Spring brings a hope of renewal in the pandemic's wake

Sometimes the depths are not apparent until the recovery is well underway. 

Spring is finally blooming in New York. Many students and their families are enjoying spring breaks. The UBS Arena and theaters and restaurants all over Nassau and Suffolk counties are bustling with the energy of people reclaiming beloved turf. Easter, Passover and other spring rituals are observed and celebrated. Garden shops are overflowing and the first real warmup of the season invites the dreams of summer.

There is reason for hope. March was the most virus-safe month of the Long Island school year for LI students, according to a Newsday analysis. COVID-19 is not over: Omicron subvariants continue to percolate and disrupt people’s lives. But the protection of vaccines, boosters, treatment, and post-infection immunity have so far kept an emergency at bay. People are able to test and isolate when needed, and hospital rates haven’t skyrocketed as in other surges.

Is this finally, then, the corner that we are able to turn? The moment of renewal and rehabilitation after a long, metaphorical winter? It is certainly a gust of fresh air after two years of held breaths and clenched fears.

On Easter Sunday 2020, 24 months ago, more than 670 people died of COVID-19 in New York, which was still at the epicenter of an international disaster. Tens of thousands more of our friends and neighbors have lost their lives to the disease since then. One recent study found that people who died of COVID in the U.S. lost, on average, some 9 years of expected life. Grappling with and mourning that loss will take real time. And the tail of all that havoc was wide.

COST OF ISOLATION

In an attempt to save lives, we agreed to stay away from each other far more than we wished. We could not visit elderly relatives in nursing homes. We socially distanced in place of hugs. We avoided so many of the pleasures in life, from holiday gatherings and social events to simple family dinners. Many of life's milestones were postponed. The radius of our worlds shrunk as many people worked, worshipped, and relaxed as best they could at home. Those who didn’t, or couldn’t, endured the lingering fear that they might infect themselves or their loved ones. Concern became habit. Periods of low-case-number “normality” were often too fleeting.

We are only beginning to reckon with the associated toll.

That toll is visible in the hundreds of Long Islanders who died of opioid overdoses during the pandemic, newlyweds and parents and sons and daughters, people who had been doing better or weren’t given a fighting chance to reverse their slides. The overdoses were part of a tragic pattern nationally, as the pillars of community and in-person treatment disappeared for too many.

The toll is visible in the way teenagers and children struggled to learn on Zoom or apart from their friends, threatening their development and shattering their sense of comfort and painstakingly-built ease. It was visible in the stresses for expectant parents bringing babies into a changed world, without the help and ballast that the constant touch of close networks can provide — because “you need a village,” as one Wheatley Heights mom rightly told Newsday recently. It was visible in how we dealt with the added tension of disputes over taking vaccines and wearing masks.

The toll can be seen among the most vulnerable, the Long Islanders with special needs and older, isolated retirees who wilted without human contact. And among the many of us who could not be with loved ones to comfort them as they slipped away.

The toll struck our mental health — seen in federal statistics that show a big jump in the number of Americans with symptoms of anxiety or depression, or just the unease that has put so many of us on edge. The toll shaped our economic life, as some workers burned out and embraced the Great Resignation, looking to try something new. Others dealt with a tough masked-up grind or were forced out of work entirely, relying on the soup kitchens and food banks that showed their worth and mettle on Long Island in these trying times.

LESSONS LEARNED

We learned about the fragility of modern life and how quickly things can fall apart, and those are lessons we will take into the future. As crucial: an understanding of how important we are to each other, of the value of togetherness and community and support, and of the need for all the boosts put on the back burner during the pandemic. The social services, 12-step programs, religious and cultural ceremonies that can sustain and give our life meaning. The simplest of interactions — hellos at an office entrance, the new lack of fear in a handshake or an embrace.

This spring, let’s celebrate everything we have. The bulbs beginning to open, the pandemic babies being introduced to the world, the return to normality, such as it is. Now we know how important the everyday can be.