January 31, 2020: “We have it totally under control.”
Wise words from our former president. Just over 365 days ago, three days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Global Health Emergency due to 9,800 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 and 200 deaths worldwide, the United States declared a public health emergency. With this declaration, most travel from China was barred, although there were exceptions for American citizens and their families, the beginning of wishy-washy policy-making that placed the United States in the number one spot for most confirmed cases per 100k people. Now, there has been much speculation around the ‘travel ban’; some believe that it was a gutsy move by the Trump Administration which saved many lives, but in reality, there is not enough evidence to support any life-saving properties of the order. In fact, if the travel restrictions had been stricter (i.e., blocking all travel from China, regardless of United States citizenship), the U.S. would have likely seen economic relief sooner, as well as a slower spread of the virus. However, a virus does not avoid infecting someone because she has a United States passport, and thus the lethal bug infiltrated the United States, despite the apparent travel ban.
March 6, 2020: Coronavirus Cruise Ships
Out of 3,500 passengers, 21 of them tested positive for COVID-19 aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship off the coast of California. There was much debate as to whether the cruise ship should be permitted to dock, and the passengers who had not been tested because test kits were not widely available, should disembark on American soil, perpetuating the virus spread. The cruise ship conundrum was the beginning of President Trump’s spewing xenophobic remarks, albeit subtly. When asked what his opinion on the ship arriving portside, former President Trump quipped, “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault. And it wasn’t the fault of the people on the ship either. Okay? It wasn’t their fault either. And they are mostly Americans”
Ultimately, the ship was permitted to disembark, and roughly 2,000 passengers were transported to military bases in California, Georgia, and Texas, to begin a 14-day quarantine and be tested. However, upon arrival, they were informed that there were not enough tests, and it was up to the passengers whether they chose to be tested. Furthermore, there was little Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), to protect the passenger and military personnel from infection. Many of the passengers decided against being tested because if they did not receive their results before the 14-day mandatory quarantine was lifted, they were not permitted to leave the bases. Therefore, considering the incubation period of COVID-19, it is likely that many of the passengers who evaded testing were in fact positive, spreading the virus further across the country.
March 9, 2020: The Stock Market Crashes
March 13, 2020: National Emergency and the European Travel Ban
Trump’s national emergency declaration put the pandemic on the forefront and opened the eyes of many who were wholly unaware of its severity. The emergency order permitted access to billions of dollars of federal aid to support the economy and its citizens during a time of uncertainty, however, the mishandling of funds and ill-advised focus on therapeutics that have little to no evidence of being entirely effective against the virus (remember hydroxychloroquine?), sent the United States pandemic response into a tailspin. On the same day, the Trump administration blocks travel to the United States from 26 European countries within 14 days of arriving in the U.S. Once again, Americans are exempt, as are people arriving from Ireland and the U.K.
March 19, 2020: California Issues the First Stay-at-home Order
California’s issuing of a shelter-in-place order shuttered restaurants, bars, nightclubs, theaters, and fitness centers in a bid to encourage social distancing and slow disease spread after the state reported 870 cases and 17 deaths. By March 25, 2020, the only states that abstained from instating stay-at-home orders were North Dakota, South Dakota. Iowa, and Arkansas. Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Utah also resisted statewide restrictions, but counties and cities took it upon themselves to lockdown. Following stay-at-home orders were school closures, and my home state of Kansas was the first state to order all K-12 schools to close for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. School closures seemed unprecedented. Think about it, how many times have you had to drive to school on slippery roads covered in black ice just because the district doesn’t want to waste a snow day? Or, how many times did you go to school feeling sick just because you didn’t want an absence? Missing school is a misdemeanor–– truancy–– so, how on earth were schools permitted to close for an entire quarter? I graduated from high school in 2020, and college and K-12 closures hit a little too close to home.
