THIS WEEK IS FIVE YEARS SINCE THE COVID PANDEMIC BEGAN—HAVE WE LEARNED ANYTHING FROM IT?

I had planned a completely different article for today. (Hopefully, I’ll get to that one in the busy next couple of weeks.)

And then on this past Tuesday night, I realized what date it was—March 11. On that date in 2020, I came home from a fun restaurant opening, (where people were cavalierly joking about the new Covid 19 virus, and gleefully touching elbows, while discussing that Tom Hanks had just announced the he now had Covid!,) to see the NBA shutting down not only one pro basketball game, but the entire NBA season, because a player, Utah Jazz star Rudy Gobert, had just been diagnosed with the disease. It was all pretty shocking.

The following morning back then, I cancelled going to a planned event for the next night, (which was eerily Friday the 13th!,) and took a nap on the couch. I woke-up to a local LA press conference urging us all to stay home for the next week or so. Boy, did they underestimate that time frame!

Then slowly, all my very fun events for the next month+ began getting cancelled. And that was the beginning of our new multi-year reality.

Getting back to this current week, the realization that it had been five years since that day jarred me. I woke up the next morning, March 12, 2025, wondering if we, (Americans and the world,) had learned anything from that horror show. Anything at all.

And this is some of what I realized:

I realized that we learned that there are idiots out there who still don’t believe in vaccines. I actually lost two (what I thought were) very close friends because of it. It appears that at least one of them is for sure a crazy anti-vaxxer, which I never would have guessed. I would have thought that all my friends were more-or-less normal people. But when the world started opening-up again, I invited that one to a big theatre opening with me. In the email invitation, I had mentioned that we all needed to be masked, (and stay that way throughout the show, of course,) and show proof of vaccination. Those responsible conditions set-out by the theatre were the only reasons I was taking the risk of attending the show myself, and I put it in the invite just to make sure that my friends knew the theatre was taking the risk seriously and looking out for its patrons, to put my pals’ minds at peace. To my shock, that good friend wrote back to ask why I would demand vax proof! I responded that it wasn’t me who required it, but the venue. And then the only thing I’ve ever heard from her again was a nasty-ish phone message in which she very defiantly told me she would never get the shot! I was shocked! I left her a nice message back, very calmly asking her to call me and explain her point of view.  And…I have never, to this day, ever heard from her again!

I also haven’t heard from the friend through whom I met that confirmed anti-vaxxer, (except to keep bugging me with public newsletters about her business,) so I assume she’s one of them, as well.  (I did not even mean to tell you all that, but once I got started…)

I also learned that there are still tons of morons among us because they re-elected that absolute danger to society who told us to drink bleach during the pandemic! I really wish that Orange Hitler had done just that himself, to demonstrate what a “genius” he was! That would have been something, wouldn’t it?

On this date in 2020, in my first column (of many) about the pandemic, I wrote, “This is not about politics for me, but if we had a non-moron for President, I don’t think the danger would have gotten so prevalent in this country. That disgrace of a human being has only made things worse. Much, much worse.” Yet, here he is again, leading America to ruin.

On a different note, later on in that same article, I optimistically wrote, “I just hope this virus will be contained before the Summer Olympics! Tokyo is trying desperately to not have to cancel it.” But, of course, they did have to postpone the 2020 Olympics until 2021, and then still had no spectators, which could not have been fun for the athletes.

So again, here it is exactly five years after we understood the seriousness of the pandemic, and even the people who didn’t get Covid, or lose someone to it, have been forever affected. I know no one whose life has ever been the same as it was before. (I refer to that easier time as “BP,” meaning “before the pandemic.”)

Using just Mr. X and myself as a brief example, life was way different BP. In some ways it’s a bad thing, and in some ways it’s an improvement. Back in normal life, I was going out just about five nights a week. Mr. X has never been a fan of going out, so I went everywhere with different pals all the time. But during the pandemic, I got so used to staying in all the time, and hanging with only Mr. X, that social life even now has become so much less. I limit it to only about one or two nights a week and an occasional daytime event. I turn down waaay more invitations than I did BP.

I’m also less of a workaholic. Back then, I published a new column in this e-zine all five weekdays. But, without any actual events to write about for those three years or so, I got down to two or three columns per week, and I’ve kept it that way ever since. So that’s one good thing the lockdown did for me—I don’t torture myself to write 24/7 anymore.

I also learned to stop washing my hair every day, which makes it much healthier. And we had time to exercise every single day! It had been almost two decades since I had time for that! (The bad thing about all that activity, though, is that we both messed-up our knees. And it took several doctor visits—and those only after my exhaustive search to find a new orthopedist because our long-time one had retired during the lockdown!—and beaucoup bucks to get them to even a semblance of lesser pain now.)

Another plus is that I learned to cook! I didn’t want strangers handling my food anymore. So we basically hazmat-suited-up for a monthly shopping trip, and disinfected everything—even the boxes— when we got home. (We left our clothing in the garage, as well.) I began planning our meals for the next month, like a tradwife! But let me tell you—we ate the best we ever had! Or have! I’m back to not cooking much because I’m out-and-about again, which is a shame for our health.

Speaking of grocery shopping, one new thing that actually annoys both of us now is that I insist we do it together. BP, only Mr. X shopped because he didn’t mind it and I did.  But during the siege, I insisted we go together because I was worried that he would not be as germ-cautious as I. And once I saw that he never bought anything on sale, and chose only unnecessary items for which he paid top dollar, that’s been it for me ever since. So now I still have to go with him, to guard our finances!

The perhaps saddest change for me is that I seem to have fewer friends than I did BP. In addition to losing those anti-vaxxers, some others who were in my regular rotation and I just never picked up again where we left off in March 2020. The same with some business associates. Some of my other formerly-uber-popular pals tell me the same thing has happened to them. And in some cases, by being five years older than back then, those people just want to continue staying put. It’s basically a different landscape for many of us now.

I’m not saying things are worse, just different. And some things may even be for the better.

I still wear a mask at stores and theaters. It’s not mainly Covid of which I am afraid—I want to be safe from the flu and even colds. And now, as one of the very few children who never got measles, (a fact of which I had always been so proud,) I have to worry about that killer, which has recently arrived in LA!

So, to answer the question I pondered in the title of this article—have we learned anything from the Covid pandemic in this handful of years—I think the smart people among us have. Now we just have to be careful because too many dumb ones are still out there.