• Newsletters

Site search

  • Israel-Hamas war
  • 2024 election
  • Supreme Court
  • Animal welfare
  • Climate change
  • What to watch
  • All explainers
  • Future Perfect

Filed under:

Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

Share this story

  • Share this on Facebook
  • Share this on Twitter
  • Share this on Reddit
  • Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

essay about life in pandemic

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

Will you help keep Vox free for all?

At Vox, we believe that clarity is power, and that power shouldn’t only be available to those who can afford to pay. That’s why we keep our work free. Millions rely on Vox’s clear, high-quality journalism to understand the forces shaping today’s world. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today.

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via

essay about life in pandemic

Next Up In Culture

Sign up for the newsletter today, explained.

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

Thanks for signing up!

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

A photo of a row of yellow candles in glass jars; at the end, surrounded by roses, is a color photo of Navalny, a clean-shaven white man with sandy brown hair.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, explained

Donald Trump’s face is in focus in a courtroom during his fraud trial.

Trump is suddenly in need of a lot of cash. That’s everyone’s problem.

A graphic illustration of a statue holding a balance scale in one hand and a sword in the other, against a gridded backdrop.

Can California show the way forward on AI safety?

A woman with tattooed shoulders and short hair wearing tiny eyeglasses.

What’s behind the power of tiny eyeglasses?

A child walks over muddy ground between rows of tents.

The looming ground assault on the last “safe” zone in Gaza

Johnson in the woods looking through a spider web.

Dakota Johnson’s aloof appeal, explained

DigitalCommons@SHU

  • < Previous

Home > History Community Special Collections > Remembering COVID-19 Community Archive > Community Reflections > 21

Remembering COVID-19 Community Archive

Community Reflections

My life experience during the covid-19 pandemic.

Melissa Blanco Follow

Document Type

Class Assignment

Publication Date

Affiliation with sacred heart university.

Undergraduate, Class of 2024

My content explains what my life was like during the last seven months of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it affected my life both positively and negatively. It also explains what it was like when I graduated from High School and how I want the future generations to remember the Class of 2020.

Class assignment, Western Civilization (Dr. Marino).

Recommended Citation

Blanco, Melissa, "My Life Experience During the Covid-19 Pandemic" (2020). Community Reflections . 21. https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/covid19-reflections/21

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Since September 23, 2020

Included in

Higher Education Commons , Virus Diseases Commons

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately, you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.

Advanced Search

  • Notify me via email or RSS
  • Expert Gallery
  • Collections
  • Disciplines

Author Corner

  • SelectedWorks Faculty Guidelines
  • DigitalCommons@SHU: Nuts & Bolts, Policies & Procedures
  • Sacred Heart University Library

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

essay about life in pandemic

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

More from TIME

Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

More Must-Reads From TIME

  • East Palestine, One Year After Train Derailment
  • How Tech Giants Turned Ukraine Into an AI War Lab
  • In the Belly of MrBeast
  • The Closers: 18 People Working to End the Racial Wealth Gap
  • How Long Should You Isolate With COVID-19?
  • The Best Romantic Comedies to Watch on Netflix
  • Taylor Swift Is TIME's 2023 Person of the Year
  • Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

You May Also Like

essay about life in pandemic

One Student's Perspective on Life During a Pandemic

  • Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
  • Ethics Resources
  • Ethics Spotlight
  • COVID-19: Ethics, Health and Moving Forward

person sitting at table with open laptop, notebook and pen image link to story

The pandemic and resulting shelter-in-place restrictions are affecting everyone in different ways. Tiana Nguyen, shares both the pros and cons of her experience as a student at Santa Clara University.

person sitting at table with open laptop, notebook and pen

person sitting at table with open laptop, notebook and pen

Tiana Nguyen ‘21 is a Hackworth Fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. She is majoring in Computer Science, and is the vice president of Santa Clara University’s Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) chapter .

The world has slowed down, but stress has begun to ramp up.

In the beginning of quarantine, as the world slowed down, I could finally take some time to relax, watch some shows, learn to be a better cook and baker, and be more active in my extracurriculars. I have a lot of things to be thankful for. I especially appreciate that I’m able to live in a comfortable house and have gotten the opportunity to spend more time with my family. This has actually been the first time in years in which we’re all able to even eat meals together every single day. Even when my brother and I were young, my parents would be at work and sometimes come home late, so we didn’t always eat meals together. In the beginning of the quarantine I remember my family talking about how nice it was to finally have meals together, and my brother joking, “it only took a pandemic to bring us all together,” which I laughed about at the time (but it’s the truth).

Soon enough, we’ll all be back to going to different places and we’ll be separated once again. So I’m thankful for my living situation right now. As for my friends, even though we’re apart, I do still feel like I can be in touch with them through video chat—maybe sometimes even more in touch than before. I think a lot of people just have a little more time for others right now.

Although there are still a lot of things to be thankful for, stress has slowly taken over, and work has been overwhelming. I’ve always been a person who usually enjoys going to classes, taking on more work than I have to, and being active in general. But lately I’ve felt swamped with the amount of work given, to the point that my days have blurred into online assignments, Zoom classes, and countless meetings, with a touch of baking sweets and aimless searching on Youtube.

The pass/no pass option for classes continues to stare at me, but I look past it every time to use this quarter as an opportunity to boost my grades. I've tried to make sense of this type of overwhelming feeling that I’ve never really felt before. Is it because I’m working harder and putting in more effort into my schoolwork with all the spare time I now have? Is it because I’m not having as much interaction with other people as I do at school? Or is it because my classes this quarter are just supposed to be this much harder? I honestly don’t know; it might not even be any of those. What I do know though, is that I have to continue work and push through this feeling.

This quarter I have two synchronous and two asynchronous classes, which each have pros and cons. Originally, I thought I wanted all my classes to be synchronous, since that everyday interaction with my professor and classmates is valuable to me. However, as I experienced these asynchronous classes, I’ve realized that it can be nice to watch a lecture on my own time because it even allows me to pause the video to give me extra time for taking notes. This has made me pay more attention during lectures and take note of small details that I might have missed otherwise. Furthermore, I do realize that synchronous classes can also be a burden for those abroad who have to wake up in the middle of the night just to attend a class. I feel that it’s especially unfortunate when professors want students to attend but don’t make attendance mandatory for this reason; I find that most abroad students attend anyway, driven by the worry they’ll be missing out on something.

I do still find synchronous classes amazing though, especially for discussion-based courses. I feel in touch with other students from my classes whom I wouldn’t otherwise talk to or regularly reach out to. Since Santa Clara University is a small school, it is especially easy to interact with one another during classes on Zoom, and I even sometimes find it less intimidating to participate during class through Zoom than in person. I’m honestly not the type to participate in class, but this quarter I found myself participating in some classes more than usual. The breakout rooms also create more interaction, since we’re assigned to random classmates, instead of whomever we’re sitting closest to in an in-person class—though I admit breakout rooms can sometimes be awkward.

