 were living with parents, a figure unmatched since the Great Depression. From February to July 2020, 2.6 million young adults moved back with one or both parents. That's a lot of shared Netflix accounts. It's also a culture shift, says Karen Fingerman, director of the Texas Aging & Longevity Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “After the family dinners together, grandparents filling in for childcare, and the wise economic sense, it's going to be acceptable for adult family members to co-reside,” Fingerman says. “At least for a while.”

What We've Learned From the Pandemic

• Lesson 1: Family Matters • Lesson 2: Medical Breakthroughs • Lesson 3: Self-Care Matters • Lesson 4: Be Financially Prepared • Lesson 5: Age Is Just a Number • Lesson 6: Getting Online for Good • Lesson 7: Working Anywhere • Lesson 8: Restoring Trust • Lesson 9: Gathering Carefully • Lesson 10: Isolation's Health Toll • Lesson 11: Getting Outside • Lesson 12: Wealth Disparities’ Toll • Lesson 13: Preparing for the Future • Lesson 14: Tapping Telemedicine • Lesson 15: Cities Are Changing

Spouses and partners are critical to well-being . “The ones who've done exceptionally well are couples in long-term relationships who felt renewed intimacy and reconnection to each other,” says social psychologist Richard Slatcher, who runs the Close Relationships Laboratory at the University of Georgia.

Difficult caregiving can morph into good-for-all home-sharing. To get older Americans out of nursing homes and into a loved one's home — a priority that has gained in importance and urgency due to the pandemic — will take more than just a willing child or grandchild. New resources could help, like expanding Medicaid programs to pay family caregivers, such as an adult child, or initiatives like the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, a Medicare-backed benefit currently helping 50,000 “community dwelling” seniors with medical services, home care and transportation.

"A positive piece this year has been the pause to reflect on how we can help people stay in their homes as they age, which is what everyone wants,” says Nancy LeaMond, AARP's chief advocacy and engagement officer. “If you're taking care of a parent, grandparent, aging partner or yourself, you see more than ever the need for community and government support, of having technology to communicate with your doctor and of getting paid leave for family caregivers. The pandemic has forced us to think about all these things, and that's very positive.”

Family may be the best medicine of all . “Now we know if you can't hug your 18-month-old granddaughter in person, you can read to her on FaceTime,” says Jane Isay, author of several books about family relationships. “You can send your adult kids snail mail. You can share your life's wisdom even from a distance. These coping skills may be the greatest gifts of COVID” — to an older generation that deeply and rightly fears isolation.

a healthcare technician unfrosts vials of a covid vaccine in a lab

Lesson 2: We Have Unleashed a Revolution in Medicine

" One of the biggest lessons we've learned from COVID is that the scientific community working together can do some pretty amazing things."

—John Cooke, M.D., medical director of the RNA Therapeutics Program at Houston Methodist Hospital's DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center

In the past it's taken four to 20 years to create conventional vaccines. For the new messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, it was a record-setting 11 months. The process may have changed forever the way drugs are developed.

"Breakthroughs” come after years of research . Supporting the development of the COVID-19 vaccines was more than a decade of research into mRNA vaccines, which teach human cells how to make a protein that triggers a specific immune response. The research had already overcome many challenging hurdles, such as making sure that mRNA wouldn't provoke inflammation in the body, says Lynne E. Maquat, director of the University of Rochester's Center for RNA Biology: From Genome to Therapeutics.

Vaccines may one day treat heart disease and more. In the near future, mRNA technology could lead to better flu vaccines that could be updated quickly as flu viruses mutate with the season, Maquat says, or the development of a “universal” flu shot that might be effective for several years. Drug developers are looking at vaccines for rabies, Zika virus and HIV. “I expect to see the approval of more mRNA-based vaccines in the next several years,” says mRNA researcher Norbert Pardi, a research assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

"We could use mRNA for diseases and conditions that can't be treated with drugs,” Cooke explains.