March-May, 2020: Lockdown Leisure
Lockdowns were the time for tears, Tik-Tok, whipped coffee, and absurd Netflix binges (Tiger King, anyone?). In my little corner of the United States, the spring weather was prettier than it had been in the three years I’ve considered myself a Kansan. I remember being able to lay on our patio furniture halfway through April and get a tan, which hardly made up for the tan I was going to get in Maui, Hawaii on spring break, but que sera, sera. These three months were also when we had our first introductions to Zoom school, and after overcoming the awkwardness of seeing your friends, family, and teachers in a Brady Bunch format on our computer screens, we quickly learned the frivolity of fully dressing for classes. I, who tried to look moderately put-together when I attended high school in-person, gave up entirely and joined my AP English Lit. and AP Calculus Zooms in a cute top, concealing my too-short fox pajama pants I’ve had since middle school. Oh, do you remember when we found out that you can catch COVID-19 through your eyes?
Besides the increasing terror surrounding the disease itself, mental health suffered terribly. Being shut-in is difficult in itself, but many people lacked adequate hermitages, food, income, and support, and those who had never suffered from depression or anxiety began to understand their friend who did. Furthermore, the abominable slaying of George Floyd catapulted the, now Nobel Prize-nominated, Black Lives Matter movement center-stage.
June-September, 2020: A Pandemic Summer
Summer 2020 was an enigma. We had successfully “flattened the curve” during the lockdown, and many Americans were ready to resume their normal lives and have as typical of a summer as possible. As expected, as soon as some restrictions were lifted, chaos ensued. When the CDC and, my personal favorite virologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, recommended all Americans wear face coverings in order to slow the spread and reduce strain on hospitals, a new contagion broke out: disinformation. Far, right-wing Americans argued that being forced to wear a face-covering infringed on their freedoms, and some anti-maskers (another term we can thank 2020 for) equated being “forced” to wear a face mask with Jews being forced (notice it’s not in quotations) to strap a yellow star to their coat sleeves during the Third Reich. Understandably, post-lockdown angst was real, and everyone was ready to get back to how things were, but like it or not, COVID-19 was here to stay–– at least until vaccines are widely distributed, and it should actually become like the flu, as so many COVID-deniers (again, thanks 2020) believe it resembles. To make matters worse, the President, the Commander-in-Chief, was unwilling to wear a mask himself and proceeded to flout gathering restrictions and hold rallies where there wasn’t a mask in sight, outside of his secret service agents. The divisiveness began with an unwillingness to mask but bled into something far more troublesome: conspiracy theories. Everyone was tired of the pandemic, but many tried their best to stay safe and remain vigilant… Not just to protect themselves, but to protect those around them, especially those who were at risk of severe disease, like the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions.
On July 7, 2020, as the U.S. surpassed 3,000,000 infections, it began to withdraw from the WHO organization. Now, I’m a Literature major, so I cannot resist a lit reference. The pandemic is Donald Trump’s scarlet letter, and his legacy lies in the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. On July 14, 2020, states that were experiencing the most heinous COVID-19 case spikes reported the most health insurance coverage losses. So, in areas where infections were soaring, many of those who became infected were unable to seek care if necessary. Back in April, Dr. Fauci, who, by this point had utterly disappeared from dwindling White House press briefings, warned Americans that if we did not follow guidelines and behave cautiously, the United States could see upwards of 50,000 new infections daily. Well, on July 16, 2020, the U.S. reported its highest number of cases in one day (don’t worry, we surpass it in the Fall), a number totaling 75,600 cases.
July wasn’t all bad, though. On July 14, 2020, Moderna reported positive results with the first round of their vaccine clinical trial, followed by optimistic reports from other Pfizer and AstraZeneca, two other companies focusing on developing a vaccine. And by the end of the summer, Moderna had seen such great success in its first two phases of the trial that it received approval to move on to the third and final phase.