Something that I find beneficial in both synchronous and asynchronous classes is that professors post a lecture recording that I can always refer to whenever I want. I found this especially helpful when I studied for my midterms this quarter; it’s nice to have a recording to look back upon in case I missed something during a lecture.

Overall, life during these times is substantially different from anything most of us have ever experienced, and at times it can be extremely overwhelming and stressful—especially in terms of school for me. Online classes don’t provide the same environment and interactions as in-person classes and are by far not as enjoyable. But at the end of the day, I know that in every circumstance there is always something to be thankful for, and I’m appreciative for my situation right now. While the world has slowed down and my stress has ramped up, I’m slowly beginning to adjust to it.

Seven short essays about life during the pandemic

The boston book festival's at home community writing project invites area residents to describe their experiences during this unprecedented time..

essay about life in pandemic

My alarm sounds at 8:15 a.m. I open my eyes and take a deep breath. I wiggle my toes and move my legs. I do this religiously every morning. Today, marks day 74 of staying at home.

My mornings are filled with reading biblical scripture, meditation, breathing in the scents of a hanging eucalyptus branch in the shower, and making tea before I log into my computer to work. After an hour-and-a-half Zoom meeting, I decided to take a long walk to the post office and grab a fresh bouquet of burnt orange ranunculus flowers. I embrace the warm sun beaming on my face. I feel joy. I feel at peace.

Advertisement

I enter my apartment and excessively wash my hands and face. I pour a glass of iced kombucha. I sit at my table and look at the text message on my phone. My coworker writes that she is thinking of me during this difficult time. She must be referring to the Amy Cooper incident. I learn shortly that she is not.

I Google Minneapolis and see his name: George Floyd. And just like that a simple and beautiful day transitions into a day of sorrow.

Nakia Hill, Boston

It was a wobbly, yet solemn little procession: three masked mourners and a canine. Beginning in Kenmore Square, at David and Sue Horner’s condo, it proceeded up Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

S. Sue Horner died on Good Friday, April 10, in the Year of the Virus. Sue did not die of the virus but her parting was hemmed by it: no gatherings to mark the passing of this splendid human being.

David devised a send-off nevertheless. On April 23rd, accompanied by his daughter and son-in-law, he set out for Old South Church. David led, bearing the urn. His daughter came next, holding her phone aloft, speaker on, through which her brother in Illinois played the bagpipes for the length of the procession, its soaring thrum infusing the Mall. Her husband came last with Melon, their golden retriever.

I unlocked the empty church and led the procession into the columbarium. David drew the urn from its velvet cover, revealing a golden vessel inset with incandescent tiles. We lifted the urn into the niche, prayed, recited Psalm 23, and shared some words.

It was far too small for the luminous “Dr. Sue”, but what we could manage in the Year of the Virus.

Nancy S. Taylor, Boston

On April 26, 2020, our household was a bustling home for four people. Our two sons, ages 18 and 22, have a lot of energy. We are among the lucky ones. I can work remotely. Our food and shelter are not at risk.

As I write this a week later, it is much quieter here.

On April 27, our older son, an EMT, transported a COVID-19 patient to the ER. He left home to protect my delicate health and became ill with the virus a week later.

On April 29, my husband’s 95-year-old father had a stroke. My husband left immediately to be with his 90-year-old mother near New York City and is now preparing for his father’s discharge from the hospital. Rehab people will come to the house; going to a facility would be too dangerous.

My husband just called me to describe today’s hospital visit. The doctors had warned that although his father had regained the ability to speak, he could only repeat what was said to him.

“It’s me,” said my husband.

“It’s me,” said my father-in-law.

“I love you,” said my husband.

“I love you,” said my father-in-law.

“Sooooooooo much,” said my father-in-law.

Lucia Thompson, Wayland

Would racism exist if we were blind?

I felt his eyes bore into me as I walked through the grocery store. At first, I thought nothing of it. With the angst in the air attributable to COVID, I understood the anxiety-provoking nature of feeling as though your 6-foot bubble had burst. So, I ignored him and maintained my distance. But he persisted, glaring at my face, squinting to see who I was underneath the mask. This time I looked back, when he yelled, in my mother tongue, for me to go back to my country.

In shock, I just laughed. How could he tell what I was under my mask? Or see anything through the sunglasses he was wearing inside? It baffled me. I laughed at the irony that he would use my own language against me, that he knew enough to guess where I was from in some version of culturally competent racism. I laughed because dealing with the truth behind that comment generated a sadness in me that was too much to handle. If not now, then when will we be together?

So I ask again, would racism exist if we were blind?

Faizah Shareef, Boston

My Family is “Out” There

But I am “in” here. Life is different now “in” Assisted Living since the deadly COVID-19 arrived. Now the staff, employees, and all 100 residents have our temperatures taken daily. Everyone else, including my family, is “out” there. People like the hairdresser are really missed — with long straight hair and masks, we don’t even recognize ourselves.

Since mid-March we are in quarantine “in” our rooms with meals served. Activities are practically non-existent. We can sit on the back patio 6 feet apart, wearing masks, do exercises there, chat, and walk nearby. Nothing inside. Hopefully June will improve.

My family is “out” there — somewhere! Most are working from home (or Montana). Hopefully an August wedding will happen, but unfortunately, I may still be “in” here.

From my window I wave to my son “out” there. Recently, when my daughter visited, I opened the window “in” my second-floor room and could see and hear her perfectly “out” there. Next time she will bring a chair so we can have an “in” and “out” conversation all day, or until we run out of words.

Barbara Anderson, Raynham

My boyfriend Marcial lives in Boston, and I live in New York City. We had been doing the long-distance thing pretty successfully until coronavirus hit. In mid-March, I was furloughed from my temp job, Marcial began working remotely, and New York started shutting down. I went to Boston to stay with Marcial.

We are opposites in many ways, but we share a love of food. The kitchen has been the center of quarantine life —and also quarantine problems.

Marcial and I have gone from eating out and cooking/grocery shopping for each other during our periodic visits to cooking/grocery shopping with each other all the time. We’ve argued over things like the proper way to make rice and what greens to buy for salad. Our habits are deeply rooted in our upbringing and individual cultures (Filipino immigrant and American-born Chinese, hence the strong rice opinions).

On top of the mundane issues, we’ve also dealt with a flooded kitchen (resulting in cockroaches) and a mandoline accident leading to an ER visit. Marcial and I have spent quarantine navigating how to handle the unexpected and how to integrate our lifestyles. We’ve been eating well along the way.

Melissa Lee, Waltham

It’s 3 a.m. and my dog Rikki just gave me a worried look. Up again?

“I can’t sleep,” I say. I flick the light, pick up “Non-Zero Probabilities.” But the words lay pinned to the page like swatted flies. I watch new “Killing Eve” episodes, play old Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats songs. Still night.

We are — what? — 12 agitated weeks into lockdown, and now this. The thing that got me was Chauvin’s sunglasses. Perched nonchalantly on his head, undisturbed, as if he were at a backyard BBQ. Or anywhere other than kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, on his life. And Floyd was a father, as we all now know, having seen his daughter Gianna on Stephen Jackson’s shoulders saying “Daddy changed the world.”