It may also target our biggest killers . Future mRNA therapies could help regenerate muscle in failing hearts and target the unique genetics of individual cancers with personalized cancer vaccines. “Every case of cancer is unique, with its own genetics,” Cooke says. “Doctors will be able to sequence your tumor and use it to make a vaccine that awakens your immune system to fight it.” Such mRNA vaccines will also prepare us for future pandemics, Maquat says.

In the meantime, use the vaccines we have available. Don't skip recommended conventional vaccines now available to older adults for the flu, pneumonia, shingles and more, Pardi says. The flu vaccine alone, which 1 in 3 older adults skipped in the winter 2019 season, saves up to tens of thousands of lives a year and lowers your risk for hospitalization with the flu by 28 percent and for needing a ventilator to breathe by 46 percent.

Lesson 3: Self Care Is Not Self-Indulgence

"Not only does self-care have positive outcomes for you, but it also sets an example to younger generations as something to establish and maintain for your entire life."

—Richelle Concepcion, clinical psychologist and president of the Asian American Psychological Association

As the virus upended life last spring, America became hibernation nation. Canned, dry and instant soup sales have risen 37 percent since last April. Premium chocolate sales grew by 21 percent in the first six months of the pandemic. The athleisure market that includes sweatpants and yoga wear saw its 2020 U.S. revenue push past an estimated $105 billion.

With 7 in 10 American workers doing their jobs from home, “COVID turned the focus, for all ages, on the small, simple pleasures that soothe and give us meaning,” says Isabel Gillies, author of Cozy: The Art of Arranging Yourself in the World.

Why care about self-care? Pampering is vital to well-being — for yourself and for those around you. Activities that once felt indulgent became essential to our health and equilibrium, and that self-care mindset is likely to endure. Whether it is permission to take long bubble baths, tinkering in the backyard “she shed,” enjoying herbal tea or seeing noon come while still in your robe, “being good to yourself offers a necessary reprieve from whatever horrors threaten us from out there,” Gillies says. Being good to yourself is good for others, too. A recent European survey found that 77 percent of British respondents 75 and younger consider it important to take their health into their own hands in order not to burden the health care system.

Nostalgia TV, daytime PJs. It's OK to use comfort as a crutch. Comfort will help us ease back to life. Some companies are already hawking pajamas you can wear in public. Old-fashioned drive-ins and virtual cast reunions for shows like Taxi, Seinfeld and Happy Days will likely continue as long as the craving is there. (More than half the consumers in a 2020 survey reported finding comfort in revisiting TV and music from their childhood.) Even the iconic “Got Milk?” ads are back, after dairy sales started to show some big upticks.

So, cut yourself some slack. Learn a new skill; adopt a pet; limit your news diet; ask for help if you need it. You've lived long enough to see the value of prioritizing number one. “Not only does self-care have positive outcomes for you,” Concepcion says, “but it also sets an example to younger generations as something to establish and maintain for your entire life."

Lesson 4: Have a Stash Ready for the Next Crisis

"The need to augment our retirement savings system to help people put away emergency savings is crucial."

—J. Mark Iwry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former senior adviser to the U.S. secretary of the Treasury

Before the pandemic, nearly 4 in 10 households did not have the cash on hand to cover an unexpected $400 expense, according to a Federal Reserve report. Then the economic downturn hit. By last October, 52 percent of workers were reporting reduced hours, lower pay, a layoff or other hits to their employment situation. A third had taken a loan or early withdrawal from a retirement plan , or intended to. “Alarm bells were already ringing, but many workers were caught off guard without emergency savings,” says Catherine Collinson, CEO and president of the Transamerica Institute. “The pandemic has laid bare so many weaknesses in our safety net."

Companies can help . One solution could be a workplace innovation that's just beginning to catch on: an employee-sponsored rainy-day savings account funded with payroll deductions. By creating a dedicated pot of savings, the thinking goes, workers are less likely to tap retirement accounts in an emergency. “It's much better from a behavioral standpoint to separate short-term savings from long-term savings,” Iwry says. (AARP has been working to make these accounts easier to create and use and is already offering them to its employees.)

Funding that emergency savings account with automatic payroll deductions is a key to the program's success. “Sometimes you think you don't have the money to save, but if a little is put away for you each pay period, you don't feel the pinch,” Iwry notes.