October-November, 2020: Ironic New Infections
On October 2, 2020, after a raucous 1st presidential debate with now President Joe Biden, former President Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19. Until this fateful October day, Trump was Typhoid Mary–– doing what he pleased, going where he desired and seeing whomever without any regard to the worsening pandemic. On that same day, President Trump was transported to Walter Reed National Military Center, “out of an abundance of caution”, to receive therapeutics that so many of his constituents were denied, in order to lessen the severity of his disease. Now, it’s not entirely clear what went down in the hospital. His physicians periodically gave updates outside the hospital, but they never explicitly revealed his condition. While in the hospital, however, the POTUS put his secret service agents at risk by conducting a motorcade, where he was transported down a street lined with his unmasked supporters, waving from the back of a vehicle unmasked. President Trump was discharged three days later and transported back to the White House to continue receiving treatment, and he put on quite a show upon his arrival, waving farewell to Marine One, breathlessly, from the balcony.
On November 4, 2020, the United States surpassed its own record for daily infections with a whopping 100,000 new cases reported in a single day. Luckily, after pausing their trials for reports of adverse effects–– proven to be unrelated to the vaccine–– AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson resumed their clinical trials, and on November 23, the Pfizer vaccine was deemed to be 90% effective against preventing infection, and shortly thereafter, it was approved by the FDA.
December 2020: The Victorious Vaccines (and variants)
December 2020 was a marvelous month for vaccine developments. On December, 10, the FDA officially approved an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines, and vaccinations of healthcare workers were set to begin in just a few days. The vaccine breakthrough provided a beacon of hope in this dark pandemic. It seemed that this time, we truly were “rounding the corner”, and, along with the positive election results, there was a newer, brighter light at the end of the tunnel–– and we can be certain that it’s not a train! Shortly after Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines were approved, the FDA agreed to another EUA on December, 17 for the Moderna vaccine, further accelerating the effort to have all Americans eligible for vaccination, vaccinated at some point in the not-so-distant future.
Like anything unfamiliar, the vaccine efforts were met with resistance, and following the trend with anti-masking, most of it came from right-wing extremists and Q-anon followers. Theories such as the vaccine being a chip so the government can track every move, mRNA permanently altering one’s DNA, and it being Bill Gates’ way of controlling the planet, circulated the web, and even when prominent GOP officials, such as former Vice-President Mike Pence and Senator Mitch McConnell received the vaccine on national television, anti-vaxxers and those wary of a vaccine produced so quickly were quick to argue that they were simply injected with saline in lieu of actual vaccine. Scientists and medical doctors quickly fought to dispel the hysteria and ensured the American people that the mRNA vaccine has actually been in the works for years, and there is already one that exists to fight Ebola, but because Ebola was relatively contained without the necessity of a widespread vaccine effort, funding was depleted. Dr. Tom Frieden explained perhaps the most simple way to understand an mRNA vaccine, and it goes like this:
The mRNA in the vaccine sends an email to your immune system, with descriptions and pictures of what the COVID-19 virus looks like, along with instructions to kill it. Your immune system takes a screenshot of that email, saves it, and then, like a Snapchat, deletes it… But it never forgets what the virus looks like or how to get rid of it.
By the end of December, a new variant was found in the U.K., and was speculated to be up to 70% more infectious than the original strain. Thus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson sent much of the U.K. into a Tier 4 (the strictest) lockdown in an effort to contain it. Unfortunately, on December 29, 2020, the U.K. variant was found in Colorado. Luckily, the variant should not give the vaccine too much trouble, but with it being highly infectious, the issue is vaccinating enough people before it spreads too far.
Where we are now:
After a hitch in the beginning, vaccine rollout is in full swing, and on February 11, 2021, Dr. Fauci announced that he believes all Americans should be able to get vaccinated beginning in April. An end to this pandemic is in sight, but for now, it is important that you continue masking, social distancing, and being as careful as possible until more people are vaccinated. We will get through this, we are getting through this, and we’re nearly there, we just have to be vigilant for a little bit longer.