Precious child. I pray, safeguard her.

Rikki has her own bed. But she won’t leave me. A Goddess of Protection. She does that thing dogs do, hovers increasingly closely the more agitated I get. “I’m losing it,” I say. I know. And like those weighted gravity blankets meant to encourage sleep, she drapes her 70 pounds over me, covering my restless heart with safety.

As if daybreak, or a prayer, could bring peace today.

Kirstan Barnett, Watertown

Until June 30, send your essay (200 words or less) about life during COVID-19 via bostonbookfest.org . Some essays will be published on the festival’s blog and some will appear in The Boston Globe.

How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Serious disabled woman concentrating on her work she sitting at her workplace and working on computer at office

Getty Images

Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

10 Ways to Discover College Essay Ideas

Doing homework

Tags: students , colleges , college admissions , college applications , college search , Coronavirus

2024 Best Colleges

essay about life in pandemic

Search for your perfect fit with the U.S. News rankings of colleges and universities.

College Admissions: Get a Step Ahead!

Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S. News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy .

Ask an Alum: Making the Most Out of College

You May Also Like

U.s. and europe degree differences.

Anayat Durrani Feb. 13, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

How to Perform Well on SAT, ACT Test Day

Cole Claybourn Feb. 13, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

Super Bowl States, by the Numbers

Elliott Davis Jr. Feb. 9, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

What Is the Student Aid Index?

Sarah Wood Feb. 9, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

What to Know About New NCAA NIL Rules

Cole Claybourn Feb. 8, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

Bachelor's Jobs With $100K+ Salaries

Sarah Wood Feb. 8, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

Online Learning Trends to Know Now

essay about life in pandemic

Veterans Considering Online College

Anayat Durrani Feb. 8, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

Affordable Out-of-State Online Colleges

Sarah Wood Feb. 7, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

The Cost of an Online Bachelor's Degree

Emma Kerr and Cole Claybourn Feb. 7, 2024

essay about life in pandemic

U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

  • Publications
  • Account settings
  • Advanced Search
  • Journal List
  • Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Logo of pheelsevier

Effects of COVID-19 pandemic in daily life

Dear Editor,

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has affected day to day life and is slowing down the global economy. This pandemic has affected thousands of peoples, who are either sick or are being killed due to the spread of this disease. The most common symptoms of this viral infection are fever, cold, cough, bone pain and breathing problems, and ultimately leading to pneumonia. This, being a new viral disease affecting humans for the first time, vaccines are not yet available. Thus, the emphasis is on taking extensive precautions such as extensive hygiene protocol (e.g., regularly washing of hands, avoidance of face to face interaction etc.), social distancing, and wearing of masks, and so on. This virus is spreading exponentially region wise. Countries are banning gatherings of people to the spread and break the exponential curve. 1 , 2 Many countries are locking their population and enforcing strict quarantine to control the spread of the havoc of this highly communicable disease.

COVID-19 has rapidly affected our day to day life, businesses, disrupted the world trade and movements. Identification of the disease at an early stage is vital to control the spread of the virus because it very rapidly spreads from person to person. Most of the countries have slowed down their manufacturing of the products. 3 , 4 The various industries and sectors are affected by the cause of this disease; these include the pharmaceuticals industry, solar power sector, tourism, Information and electronics industry. This virus creates significant knock-on effects on the daily life of citizens, as well as about the global economy.

Presently the impacts of COVID-19 in daily life are extensive and have far reaching consequences. These can be divided into various categories:

  • • Challenges in the diagnosis, quarantine and treatment of suspected or confirmed cases
  • • High burden of the functioning of the existing medical system
  • • Patients with other disease and health problems are getting neglected
  • • Overload on doctors and other healthcare professionals, who are at a very high risk
  • • Overloading of medical shops
  • • Requirement for high protection
  • • Disruption of medical supply chain
  • • Slowing of the manufacturing of essential goods
  • • Disrupt the supply chain of products
  • • Losses in national and international business
  • • Poor cash flow in the market
  • • Significant slowing down in the revenue growth
  • • Service sector is not being able to provide their proper service
  • • Cancellation or postponement of large-scale sports and tournaments
  • • Avoiding the national and international travelling and cancellation of services
  • • Disruption of celebration of cultural, religious and festive events
  • • Undue stress among the population
  • • Social distancing with our peers and family members
  • • Closure of the hotels, restaurants and religious places
  • • Closure of places for entertainment such as movie and play theatres, sports clubs, gymnasiums, swimming pools, and so on.
  • • Postponement of examinations

This COVID-19 has affected the sources of supply and effects the global economy. There are restrictions of travelling from one country to another country. During travelling, numbers of cases are identified positive when tested, especially when they are taking international visits. 5 All governments, health organisations and other authorities are continuously focussing on identifying the cases affected by the COVID-19. Healthcare professional face lot of difficulties in maintaining the quality of healthcare in these days.

Declaration of competing interest

None declared.

Resources for

  • Prospective Students
  • Current Students
  • Admin Resources

Search form

Essays reveal experiences during pandemic, unrest.

protesting during COVID-19

Field study students share their thoughts 

Members of Advanced Field Study, a select group of Social Ecology students who are chosen from a pool of applicants to participate in a year-long field study experience and course, had their internships and traditional college experience cut short this year. During our final quarter of the year together, during which we met weekly for two hours via Zoom, we discussed their reactions as the world fell apart around them. First came the pandemic and social distancing, then came the death of George Floyd and the response of the Black Lives Matter movement, both of which were imprinted on the lives of these students. This year was anything but dull, instead full of raw emotion and painful realizations of the fragility of the human condition and the extent to which we need one another. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for our students to chronicle their experiences — the good and the bad, the lessons learned, and ways in which they were forever changed by the events of the past four months. I invited all of my students to write an essay describing the ways in which these times had impacted their learning and their lives during or after their time at UCI. These are their voices. — Jessica Borelli , associate professor of psychological science

Becoming Socially Distant Through Technology: The Tech Contagion

essay about life in pandemic

The current state of affairs put the world on pause, but this pause gave me time to reflect on troubling matters. Time that so many others like me probably also desperately needed to heal without even knowing it. Sometimes it takes one’s world falling apart for the most beautiful mosaic to be built up from the broken pieces of wreckage. 

As the school year was coming to a close and summer was edging around the corner, I began reflecting on how people will spend their summer breaks if the country remains in its current state throughout the sunny season. Aside from living in the sunny beach state of California where people love their vitamin D and social festivities, I think some of the most damaging effects Covid-19 will have on us all has more to do with social distancing policies than with any inconveniences we now face due to the added precautions, despite how devastating it may feel that Disneyland is closed to all the local annual passholders or that the beaches may not be filled with sun-kissed California girls this summer. During this unprecedented time, I don’t think we should allow the rare opportunity we now have to be able to watch in real time how the effects of social distancing can impact our mental health. Before the pandemic, many of us were already engaging in a form of social distancing. Perhaps not the exact same way we are now practicing, but the technology that we have developed over recent years has led to a dramatic decline in our social contact and skills in general. 