We're off to a good start . Thanks to quarantines and forced frugality, Americans’ savings rate — the average percentage of people's income left over after taxes and personal spending — skyrocketed last spring, peaking at an unprecedented 33.7 percent. On the decline since then, most recently at 13.7 percent, it's still above the single-digit rates characterizing much of the past 35 years. Where it will ultimately settle is unclear; currently, it's in league with high-saving countries Mexico and Sweden. The real model of thriftiness: China, where, according to the latest available figures, the household savings rate averaged at least 30 percent for 14 years straight.

Lesson 5: The Adage ‘Age Is Just a Number’ Has New Meaning

"This isn't just about the pandemic. Your health is directly related to lifestyle — nutrition, physical activity, a healthy weight and restorative sleep."

—Jacob Mirsky, M.D., primary care physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Revere HealthCare Center and an instructor at Harvard Medical School

Just a few months ago, researchers at Scotland's University of Glasgow asked a big question: If you're healthy, how much does older age matter for risk of death from COVID? The health records of 470,034 women and men revealed some intriguing answers.

Age accounted for a higher risk, but comorbidities (essentially, having two or more health issues simultaneously) mattered much more. Specifically, risk for a fatal infection was four times higher for healthy people 75 and older than for all participants younger than 65. But if you compared all those 75 and older — including those with chronic health condition s like high blood pressure, obesity or lung problems — that shoved the grim odds up thirteenfold.

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Live healthfully, live long . More insights from the study: A healthy 75-year-old was one-third as likely to die from the coronavirus as a 65-year-old with multiple chronic health issues. The bottom line: Age affects your risk of severe illness with COVID, but you should be far more focused on avoiding chronic health conditions. “Coronavirus highlighted yet another reason it's so important to attend to health factors like poor diet and lack of exercise that cause so much preventable illness and death,” says Massachusetts General's Mirsky. “Lifestyle changes can improve your overall health, which will likely directly reduce your risk of developing severe COVID or dying of COVID."

Exercise remains critical . In May 2020 a British study of 387,109 adults in their 40s through 60s found a 38 percent higher risk for severe COVID in people who avoided physical activity. “Mobility should be considered one of the vital signs of health,” concludes exercise psychologist David Marquez, a professor in the department of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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a remote controlled delivery robot on a sidewalk amongst pedestrians

Lesson 6: We Befriended Technology, and There's No Going Back

"Folks who have tried online banking will stay with it. It won't mean they won't go back to branches, but they might go back for a different purpose."

—Theodora Lau, founder of financial technology consulting firm Unconventional Ventures

Of course, the world has long been going digital . But before the pandemic, standard operating procedure for most older Americans was to buy apples at the grocery, try the shoes on first before buying, have your doctor measure your blood pressure and see that hot new movie at the theater.

Arguably the biggest long-term societal effect of the pandemic will be a grand flipping of the switch that makes the digital solution the first choice of many Americans for handling life's tasks. We still may cling to a few IRL (in real life) experiences, but it is increasingly apparent that easy-to-use modern virtual tools are the new default.

"If nothing else, COVID has shown us how resilient and adaptable humans are as a society when forced to change,” says Joseph Huang, CEO of StartX, a nonprofit that helps tech companies get off the ground. “We've been forced to learn new technologies that, in many cases, have been the only safe way to continue to live our lives and stay connected to our loved ones during the pandemic.”

The tech boom wasn't just video calls and streaming TV. Popular food delivery apps more than doubled their earnings last year. Weddings and memorial services were held over videoconferences (yes, we'll go back to in-person ones but probably with cameras and live feeds now to include remote participants). In the financial sector, PayPal reported that its fastest-growing user group was people over 50; Chase said about half of its new online users were 50-plus. In telehealth, more doctors conducted routine exams via webcam than ever before — and, in response, insurance coverage expanded for these remote appointments. “It quickly became the only way to operate at scale in today's world,” Huang says, “both for us as patients and for the doctors and nurses who treat us. Telemedicine will turn out to be a better and more effective experience in many cases, even after COVID ends."

