This month marks five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The shutdowns have long since ended, but the impacts on society are still being understood. Beyond the deaths and long-term illness, the pandemic disrupted how we work, learn and even eat. The New York Public News Network is marking the anniversary with a special series. WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief Dave Lucas revisits some of the people who appeared in his earliest COVID stories.
According to Albany County Executive Dan McCoy: "The first known case of COVID-19 in Albany County was on March 12, 2020."
Within days more and more people appeared masked on city streets. The coverings would become part of everyday life. Face masks quickly disappeared from store shelves along with toilet paper and paper towels.
Then-state Assemblywoman Pat Fahy appeared in one of WAMC's earliest pandemic stories, noting that she had seen people out and about wearing masks: "I haven't worn one yet. Somebody kindly gave me an extra last night and I felt a little guilty taking it, but I'm going to have it just in case," said Fahy.
But soon Fahy and just about everyone else would be wearing masks and social distancing. Now a Senator, the Democrat says the punch COVID packed is still being felt today.
“It's hard to believe it's been five years, and I think memories are short," Fahy said. "And the cost of COVID, I try to still bring it up all the time as a state legislator, particularly when I was Higher Ed chair, about the worker shortages, the severe healthcare worker shortages that we had. We saw a mass exodus of burnout, if you will, especially in nurses, among nurses and health professionals. So we're still feeling that effect. We are absolutely feeling the COVID slide, which is an academic slide, and that's been a national issue on math and now even in English, and New York is one of those that has suffered greatly academically for elementary and secondary as well as college students. But probably the area where we're paying the biggest price, or, you know, the most obvious price, is still with the mental health consequences, as well as the housing shortages.”
Fahy says the COVID quarantine and restrictions derailed America with isolation, loneliness and other social and economic problems.
“I think the Capital Region has suffered, particularly the very core. Albany, downtown Albany was really dependent upon state workers. Many of those workers have only come back half time, and that just fueled the economic challenges, and we know in the first year of COVID, I seem to recall the comptroller said we saw 8,000 restaurants close permanently in the state of New York,” Fahy said.
As the pandemic gained momentum McCoy began a year of regular COVID-19 updates. Then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo broadcast his own brand of public health policy, and many of his decisions like requiring nursing homes to accept COVID patients are intensely debated and criticized to this day.
The general public was encouraged to stay home and later test and eventually get the vaccine.
By the last week of December 2021, cases surged in New York state as people scrambled to find at-home testing kits.
Xu Hong is a reporter based in Shanghai who weathered the pandemic in China. Five years ago she told WAMC she supported the country’s strict lockdowns. Today she works for Cailianpress, a financial wire, covering developments in the health care sector.
“I think most people in China no longer care about COVID-19. But after the pandemic, people are starting to pay more attention to respiratory diseases and infectious diseases. After the pandemic, people like me are trying to live a healthier lifestyle by exercising regularly, because I had long COVID. I know for most people, it seems nothing has been changed, but for me, I had to change my plan for my career due to my health condition," said Hong.
In 2020, Don Applyrs, an Albany-based fitness educator, personal trainer and coach, warned people that interrupting daily physical fitness routines could shock the system, especially when a routine entailed a daily run or workouts at the gym. He says as the pandemic progressed, many folks purchased home bikes, weights and other gym equipment, and signed up for virtual fitness classes.
"That has had a long lasting impact in terms of just overall gym memberships and fitness centers and the number of people who attend and go to gyms. I certainly had to kind of take a little bit of a pivot. Was doing some virtual training for a little bit with some clients that still continue with my services. But then, certainly, you know, I realized that it really wasn't sustainable in terms of how fitness and training has, has evolved since COVID."
Fahy, who lost her only son to an aggressive cancer during the pandemic, says the lockdown changed us all forever.
“So many people lost, parents or grandparents, aunts, uncles. The level of loss has been rather extraordinary and, even those who didn't experience the personal loss. The experience of the loss of freedom when they weren't in school or weren't in the workplace. And while some people still like remote work, I don't think it's been good for us as a society.”
COVID is now considered endemic.