The debate over whether we should remain quarantined during this time is not an argument I am trying to pursue. Instead, I am trying to encourage us to view this event as a unique time to study how social distancing can affect people’s mental health over a long period of time and with dramatic results due to the magnitude of the current issue. Although Covid-19 is new and unfamiliar to everyone, the isolation and separation we now face is not. For many, this type of behavior has already been a lifestyle choice for a long time. However, the current situation we all now face has allowed us to gain a more personal insight on how that experience feels due to the current circumstances. Mental illness continues to remain a prevalent problem throughout the world and for that reason could be considered a pandemic of a sort in and of itself long before the Covid-19 outbreak. 

One parallel that can be made between our current restrictions and mental illness reminds me in particular of hikikomori culture. Hikikomori is a phenomenon that originated in Japan but that has since spread internationally, now prevalent in many parts of the world, including the United States. Hikikomori is not a mental disorder but rather can appear as a symptom of a disorder. People engaging in hikikomori remain confined in their houses and often their rooms for an extended period of time, often over the course of many years. This action of voluntary confinement is an extreme form of withdrawal from society and self-isolation. Hikikomori affects a large percent of people in Japan yearly and the problem continues to become more widespread with increasing occurrences being reported around the world each year. While we know this problem has continued to increase, the exact number of people practicing hikikomori is unknown because there is a large amount of stigma surrounding the phenomenon that inhibits people from seeking help. This phenomenon cannot be written off as culturally defined because it is spreading to many parts of the world. With the technology we now have, and mental health issues on the rise and expected to increase even more so after feeling the effects of the current pandemic, I think we will definitely see a rise in the number of people engaging in this social isolation, especially with the increase in legitimate fears we now face that appear to justify the previously considered irrational fears many have associated with social gatherings. We now have the perfect sample of people to provide answers about how this form of isolation can affect people over time. 

Likewise, with the advancements we have made to technology not only is it now possible to survive without ever leaving the confines of your own home, but it also makes it possible for us to “fulfill” many of our social interaction needs. It’s very unfortunate, but in addition to the success we have gained through our advancements we have also experienced a great loss. With new technology, I am afraid that we no longer engage with others the way we once did. Although some may say the advancements are for the best, I wonder, at what cost? It is now commonplace to see a phone on the table during a business meeting or first date. Even worse is how many will feel inclined to check their phone during important or meaningful interactions they are having with people face to face. While our technology has become smarter, we have become dumber when it comes to social etiquette. As we all now constantly carry a mini computer with us everywhere we go, we have in essence replaced our best friends. We push others away subconsciously as we reach for our phones during conversations. We no longer remember phone numbers because we have them all saved in our phones. We find comfort in looking down at our phones during those moments of free time we have in public places before our meetings begin. These same moments were once the perfect time to make friends, filled with interactive banter. We now prefer to stare at other people on our phones for hours on end, and often live a sedentary lifestyle instead of going out and interacting with others ourselves. 

These are just a few among many issues the advances to technology led to long ago. We have forgotten how to practice proper tech-etiquette and we have been inadvertently practicing social distancing long before it was ever required. Now is a perfect time for us to look at the society we have become and how we incurred a different kind of pandemic long before the one we currently face. With time, as the social distancing regulations begin to lift, people may possibly begin to appreciate life and connecting with others more than they did before as a result of the unique experience we have shared in together while apart.

Maybe the world needed a time-out to remember how to appreciate what it had but forgot to experience. Life is to be lived through experience, not to be used as a pastime to observe and compare oneself with others. I’ll leave you with a simple reminder: never forget to take care and love more because in a world where life is often unpredictable and ever changing, one cannot risk taking time or loved ones for granted. With that, I bid you farewell, fellow comrades, like all else, this too shall pass, now go live your best life!

Privilege in a Pandemic 

essay about life in pandemic

Covid-19 has impacted millions of Americans who have been out of work for weeks, thus creating a financial burden. Without a job and the certainty of knowing when one will return to work, paying rent and utilities has been a problem for many. With unemployment on the rise, relying on unemployment benefits has become a necessity for millions of people. According to the Washington Post , unemployment rose to 14.7% in April which is considered to be the worst since the Great Depression. 

Those who are not worried about the financial aspect or the thought never crossed their minds have privilege. Merriam Webster defines privilege as “a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor.” Privilege can have a negative connotation. What you choose to do with your privilege is what matters. Talking about privilege can bring discomfort, but the discomfort it brings can also carry the benefit of drawing awareness to one’s privilege, which can lead the person to take steps to help others. 

I am a first-generation college student who recently transferred to a four-year university. When schools began to close, and students had to leave their on-campus housing, many lost their jobs.I was able to stay on campus because I live in an apartment. I am fortunate to still have a job, although the hours are minimal. My parents help pay for school expenses, including housing, tuition, and food. I do not have to worry about paying rent or how to pay for food because my parents are financially stable to help me. However, there are millions of college students who are not financially stable or do not have the support system I have. Here, I have the privilege and, thus, I am the one who can offer help to others. I may not have millions in funding, but volunteering for centers who need help is where I am able to help. Those who live in California can volunteer through Californians For All  or at food banks, shelter facilities, making calls to seniors, etc. 

I was not aware of my privilege during these times until I started reading more articles about how millions of people cannot afford to pay their rent, and landlords are starting to send notices of violations. Rather than feel guilty and be passive about it, I chose to put my privilege into a sense of purpose: Donating to nonprofits helping those affected by COVID-19, continuing to support local businesses, and supporting businesses who are donating profits to those affected by COVID-19.

My World is Burning 

essay about life in pandemic

As I write this, my friends are double checking our medical supplies and making plans to buy water and snacks to pass out at the next protest we are attending. We write down the number for the local bailout fund on our arms and pray that we’re lucky enough not to have to use it should things get ugly. We are part of a pivotal event, the kind of movement that will forever have a place in history. Yet, during this revolution, I have papers to write and grades to worry about, as I’m in the midst of finals. 

My professors have offered empty platitudes. They condemn the violence and acknowledge the stress and pain that so many of us are feeling, especially the additional weight that this carries for students of color. I appreciate their show of solidarity, but it feels meaningless when it is accompanied by requests to complete research reports and finalize presentations. Our world is on fire. Literally. On my social media feeds, I scroll through image after image of burning buildings and police cars in flames. How can I be asked to focus on school when my community is under siege? When police are continuing to murder black people, adding additional names to the ever growing list of their victims. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. David Mcatee. And, now, Rayshard Brooks. 