Tech is for all . To financial technology expert Lau, the tech adoption rate by older people is no surprise. She never believed the myth that older people lack such knowledge. “There's a difference between knowing how to use something versus preferring to use it,” Lau says. “Sometimes we know how, but we prefer face-to-face interaction.” And now those preferences are shifting.

man at his home computer on a telemedicine call

Lesson 7: Work Is Anywhere Now — a Shift That Bodes Well for Older Americans

"One of the major impacts of the new working-from-home focus is that more jobs are becoming non-location-specific."

—Carol Fishman Cohen, cofounder of iRelaunch, which works with employers to create mid-career return-to-work programs for older workers

Necessity is the mother of reinvention : Forced to work remotely since the onset of the pandemic, millions of workers — and their managers — have learned they could be just as productive as they were at the office, thanks to videoconferencing, high-speed internet and other technologies. “This has opened a lot of corporate eyes,” says Steven Allen, professor of economics at North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management. Twitter, outdoor-goods retailer REI and insurer Lincoln Financial Group are a few of the companies that have announced plans to shift toward more remote work on a permanent basis.

Face-lift your Face-Time . Yes, many workers are tied to a location: We will always need nurses, police, roofers, machine operators, farmers and countless other workers to show up. But if you are among the people who are now able to work remotely, you may be able to live in a less expensive area than where your employer is based — or work right away from the home you were planning to retire to later on, Cohen says. As remote hiring takes hold, how you project yourself on-screen becomes more of a factor. “This puts more pressure on you to make sure you show up well in a virtual setting,” Cohen notes. And don't assume being comfortable with Zoom is a feather in your cap; mentioning it is akin to listing “proficient in Microsoft Word” on your résumé.

Self-employed workers have suffered during the pandemic — nearly two-thirds report being hurt financially, according to the “State of Independence in America 2020” report from MBO Partners — but remote work could fuel their comeback. Before the pandemic, notes Steve King, partner at Emergent Research, businesses with a high percentage of remote workers used a high percentage of independent contractors. “Now that companies are used to workers not being as strongly attached physically to a workplace, they'll be more amenable to hiring independent workers,” he says.

Travel less, stay longer . Tired of sitting in traffic to and from work? Can't stand flying across country for a single meeting? Ridding yourself of these hassles with an internet connection and Zoom calls may be the incentive you need to work longer. People often quit jobs because of little frustrations, Allen says. But now, he adds, “the things that wear you down may be going by the wayside."

Ageism remains a threat . Older workers — who before the coronavirus enjoyed lower unemployment rates than mid-career workers — have been hit especially hard by the pandemic. In December, 45.5 percent of unemployed workers 55 and older had been out of work for 27 weeks or more, compared with 35.1 percent of younger job seekers. Some employers, according to reports this fall, are replacing laid-off older workers with younger, lower-cost ones, instead of recalling those older employees. Psychological studies, Allen says, indicate that older workers have better communication and interpersonal skills — both of which are critical for successful remote work. But whether those strengths can offset age discrimination in the workplace is unknown.

Lesson 8: Our Trust in One Another Has Frayed, but It Can Be Slowly Restored

"Truth matters, but it requires messaging and patience.”

—Historian John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza

Even before our views perforated along lines dotted by pandemic politics, race, class and whether Bill Gates is trying to save us or track us, we were losing faith in society. In 1997, 64 percent of Americans put a “very great or good deal of trust” in the political competence of their fellow citizens; today only a third of us feel that way. A 2019 Pew survey found that the majority of Americans say most people can't be trusted. It's even tougher to trust in the future. Only 13 percent of millennials say America is the greatest country in the world, compared with 45 percent of members of the silent generation. No wonder that by June of last year, “national pride” was lower than at any point since Gallup began measuring. To trust again:

As life returns, look beyond your familiar pod. “Distrust breeds distrust, but hope isn't lost for finding common ground, especially for older people,” says Encore.org's Freedman. “Even in the era of ‘OK, boomer’ and ‘OK, millennial’ — memes that dismiss entire generations with an eye roll — divides are bridgeable with what Freedman calls “proximity and purpose.” Rebuilding trust together, across generations, under shared priorities and common humanity.” He points to pandemic efforts like Good Neighbors from the home-sharing platform Nesterly, which pairs older and younger people to provide cross-generational support, and UCLA's Generation Xchange, which connects Gen X mentors with children in grades K-3 in South Los Angeles, where educational achievement is notoriously poor. “Engaging with people for a common goal makes you trust them,” he says.

