An Oral History of the Covid Pandemic

February 23, 2023

(New York Times) – Notice your resistance to reading the next several thousand words. They’re about the necessity of looking back at the pandemic with intelligence and care, while acknowledging that the pandemic is still with us. They raise the possibility that when we say the pandemic is over, we are actually seeking permission to act like it never happened — to let ourselves off the hook from having to make sense of it or take seriously its continuing effects. As we enter a fourth pandemic year, each of us is consciously or subconsciously working through potentially irreconcilable stories about what we lived through — or else, strenuously avoiding that dissonance, insisting there’s no work to be done. And so, with many people claiming (publicly, at least) that they’re over the pandemic — that they have, so to speak, restraightened all their picture frames and dragged their psychic trash to the curb — this article is saying: Hey, hold up. What’s in that bag? (Read More)