It already felt like the world was being asked of us when the pandemic started and classes continued. High academic expectations were maintained even when students now faced the challenges of being locked down, often trapped in small spaces with family or roommates. Now we are faced with another public health crisis in the form of police violence and once again it seems like educational faculty are turning a blind eye to the impact that this has on the students. I cannot study for exams when I am busy brushing up on my basic first-aid training, taking notes on the best techniques to stop heavy bleeding and treat chemical burns because at the end of the day, if these protests turn south, I will be entering a warzone. Even when things remain peaceful, there is an ugliness that bubbles just below the surface. When beginning the trek home, I have had armed members of the National Guard follow me and my friends. While kneeling in silence, I have watched police officers cock their weapons and laugh, pointing out targets in the crowd. I have been emailing my professors asking for extensions, trying to explain that if something is turned in late, it could be the result of me being detained or injured. I don’t want to be penalized for trying to do what I wholeheartedly believe is right. 

I have spent my life studying and will continue to study these institutions that have been so instrumental in the oppression and marginalization of black and indigenous communities. Yet, now that I have the opportunity to be on the frontlines actively fighting for the change our country so desperately needs, I feel that this study is more of a hindrance than a help to the cause. Writing papers and reading books can only take me so far and I implore that professors everywhere recognize that requesting their students split their time and energy between finals and justice is an impossible ask.

Opportunity to Serve

essay about life in pandemic

Since the start of the most drastic change of our lives, I have had the privilege of helping feed more than 200 different families in the Santa Ana area and even some neighboring cities. It has been an immense pleasure seeing the sheer joy and happiness of families as they come to pick up their box of food from our site, as well as a $50 gift card to Northgate, a grocery store in Santa Ana. Along with donating food and helping feed families, the team at the office, including myself, have dedicated this time to offering psychosocial and mental health check-ups for the families we serve. 

Every day I go into the office I start my day by gathering files of our families we served between the months of January, February, and March and calling them to check on how they are doing financially, mentally, and how they have been affected by COVID-19. As a side project, I have been putting together Excel spreadsheets of all these families’ struggles and finding a way to turn their situation into a success story to share with our board at PY-OCBF and to the community partners who make all of our efforts possible. One of the things that has really touched me while working with these families is how much of an impact this nonprofit organization truly has on family’s lives. I have spoken with many families who I just call to check up on and it turns into an hour call sharing about how much of a change they have seen in their child who went through our program. Further, they go on to discuss that because of our program, their children have a different perspective on the drugs they were using before and the group of friends they were hanging out with. Of course, the situation is different right now as everyone is being told to stay at home; however, there are those handful of kids who still go out without asking for permission, increasing the likelihood they might contract this disease and pass it to the rest of the family. We are working diligently to provide support for these parents and offering advice to talk to their kids in order to have a serious conversation with their kids so that they feel heard and validated. 

Although the novel Coronavirus has impacted the lives of millions of people not just on a national level, but on a global level, I feel that in my current position, it has opened doors for me that would have otherwise not presented themselves. Fortunately, I have been offered a full-time position at the Project Youth Orange County Bar Foundation post-graduation that I have committed to already. This invitation came to me because the organization received a huge grant for COVID-19 relief to offer to their staff and since I was already part-time, they thought I would be a good fit to join the team once mid-June comes around. I was very excited and pleased to be recognized for the work I have done at the office in front of all staff. I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. I will work even harder to provide for the community and to continue changing the lives of adolescents, who have steered off the path of success. I will use my time as a full-time employee to polish my resume, not forgetting that the main purpose of my moving to Irvine was to become a scholar and continue the education that my parents couldn’t attain. I will still be looking for ways to get internships with other fields within criminology. One specific interest that I have had since being an intern and a part-time employee in this organization is the work of the Orange County Coroner’s Office. I don’t exactly know what enticed me to find it appealing as many would say that it is an awful job in nature since it relates to death and seeing people in their worst state possible. However, I feel that the only way for me to truly know if I want to pursue such a career in forensic science will be to just dive into it and see where it takes me. 

I can, without a doubt, say that the Coronavirus has impacted me in a way unlike many others, and for that I am extremely grateful. As I continue working, I can also state that many people are becoming more and more hopeful as time progresses. With people now beginning to say Stage Two of this stay-at-home order is about to allow retailers and other companies to begin doing curbside delivery, many families can now see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Let’s Do Better

essay about life in pandemic

This time of the year is meant to be a time of celebration; however, it has been difficult to feel proud or excited for many of us when it has become a time of collective mourning and sorrow, especially for the Black community. There has been an endless amount of pain, rage, and helplessness that has been felt throughout our nation because of the growing list of Black lives we have lost to violence and brutality.

To honor the lives that we have lost, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Trayon Martin, and all of the other Black lives that have been taken away, may they Rest in Power.

Throughout my college experience, I have become more exposed to the various identities and the upbringings of others, which led to my own self-reflection on my own privileged and marginalized identities. I identify as Colombian, German, and Mexican; however navigating life as a mixed race, I have never been able to identify or have one culture more salient than the other. I am visibly white-passing and do not hold any strong ties with any of my ethnic identities, which used to bring me feelings of guilt and frustration, for I would question whether or not I could be an advocate for certain communities, and whether or not I could claim the identity of a woman of color. In the process of understanding my positionality, I began to wonder what space I belonged in, where I could speak up, and where I should take a step back for others to speak. I found myself in a constant theme of questioning what is my narrative and slowly began to realize that I could not base it off lone identities and that I have had the privilege to move through life without my identities defining who I am. Those initial feelings of guilt and confusion transformed into growth, acceptance, and empowerment.

This journey has driven me to educate myself more about the social inequalities and injustices that people face and to focus on what I can do for those around me. It has motivated me to be more culturally responsive and competent, so that I am able to best advocate for those around me. Through the various roles I have worked in, I have been able to listen to a variety of communities’ narratives and experiences, which has allowed me to extend my empathy to these communities while also pushing me to continue educating myself on how I can best serve and empower them. By immersing myself amongst different communities, I have been given the honor of hearing others’ stories and experiences, which has inspired me to commit myself to support and empower others.

I share my story of navigating through my privileged and marginalized identities in hopes that it encourages others to explore their own identities. This journey is not an easy one, and it is an ongoing learning process that will come with various mistakes. I have learned that with facing our privileges comes feelings of guilt, discomfort, and at times, complacency. It is very easy to become ignorant when we are not affected by different issues, but I challenge those who read this to embrace the discomfort. With these emotions, I have found it important to reflect on the source of discomfort and guilt, for although they are a part of the process, in taking the steps to become more aware of the systemic inequalities around us, understanding the source of discomfort can better inform us on how we perpetuate these systemic inequalities. If we choose to embrace ignorance, we refuse to acknowledge the systems that impact marginalized communities and refuse to honestly and openly hear cries for help. If we choose our own comfort over the lives of those being affected every day, we can never truly honor, serve, or support these communities.

I challenge any non-Black person, including myself, to stop remaining complacent when injustices are committed. We need to consistently recognize and acknowledge how the Black community is disproportionately affected in every injustice experienced and call out anti-Blackness in every role, community, and space we share. We need to keep ourselves and others accountable when we make mistakes or fall back into patterns of complacency or ignorance. We need to continue educating ourselves instead of relying on the emotional labor of the Black community to continuously educate us on the history of their oppressions. We need to collectively uplift and empower one another to heal and rise against injustice. We need to remember that allyship ends when action ends.