Be patient but verify facts. History also provides a guide. In the wake of the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed between 50 million and 100 million people, trust in authority withered after local and national government officials played down the disease's threats in order to maintain wartime morale. Historian Barry points out that the head of the Army's’ division of communicable diseases was so worried about the collective failure of trust that he warned that “civilization could easily disappear ... from the face of the earth.” It didn't then, and it won't now, Barry says.

Verify facts and then decide. Check reliable, balanced news sources (such as Reuters and the Associated Press) and unbiased fact-checking sites (such as PolitiFact) before clamping down on an opinion.

Perhaps most important, be open to changing conditions and viewpoints. “As we see vaccines and therapeutic drugs slowly gain widespread success in fighting this virus, I think we'll start to overcome some of our siloed ways of thinking and find relief — together as one — that this public health menace is ending,” Barry adds. “We have to put our faith in other people to get through this together.”

aerial photo of people in a grassy park staying within social distancing circles painted on the grass

Lesson 9: The Crowds Will Return, but We'll Gather Carefully

"Masks and sanitizers will be part of the norm for years, the way airport and transportation security measures are still in place from 9/11."

— Christopher McKnight Nichols, associate professor of history at Oregon State University and founder of the Citizenship and Crisis Initiative

The COVID-19 pandemic won't end with bells tolling or a ticker-tape parade . Instead, we'll slowly, cautiously ease back to familiar activities. For all our fears of the coronavirus, many of us can't wait to resume a public life: When 1,000 people 65 and older were asked which pursuits they were most eager to start anew post-pandemic, 78 percent said going out to dinner, 76 percent picked getting together with family and friends, 71 percent chose travel, and 30 percent cited going to the movies.

Seeing art , attending concerts, cheering in a stadium — even going to class reunions we might have once dreaded — we'll do them again. But how will we return to feeling comfortable in groups of tens, hundreds and thousands? And will these gatherings be different? How we come together:

Don't expect the same old, same old . Just as the rationing, isolation and economic crisis caused by World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic “led to a kind of awakening of how we assembled,” Nichols says, expect COVID to shake up the nature and personality of our public spaces. Back in the 1920s, it was the rise of jazz clubs, organized athletics, fraternal organizations and the golden age of the movie cinema. As the pandemic subsides, we'll probably see more temperature-controlled outdoor event and dining spaces, more pedestrian and bicycling options, more city parks and more hybrid events that give you the option to attend virtually.

Retrain your brain . Psychologists say the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy can help people at any age regain the certainty and confidence they need to venture into the public space post-pandemic. “Visualizing good outcomes and repeating a stated goal can help overcome whatever obstacles are holding you back,” says Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University, who suggests making an “if-then plan” to reacclimate to public life. If eating indoors at a restaurant is too agitating, even if you've been vaccinated, then try a table outside first. If a bucket-list family vacation to Italy feels too daunting, then book a stateside trip together first. “There's always an alternative if something stands in the way of you fulfilling your wish,” she says. “Eventually, you'll get there.”

Lesson 10: Loneliness Hurts Health More Than We Thought

"What we've learned from COVID is that isolation is everyone's problem. It doesn't just happen to older adults; it happens to us all."

— Julianne Holt-Lunstad, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University

How deadly is the condition of loneliness? During the first five months of the pandemic, nursing home lockdowns intended to safeguard older and vulnerable adults with dementia contributed to the deaths of an additional 13,200 people compared with previous years, according to a shocking Washington Post investigation published last September. “People with dementia are dying,” the article notes, “not just from the virus but from the very strategy of isolation that's supposed to protect them.”

