COVID, five years on: memories of a strange and scary time

When did COVID start for you? Personally, I trace the beginning to Feb. 13, 2020. My wife and I were waiting for a plane at O'Hare when a group of JAL flight attendants walked past, wearing those masks I'd read about. I snapped a photo and sent it into the city desk. Look, news.

Emotionally, it really began in March. The stripped Target shelves. A few hours before Gov. JB Pritzker shut down the restaurants, I popped into Kamehachi for a last sushi fix, and was surprised to find myself the lone diner at 12:30 p.m. Watching the chef prepare my order, thinking, with dread: "I'm killing myself for a negi hamachi roll."

Though if you are looking for the very beginning in the Chicago area, I suppose that should be Jan. 13, 2020 — five years ago Monday — when a suburban woman returned from Wuhan, China, where she had been caring for her elderly father, bringing with her the COVID virus. A few days later she felt ill and went to Ascension St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates. making her the first person in Illinois, the second in the United States, diagnosed with a disease that, in the next half decade, would kill more than one million Americans and 20 million worldwide.

Anniversaries are complicated. Five years is not that long but already COVID has gone hazy. A lot of people seem to have forgotten it ever occurred. Or have taken away a deep antipathy toward both medicine and measures to prevent infection — vaccines are poison, masks a unacceptable intrusion upon their personal liberty. That seems far from what the actual lessons should be. Perhaps reconsideration is in order.

But it can be hard to form clear judgments, because COVID was immediately politicized — a plot of foreigners, a Blue State concern. As if a virus cares who you voted for. As severely as COVID rocked society, it was also just one bad element of a very bad year. Within a 10-month span, the world was shut down by a deadly plague then, two months later, American cities were rocked by riots after the murder of George Floyd. Then in January, the Capitol was stormed by rioters. Not exactly memories that folks want to dwell on.

The crisis shifted when the vaccine became available in early 2021. Some wouldn't stick out their arm to get it. Me, I drove down to Springfield, expecting a mob scene at the Walgreen's, like the ending of "The Year of Living Dangerously," with crowds climbing over each other and mothers waving their babies at frenzied med techs. Instead the store was empty and silent. There weren't even shoppers. It was strange and a little frightening.

Maybe that's why people so readily forget COVID; it was so odd, so scary. Who can look back fondly at hoarding toilet paper? Though I do take pride in my response. I didn't want to sit out the plague sheltering in Northbrook, and tried to find a role I could play. I've written lots of medical stories — heart transplants, lung transplants, autopsies, you name it, so figured I should explore the medical response. Photographer Ashlee Rezin and I began with a three-part series, looking at the harried nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital, then moved on to Roseland.

I finally got COVID in July 2023. Hit it with Paxlovid and my wife's chicken soup. I recovered quickly, I believe, because I'd had five vaccines — as opposed to a certain president who agreed his own recovery made him an “invincible hero.” virus. I spent a few days dozing in the sun on the back deck — an oddly happy memory, compared to my usual gerbil-on-a-wheel routine.

When will COVID end? The easy answer is: Never. Not for those who lost their lives, and their loved ones. Or those who struggle with long COVID.

But the harder answer is: It ended long ago — the lessons lost, forgotten if ever learned, leaving us less ready, not more, to deal with the next virus coming down the pike. And it will come.

Can that change? Doubtful. Put it this way: About 1.1 million Illinoisans contracted COVID; 8% of the state. Some 21,000 died from it, with 40% of those cases in Cook County. Meanwhile, there are 2,970 Illinois names on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington — a seventh of the COVID toll. Maya Lin's challenging memorial was unveiled in 1982, seven years after the war ended. Five years on, if there is a push to memorialize the COVID dead, I missed it.

Those who forget the past, are ... well, you know.