To the Black community, you are strong. You deserve to be here. The recent events are emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting, and the need for rest to take care of your mental, physical, and emotional well-being are at an all time high. If you are able, take the time to regain your energy, feel every emotion, and remind yourself of the power you have inside of you. You are not alone.

The Virus That Makes You Forget

essay about life in pandemic

Following Jan. 1 of 2020 many of my classmates and I continued to like, share, and forward the same meme. The meme included any image but held the same phrase: I can see 2020. For many of us, 2020 was a beacon of hope. For the Class of 2020, this meant walking on stage in front of our families. Graduation meant becoming an adult, finding a job, or going to graduate school. No matter what we were doing in our post-grad life, we were the new rising stars ready to take on the world with a positive outlook no matter what the future held. We felt that we had a deal with the universe that we were about to be noticed for our hard work, our hardships, and our perseverance.

Then March 17 of 2020 came to pass with California Gov. Newman ordering us to stay at home, which we all did. However, little did we all know that the world we once had open to us would only be forgotten when we closed our front doors.

Life became immediately uncertain and for many of us, that meant graduation and our post-graduation plans including housing, careers, education, food, and basic standards of living were revoked! We became the forgotten — a place from which many of us had attempted to rise by attending university. The goals that we were told we could set and the plans that we were allowed to make — these were crushed before our eyes.

Eighty days before graduation, in the first several weeks of quarantine, I fell extremely ill; both unfortunately and luckily, I was isolated. All of my roommates had moved out of the student apartments leaving me with limited resources, unable to go to the stores to pick up medicine or food, and with insufficient health coverage to afford a doctor until my throat was too swollen to drink water. For nearly three weeks, I was stuck in bed, I was unable to apply to job deadlines, reach out to family, and have contact with the outside world. I was forgotten.

Forty-five days before graduation, I had clawed my way out of illness and was catching up on an honors thesis about media depictions of sexual exploitation within the American political system, when I was relayed the news that democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault. However, when reporting this news to close friends who had been devastated and upset by similar claims against past politicians, they all were too tired and numb from the quarantine to care. Just as I had written hours before reading the initial story, history was repeating, and it was not only I who COVID-19 had forgotten, but now survivors of violence.

After this revelation, I realize the silencing factor that COVID-19 has. Not only does it have the power to terminate the voices of our older generations, but it has the power to silence and make us forget the voices of every generation. Maybe this is why social media usage has gone up, why we see people creating new social media accounts, posting more, attempting to reach out to long lost friends. We do not want to be silenced, moreover, we cannot be silenced. Silence means that we have been forgotten and being forgotten is where injustice and uncertainty occurs. By using social media, pressing like on a post, or even sending a hate message, means that someone cares and is watching what you are doing. If there is no interaction, I am stuck in the land of indifference.

This is a place that I, and many others, now reside, captured and uncertain. In 2020, my plan was to graduate Cum Laude, dean's honor list, with three honors programs, three majors, and with research and job experience that stretched over six years. I would then go into my first year of graduate school, attempting a dual Juris Doctorate. I would be spending my time experimenting with new concepts, new experiences, and new relationships. My life would then be spent giving a microphone to survivors of domestic violence and sex crimes. However, now the plan is wiped clean, instead I sit still bound to graduate in 30 days with no home to stay, no place to work, and no future education to come back to. I would say I am overly qualified, but pandemic makes me lost in a series of names and masked faces.

Welcome to My Cage: The Pandemic and PTSD

essay about life in pandemic

When I read the campuswide email notifying students of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the coronavirus pandemic, I was sitting on my couch practicing a research presentation I was going to give a few hours later. For a few minutes, I sat there motionless, trying to digest the meaning of the words as though they were from a language other than my own, familiar sounds strung together in way that was wholly unintelligible to me. I tried but failed to make sense of how this could affect my life. After the initial shock had worn off, I mobilized quickly, snapping into an autopilot mode of being I knew all too well. I began making mental checklists, sharing the email with my friends and family, half of my brain wondering if I should make a trip to the grocery store to stockpile supplies and the other half wondering how I was supposed take final exams in the midst of so much uncertainty. The most chilling realization was knowing I had to wait powerlessly as the fate of the world unfolded, frozen with anxiety as I figured out my place in it all.

These feelings of powerlessness and isolation are familiar bedfellows for me. Early October of 2015, shortly after beginning my first year at UCI, I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Despite having had years of psychological treatment for my condition, including Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Retraining, the flashbacks, paranoia, and nightmares still emerge unwarranted. People have referred to the pandemic as a collective trauma. For me, the pandemic has not only been a collective trauma, it has also been the reemergence of a personal trauma. The news of the pandemic and the implications it has for daily life triggered a reemergence of symptoms that were ultimately ignited by the overwhelming sense of helplessness that lies in waiting, as I suddenly find myself navigating yet another situation beyond my control. Food security, safety, and my sense of self have all been shaken by COVID-19.

The first few weeks after UCI transitioned into remote learning and the governor issued the stay-at-home order, I hardly got any sleep. My body was cycling through hypervigilance and derealization, and my sleep was interrupted by intrusive nightmares oscillating between flashbacks and frightening snippets from current events. Any coping methods I had developed through hard-won efforts over the past few years — leaving my apartment for a change of scenery, hanging out with friends, going to the gym — were suddenly made inaccessible to me due to the stay-at-home orders, closures of non-essential businesses, and many of my friends breaking their campus leases to move back to their family homes. So for me, learning to cope during COVID-19 quarantine means learning to function with my re-emerging PTSD symptoms and without my go-to tools. I must navigate my illness in a rapidly evolving world, one where some of my internalized fears, such as running out of food and living in an unsafe world, are made progressively more external by the minute and broadcasted on every news platform; fears that I could no longer escape, being confined in the tight constraints of my studio apartment’s walls. I cannot shake the devastating effects of sacrifice that I experience as all sense of control has been stripped away from me.

However, amidst my mental anguish, I have realized something important—experiencing these same PTSD symptoms during a global pandemic feels markedly different than it did years ago. Part of it might be the passage of time and the growth in my mindset, but there is something else that feels very different. Currently, there is widespread solidarity and support for all of us facing the chaos of COVID-19, whether they are on the frontlines of the fight against the illness or they are self-isolating due to new rules, restrictions, and risks. This was in stark contrast to what it was like to have a mental disorder. The unity we all experience as a result of COVID-19 is one I could not have predicted. I am not the only student heartbroken over a cancelled graduation, I am not the only student who is struggling to adapt to remote learning, and I am not the only person in this world who has to make sacrifices.