Isolation may be the new normal . Fifty-six percent of adults age 50-plus said they felt isolated in June 2020, double the number who felt lonely in 2018, a University of Michigan poll found. Rates of psychological distress rose for all adults as the pandemic deepened — increasing sixfold for young adults and quadrupling for those ages 30 to 54, according to a Johns Hopkins University survey published in JAMA in June. And it's hard to tell whether the workplace culture many of us relied on for social support will fully return anytime soon.

Those 50-plus have a leg up. “Older adults with higher levels of empathy, compassion, decisiveness and self-reflection score lowest for loneliness,” says Dilip Jeste, M.D., director of the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the University of California, San Diego. “Research shows that many older adults have handled COVID psychologically better than younger adults. With age comes experience and wisdom. You've lived through difficult times before and survived.”

Help yourself by helping others. Jeste says that when older adults share their wisdom with younger people, everyone benefits. “Young people are reassured about the future,” he adds. “Older adults feel even more confident. They're role models. Their contributions matter."

a couple poses for a photograph at a scenic overlook at yosemite national park in california

Lesson 11: When Your World Gets Small, Nature Lets Us Live Large

"For older people in particular, nature provided a way to shake off the weight and hardships associated with stay-at-home orders, of social isolation and of the stress of being the most vulnerable population in the pandemic."

— Kathleen Wolf, a research social scientist in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington

One silver lining to COVID-19's dark cloud : Clouds themselves became more familiar to all of us. So did birds, trees, bees, shooting stars and window gardens. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans have a new appreciation for nature because of the pandemic, according to one survey that also found three-quarters of respondents reported a boost in their mood while spending time outside.

By nearly every measure, the planet got more love during COVI D. And wouldn't it be nice if that continued going forward? The ins and outs on our new outdoor life:

Move somewhere greener (or at least move around more outside). How you access nature is up to you, but consider the options. Nearly a third of Americans were considering moving to less populated areas, according to a Harris Poll taken last year during the pandemic. Walking, running and hiking became national pastimes. One day last September, Boston's BlueBikes bike-share system saw its highest-ever single-day ridership, with 14,400 trips recorded. Stargazers and bird-watchers helped push binocular sales up 22 percent.

Once known mainly as a retirement activity, pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in America, with almost 3.5 million U.S. players of all ages participating in the contact-free outdoor net game designed for players of any athletic ability. The return of the pandemic “victory garden” reflects research that finds 79 percent of patients feel more relaxed and calm after spending time in a garden.

Make the city less gritty . The University of Washington's Wolf thinks that our collective nature kick will go beyond a run on backyard petunias. Her research brief on the benefits of nearby nature in cities for older adults suggests we may rethink the design of neighborhood environments to facilitate older people's outdoor activities. That means more places to sit, more green spaces associated with the health status of older people, safer routes and paths, and more allotment for community gardens. “It's impossible to overestimate the value these outdoor spaces have on reducing stressful life events, improving working memory and adding meaning and happiness in older people's lives,” Wolf says.

If you can't get out, bring nature in . Even video and sounds of nature can provide health gains to those shut indoors, says Marc Berman of the University of Chicago's Environmental Neuroscience Lab. “Listening to recordings of crickets chirping or waves crashing improved how our subjects performed on cognitive tests,” he says.

Above all, the environment is in your hands, so take action to protect it . “We've seen a lot of older folks stepping up their activity in trail conservation, stream cleaning, being forest guides and things like that this year, which indicates a shift in how that age group interacts with nature,” says Cornell University gerontologist Karl Pillemer.

"There's an old saw that older people care less than younger people about the environment. But given this year's nature boom, I'm expecting that to change. As the generation that gave birth to the environmental movement enters retirement, we're likely to see a wave of interest in conservation among those 60 and up."

Lesson 12: You Can Hope for Stability — but Best Be Prepared for the Opposite

"COVID-19, perhaps more than any other disaster, demonstrated that we need to continue ensuring response plans are flexible and scalable. You can't predict exactly what a disaster will bring, but if you know what tools you have in your tool kit, you can pull out the right one you need when you need it."

