72 Living Through History: A Reflection on the COVID-19 Pandemic

When COVID was starting to shut the world down, I was physically in my hometown of Stratford, Ontario. I was 15 at the time and was about mid-week during March break during my grade 10 year. I remember sitting with my mom listening to the news in my Oma’s hospice room. It developed so quickly, from something that was being discovered to something that was a threat to the entire world. People were unsure about it and had no idea what was going on. This was something that no one had experienced before let alone someone my age. I remember I was terrified about what it would mean if the world shut down. What would happen to school? My 16th birthday? What would happen to the rest of the world? There were numbers of people infected being presented on the TV, people in a panic, the unknowingness of it all made it seem like the world was ending. I remember I kept a journal from that day on for a couple of months recording what was going on, trying to make sense of it all in my teenage brain. If only I knew just how much would change in the next couple months to the next couple of years. Not knowing the social isolation, the fear, the changes, etc. Looking back on it now, I was physically there but mentally that was the downward spiral of the next few years.

Once the pandemic was announced, my friends and I were excited for the fact that we had another two weeks off school, not knowing how that was going to fundamentally change us. We immediately went into full lockdown, without any knowledge of how long it would truly last. Small things like grocery shopping, going for walks, seeing friends, etc. were all drastically changed overnight. We were afraid of going out, of possibly getting sick with this unknown virus that was killing thousands of people. I was in the middle of high school, wanting to see my friends, go out and have fun, really do anything and suddenly, we were confined to our homes. Personally, the only thing that saved me from going crazy during lockdown were drives around town or in the country. To this day, I have never seen the streets so empty and desolate. There was no one in sight even in the middle of the day. Everything was closed, people were laid off, too afraid to go anywhere, even for walks. For the next year, lockdowns were a common occurrence and most of the time I was too scared to go out and possibly get sick. Life as I knew it was forever changed. 

I remember vividly that before we could start, the school administrators emptied out all our lockers and put it in trash bags for us to drive to the school to pick up. It was such a weird experience picking up a trash bag with all our belongings in it. The line up wrapped around the block since we couldn’t get out to grab it, it was passed through our car window with both parties wearing masks. Once we started online school though, it was hard. No one knew when we could go back, people didn’t show up, teachers had no idea how to use the software, it was a nightmare. In some classes, they tried to go back to normal, but in others, they really didn’t care. I remember my math teacher encouraged us to cheat on tests and we ended up missing a couple chapters of our textbook, setting us up for failure for the next year. We couldn’t socialize, or work in groups, we just stared at a computer screen for 6 hours a day. Even to this day, I have a harder time sitting for a long period of time staring at my computer screen and it ruined my eyes. I fully believe that it has damaged my eyes and my ability to be as social as I once was. As much as we thought that it would be the best option, it has done so much damage in the long run.

Unfortunately, it was the year of my 16th birthday. Like most teenagers, they look forward to having a bigger party for that milestone. With COVID, rules and regulations were being changed daily, some weeks it looked like it was going to start reopening, and others it kept shutting down more. Fortunately, my birthday was in September, so I was able to have a couple people over in our backyard for a fire. It wasn’t what I wanted but I was excited I could have people over compared to a couple of my friend’s birthdays. Since theirs were in April, we did a virtual birthday and played videogames as a group from our respective homes. Getting your driver’s license is also a huge part of having your 16th birthday. One of the things that was shut down was the driving test center and they were only letting people from January-June birthdays get their license the first week of September. Thankfully I only had to wait 8 weeks until they allowed me to get my license but those who had birthdays in July and onwards had to wait until September to get theirs too. Something as small as that really changed how I thought my teenage years were going to be and even to this day I feel disappointment that I didn’t get the experience a lot of what other people get.

As we have seen in previous plagues and epidemics, there has been a common theme with isolation, blaming, and fear. COVID falls into the same category as previous historical epidemics. There was isolation in the attempt to stop the spread of the virus as well as to protect those who were immunocompromised. There was the blaming phase, since it started in China, it was seen as a result of Chinese people, therefore the rate of racial attacks, especially towards Asian people rose. Finally, there was the fear. The fear that we might get sick, get others sick, have lasting effects from the illness or vaccine, and of what was going to happen after we came out of the other side of this. Throughout history, there was a pattern, and it continued into this pandemic. It will continue throughout the future whenever we face the unknown.