Between observations I’ve made on social media and conversations with my friends and classmates, this time we are all enduring great pain and stress as we attempt to adapt to life’s challenges. As a Peer Assistant for an Education class, I have heard from many students of their heartache over the remote learning model, how difficult it is to study in a non-academic environment, and how unmotivated they have become this quarter. This is definitely something I can relate to; as of late, it has been exceptionally difficult to find motivation and put forth the effort for even simple activities as a lack of energy compounds the issue and hinders basic needs. However, the willingness of people to open up about their distress during the pandemic is unlike the self-imposed social isolation of many people who experience mental illness regularly. Something this pandemic has taught me is that I want to live in a world where mental illness receives more support and isn’t so taboo and controversial. Why is it that we are able to talk about our pain, stress, and mental illness now, but aren’t able to talk about it outside of a global pandemic? People should be able to talk about these hardships and ask for help, much like during these circumstances.

It has been nearly three months since the coronavirus crisis was declared a pandemic. I still have many bad days that I endure where my symptoms can be overwhelming. But somehow, during my good days — and some days, merely good moments — I can appreciate the resilience I have acquired over the years and the common ground I share with others who live through similar circumstances. For veterans of trauma and mental illness, this isn’t the first time we are experiencing pain in an extreme and disastrous way. This is, however, the first time we are experiencing it with the rest of the world. This strange new feeling of solidarity as I read and hear about the experiences of other people provides some small comfort as I fight my way out of bed each day. As we fight to survive this pandemic, I hope to hold onto this feeling of togetherness and acceptance of pain, so that it will always be okay for people to share their struggles. We don’t know what the world will look like days, months, or years from now, but I hope that we can cultivate such a culture to make life much easier for people coping with mental illness.

A Somatic Pandemonium in Quarantine

essay about life in pandemic

I remember hearing that our brains create the color magenta all on their own. 

When I was younger I used to run out of my third-grade class because my teacher was allergic to the mold and sometimes would vomit in the trash can. My dad used to tell me that I used to always have to have something in my hands, later translating itself into the form of a hair tie around my wrist.

Sometimes, I think about the girl who used to walk on her tippy toes. medial and lateral nerves never planted, never grounded. We were the same in this way. My ability to be firmly planted anywhere was also withered. 

Was it from all the times I panicked? Or from the time I ran away and I blistered the soles of my feet 'til they were black from the summer pavement? Emetophobia. 

I felt it in the shower, dressing itself from the crown of my head down to the soles of my feet, noting the feeling onto my white board in an attempt to solidify it’s permanence.

As I breathed in the chemical blue transpiring from the Expo marker, everything was more defined. I laid down and when I looked up at the starlet lamp I had finally felt centered. Still. No longer fleeting. The grooves in the lamps glass forming a spiral of what felt to me like an artificial landscape of transcendental sparks. 

She’s back now, magenta, though I never knew she left or even ever was. Somehow still subconsciously always known. I had been searching for her in the tremors.

I can see her now in the daphnes, the golden rays from the sun reflecting off of the bark on the trees and the red light that glowed brighter, suddenly the town around me was warmer. A melting of hues and sharpened saturation that was apparent and reminded of the smell of oranges.

I threw up all of the carrots I ate just before. The trauma that my body kept as a memory of things that may or may not go wrong and the times that I couldn't keep my legs from running. Revelations bring memories bringing anxieties from fear and panic released from my body as if to say “NO LONGER!” 

I close my eyes now and my mind's eye is, too, more vivid than ever before. My inner eyelids lit up with orange undertones no longer a solid black, neurons firing, fire. Not the kind that burns you but the kind that can light up a dull space. Like the wick of a tea-lit candle. Magenta doesn’t exist. It is perception. A construct made of light waves, blue and red.

Demolition. Reconstruction. I walk down the street into this new world wearing my new mask, somatic senses tingling and I think to myself “Houston, I think we’ve just hit equilibrium.”

How COVID-19 Changed My Senior Year

essay about life in pandemic

During the last two weeks of Winter quarter, I watched the emails pour in. Spring quarter would be online, facilities were closing, and everyone was recommended to return home to their families, if possible. I resolved to myself that I would not move back home; I wanted to stay in my apartment, near my boyfriend, near my friends, and in the one place I had my own space. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, things continued to change quickly. Soon I learned my roommate/best friend would be cancelling her lease and moving back up to Northern California. We had made plans for my final quarter at UCI, as I would be graduating in June while she had another year, but all of the sudden, that dream was gone. In one whirlwind of a day, we tried to cram in as much of our plans as we could before she left the next day for good. There are still so many things – like hiking, going to museums, and showing her around my hometown – we never got to cross off our list.

Then, my boyfriend decided he would also be moving home, three hours away. Most of my sorority sisters were moving home, too. I realized if I stayed at school, I would be completely alone. My mom had been encouraging me to move home anyway, but I was reluctant to return to a house I wasn’t completely comfortable in. As the pandemic became more serious, gentle encouragement quickly turned into demands. I had to cancel my lease and move home.

I moved back in with my parents at the end of Spring Break; I never got to say goodbye to most of my friends, many of whom I’ll likely never see again – as long as the virus doesn’t change things, I’m supposed to move to New York over the summer to begin a PhD program in Criminal Justice. Just like that, my time at UCI had come to a close. No lasts to savor; instead I had piles of things to regret. In place of a final quarter filled with memorable lasts, such as the senior banquet or my sorority’s senior preference night, I’m left with a laundry list of things I missed out on. I didn’t get to look around the campus one last time like I had planned; I never got to take my graduation pictures in front of the UC Irvine sign. Commencement had already been cancelled. The lights had turned off in the theatre before the movie was over. I never got to find out how the movie ended.

Transitioning to a remote learning system wasn’t too bad, but I found that some professors weren’t adjusting their courses to the difficulties many students were facing. It turned out to be difficult to stay motivated, especially for classes that are pre-recorded and don’t have any face-to-face interaction. It’s hard to make myself care; I’m in my last few weeks ever at UCI, but it feels like I’m already in summer. School isn’t real, my classes aren’t real. I still put in the effort, but I feel like I’m not getting much out of my classes.

The things I had been looking forward to this quarter are gone; there will be no Undergraduate Research Symposium, where I was supposed to present two projects. My amazing internship with the US Postal Inspection Service is over prematurely and I never got to properly say goodbye to anyone I met there. I won’t receive recognition for the various awards and honors I worked so hard to achieve.

And I’m one of the lucky ones! I feel guilty for feeling bad about my situation, when I know there are others who have it much, much worse. I am like that quintessential spoiled child, complaining while there are essential workers working tirelessly, people with health concerns constantly fearing for their safety, and people dying every day. Yet knowing that doesn't help me from feeling I was robbed of my senior experience, something I worked very hard to achieve. I know it’s not nearly as important as what many others are going through. But nevertheless, this is my situation. I was supposed to be enjoying this final quarter with my friends and preparing to move on, not be stuck at home, grappling with my mental health and hiding out in my room to get some alone time from a family I don’t always get along with. And while I know it’s more difficult out there for many others, it’s still difficult for me.