— Linda Mastandrea, director of the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

The pandemic was among the toughest slap-in-the-face moments in recent history to remind us that everything — everything — in our lives can change in a moment. While older Americans may have a deep-seated desire for stability and security after all it took to get to an advanced age, we certainly cannot bank on it. Which is why the word of the year, and perhaps the coming century, is “resilience.” Not just at the individual level but at every social tier, from family to community to the nation as a whole.

Banish fear . “We don't have to live in fear” of some looming disaster, says former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden, now president and CEO of global public health initiative Resolve to Save Lives. “By strengthening our defenses and investing in preparedness, we can live easier knowing that communities have what they need to better respond in moments of crisis."

Preparation must start at the top . For government, that means a new commitment to plans that allow, not so much for stockpiles but for the ability to ramp up production of crucial equipment when needed. “We need increased, sustained, predictable base funding for public health security defense programs that prevent, detect and respond to outbreaks such as COVID-19 or pandemic influenza,” Frieden says.

Being creative and even entrepreneurial helps , says Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Earth Institute. Warehouses full of masks could have helped us initially, he says, but stockpiles of equipment aren't the answer on their own. In a free market there is pressure to sell off surpluses, so he suggests we reimagine our manufacturing capacities for times of emergency. When whiskey distillers stepped up to make hand sanitizer, and auto manufacturers switched gears to build ventilators, we saw “glimmers of solutions,” Schlegelmilch says, the sort of responses we may need to tee up in the future.

Focus on health care . Prime among the areas that need to be addressed, crisis management consultant Luiz Hargreaves says, are overwhelmed health care systems. “They were living a disaster before the pandemic. When the pandemic came, it was a catastrophe.” But Hargreaves hopes we will use this wake-up call to produce new solutions, rather than to return to old ways. “Extraordinary times,” he says, “call for extraordinary measures."

Lesson 13: Wealth Inequality Is Growing, and It Affects Us All

"It's outrageous that somebody could work full-time and not even be able to pay rent, let alone food and clothing. There's a recognition that there's a problem on both the left and right. "

— Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist, Columbia University professor and author of The Price of Inequality

"The data is pretty dramatic,” says Stiglitz, one of America's most-esteemed economists. Government economists estimate that unemployment rates in this pandemic are less than 5 percent for the highest earners but as high as 20 percent for the lowest-paid ones. “People at the bottom have disproportionately experienced the disease, and those at the bottom have lost jobs in enormous disproportion, too."

As white-collar professionals work from home and stay socially distant, frontline workers in government, transportation and health care — as well as retail, dining and other service sectors — face far greater health risks and unemployment. “We try to minimize interactions as we try to protect ourselves,” he says, “yet we realize that minimizing those interactions is also taking away jobs.” The disparate effects of the pandemic are particularly evident along racial lines, points out Jean Accius, AARP senior vice president for global thought leadership. “Job losses have hit communities of color disproportionately,” he says. And there's a health gap, too, with people of color — who have a greater likelihood than white Americans to be frontline workers — experiencing higher rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalizations and mortality, and lower rates of vaccinations. “What we're seeing is a double whammy for communities of color,” Accius says. “It is hitting them in their wallets. And it's hitting them with regard to their health."

Those economic and health crises, along with protests over racial injustice over the past year, says Accius, “have really sparked major conversations around what do we need to do in order to advance equity in this country."

A rising gap between rich and poor in any society, Stiglitz argues, increases economic instability, reduces opportunities and results in less investment in public goods such as education and public transportation. But the country appears primed to make some changes that could help narrow the wealth gap, he says. Among them are President Biden's proposals to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, increase the earned income tax credit for low-income workers and provide paid sick leave. Stiglitz also proposes raising taxes on gains from sales of stocks and other securities not held in retirement accounts. “The notion that people who work for a living shouldn't pay higher taxes than those who speculate for a living seems not to be a hard idea to get across,” Stiglitz says.

"Many people continue to say, ‘It's time for us to get back to normal,'” Accius says. “Well, going back to normal means that we're in a society where those that have the least continue to be impacted the most — a society where older adults are marginalized and communities of color are devalued. We have to be honest with what we are going through as a collective nation. And then we have to be bold and courageous, to really build a society where race and other social demographic factors do not determine your ability to live a longer, healthier and more productive life.”

Who Owns America's Wealth?

For some, hard times bring opportunity.

Want a positive reminder of the American way? When the going got tough this past summer, many people responded by planning a new business. In the second half of 2020, there was a 40 percent jump over the prior year's figures in applications to form businesses highly likely to hire employees, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Significantly, no such spike occurred during the Great Recession, points out Alexander Bartik, assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “That's cause for some optimism — that there are people who are trying to start new things,” he says. One possible reason this time is different: Unlike during that recession, the stock market and home values have held on, and those sources of personal wealth are often what people draw upon to fund small-business start-ups.

High-propensity* Business Applications in the U.S.

*Businesses likely to have employees

the number of applications to form businesses likely to hire employees greatly increased during the pandemic

Lesson 14: The Benefits of Telemedicine Have Become Indisputable

"The processes we developed to avoid face-to-face care have transformed the way we approach diabetes care management.”

— John P. Martin, M.D., codirector of Diabetes Complete Care for Kaiser Permanente Southern California

If there was ever any truth to the stereotype of the older person whose life revolved around a constant calendar of in-person doctor appointments, it's certainly been tossed out the window this past year due to the strains of the pandemic on our health care system. The timing was fortuitous in one way: Telemedicine was ready for prime time and has proved to be a godsend, particularly for those with chronic health conditions.

Say goodbye to routine doctor visits . Patients who sign up for remote blood sugar monitoring at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California use Bluetooth-enabled meters to transmit results via a smartphone app directly to their health records. “ Remote monitoring allows us to recognize early when there should be adjustments to treatment,” Martin says.

We need to push for more access . The pandemic underlines the need for more home-based medical help with chronic conditions. But that takes both willingness and a lot of gear, such as Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure monitors and, on the doctor side, systems to store and analyze the data. “People need access to the equipment, and health care systems have to be ready to handle all that data,” says Mirsky of Massachusetts General Hospital.

Group doctor visits may be a way forward . Mirsky is conducting virtual group visits and remote monitoring of blood sugar for his patients with type 2 diabetes. “Instead of having a few minutes with each person to talk about important issues — like blood sugar testing, diet and exercise — we get an hour or more to go over it,” he says. “At every meeting somebody in the group has a great tip I've never heard of, like a new YouTube exercise channel or fitness app. There's group support, too. I see group visits like this continuing into the future, becoming part of routine chronic disease care for all patients who want it."

Bottom line: The doctor is in (your house) . Managing chronic health conditions like diabetes “can't just be about getting in your car and driving to your doctor's office,” Martin says. Taking care of your health conditions yourself is the path forward.

Lesson 15: Our Cities Won't Ever Be the Same

"This is obviously a very big watershed moment in how we live, how we organize our cities and our communities. There are going to be long-lasting changes."

— Chris Jones, chief planner at Regional Plan Association, a New York–based urban planning organization

"When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown,” Petula Clark sang in her 1964 chart-topping ode to city life. Well, things change. Suddenly, crowds are the enemy, public buses and subways a health risk, packed office towers out of favor, and a roomy suburban home seems just where you want to be. But don't write off downtowns just yet.

The office and business district will look different. Many workers have little interest in returning to a 9-to-5 life. For those who do make the commute, they may find cubicles replaced with more flexible work spaces focused on common areas, with ample outdoor seating space for meetings and working lunches. And some now-empty offices will likely be converted into apartments and condos, making downtowns more vibrant. “Now you have an opportunity to remake a central business district into an actual neighborhood,” says Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and a cofounder of CityLab, an online publication about urbanism.

Public spaces will serve more of the public. Those areas set up for outdoor restaurant dining — some of those will likely remain. Streets and parking lots have been turned into plazas and promenades. Many cities have already opened miles of bike lanes; in 2020, Americans bought bikes, including electric bikes, in record numbers. “This idea of social space, where you can get outside and enjoy that active public realm, is going to become increasingly important,” says Lynn Richards, the president and CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism, which champions walkable cities.

Contributors to this report: Sari Harrar, David Hochman, Ronda Kaysen, Lexi Pandell, Jessica Ravitz and Ellen Stark

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