The thing that stresses me out most is the uncertainty. Uncertainty for the future – how long will this pandemic last? How many more people have to suffer before things go back to “normal” – whatever that is? How long until I can see my friends and family again? And what does this mean for my academic future? Who knows what will happen between now and then? All that’s left to do is wait and hope that everything will work out for the best.

Looking back over my last few months at UCI, I wish I knew at the time that I was experiencing my lasts; it feels like I took so much for granted. If there is one thing this has all made me realize, it’s that nothing is certain. Everything we expect, everything we take for granted – none of it is a given. Hold on to what you have while you have it, and take the time to appreciate the wonderful things in life, because you never know when it will be gone.

Physical Distancing

essay about life in pandemic

Thirty days have never felt so long. April has been the longest month of the year. I have been through more in these past three months than in the past three years. The COVID-19 outbreak has had a huge impact on both physical and social well-being of a lot of Americans, including me. Stress has been governing the lives of so many civilians, in particular students and workers. In addition to causing a lack of motivation in my life, quarantine has also brought a wave of anxiety.

My life changed the moment the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the government announced social distancing. My busy daily schedule, running from class to class and meeting to meeting, morphed into identical days, consisting of hour after hour behind a cold computer monitor. Human interaction and touch improve trust, reduce fear and increases physical well-being. Imagine the effects of removing the human touch and interaction from midst of society. Humans are profoundly social creatures. I cannot function without interacting and connecting with other people. Even daily acquaintances have an impact on me that is only noticeable once removed. As a result, the COVID-19 outbreak has had an extreme impact on me beyond direct symptoms and consequences of contracting the virus itself.

It was not until later that month, when out of sheer boredom I was scrolling through my call logs and I realized that I had called my grandmother more than ever. This made me realize that quarantine had created some positive impacts on my social interactions as well. This period of time has created an opportunity to check up on and connect with family and peers more often than we were able to. Even though we might be connecting solely through a screen, we are not missing out on being socially connected. Quarantine has taught me to value and prioritize social connection, and to recognize that we can find this type of connection not only through in-person gatherings, but also through deep heart to heart connections. Right now, my weekly Zoom meetings with my long-time friends are the most important events in my week. In fact, I have taken advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with many of my old friends and have actually had more meaningful conversations with them than before the isolation.

This situation is far from ideal. From my perspective, touch and in-person interaction is essential; however, we must overcome all difficulties that life throws at us with the best we are provided with. Therefore, perhaps we should take this time to re-align our motives by engaging in things that are of importance to us. I learned how to dig deep and find appreciation for all the small talks, gatherings, and face-to-face interactions. I have also realized that friendships are not only built on the foundation of physical presence but rather on meaningful conversations you get to have, even if they are through a cold computer monitor. My realization came from having more time on my hands and noticing the shift in conversations I was having with those around me. After all, maybe this isolation isn’t “social distancing”, but rather “physical distancing” until we meet again.

Follow us on social media

How We Live Now

painting of woman draped in fabric with mask off at table with coffee and sandwich

All products featured on Allure are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

To be alive is to experience stress. Or, to be more dramatic: Life is suffering. But none of us could have prepared for the stress — abject, encompassing — that 2020 would bring. In January, America began the year with the baseline anxiety that the killing of an Iranian general by a U.S. drone strike might plunge us into World War III. Things generally went south from there.

Now, as COVID-19 works its way through the country, so does another ailment. Risk factors include sudden changes in routine, social isolation, fear of getting sick or making others sick, and financial insecurity. Symptoms range from nausea to hives. To get a better picture of how the pandemic has shifted the American psyche, I spoke with therapists across the country — and every provider I asked said mental health conditions like chronic stress, anxiety, and depression have spiked since March.

Stress isn't always this expansive and threatening. But when you factor in a global health crisis that adds emotional and physical stress and subtracts many coping mechanisms, it can manifest in new, seemingly unconquerable ways. "If you've had a hard day, you can't just go out for a run or head to a friend's house," says Austin-based therapist Grace Dowd . "These things might not be safe."

Losing your hobby or a familiar routine is enough to provoke grief, but probably nothing is as profound as the loss of connection with other people, of all the nuance and support of in-person interaction. Now, deciding whether to see a friend feels a lot like being forced to make a choice between your physical and mental health.

"There are often no right answers, but the consequences [of every decision] feel so high," says Ali Mattu , a clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay area. "Everything feels high stakes."

There’s a cruel feedback loop to chronic stress: Anxiety can trigger physical symptoms, like nausea or a sore throat, which can create new anxieties about catching the virus and/or contributing to a pandemic. Like body, like mind: All of this persistent, mounting stress in our everyday lives can exacerbate existing mental health conditions, or trigger new ones.

Jessica Harris, a therapist based in Maryland, says she’s seeing more cases of anxiety and depression among her clientele; plus, people who have been sick themselves or lost a loved one to COVID-19 are showing signs of trauma. According to Mattu, chronic stress is also known to impact physical health, even compromising the immune system. And the strain is worse for Black Americans during yet another public referendum on police violence and systemic racism.

Ednesha Saulsbury , a therapist at Be Well Psychotherapy in New York City, reports that many of her Black clients are dealing with PTSD symptoms, anxiety, hypervigilance, and avoidance since the death of George Floyd in May.

Apologies if reading this has so far created more anxiety in your own life, but we promise, there is good news: Stress has spiked for most of us, but therapists say personal growth has too. For example, some people are taking stock of their lives and rearranging priorities to match their values. Dowd says a crisis of this scale can enable people to pull the trigger on major life decisions they had been putting off, such as moving in with a partner, quitting a job they hate for a more satisfying one, or getting married or divorced. She chalks this up to people having ongoing feelings of restlessness and being "stuck."

"The pandemic is the great accelerant," she says, citing a strange blend of boredom and anxiety that can fast-track plans to fruition. A sense of hopeful desperation amid a complete absence of certainty is also leading people to rekindle old spiritual practices, or start new ones. Mindfulness practices , meditation, and yoga — especially practiced first thing in the morning as a tone-setter for the inevitably stressful day ahead — help people be more present, even taking the edge off anxiety symptoms, Saulsbury says.

More good news: Therapy has become a bigger priority than ever. Early on in the pandemic, that wasn’t necessarily the case: Saulsbury says numerous clients dropped out of therapy due to financial insecurity or the lack of privacy in tiny New York apartments (at least one of her patients had to conduct therapy in the bathroom). But several months in, the tide has turned. Now, she says, more people are willing, even desperate, to talk through their problems.

Everyone has a different story, but a common theme in session is self-compassion. People beat themselves up about not achieving at work the way they did pre-pandemic, or for being "bad friends" or "bad partners," which creates a sense of ongoing, low-level guilt. Both Dowd and Saulsbury say they focus on normalizing disappointment and grief — these are, as they say, unprecedented times — and encouraging people, in general, to take it easier on themselves.

Vote in Our 2024 Readers' Choice Awards Poll

By Allure Editors

Taylor Swift’s Favorite Perfume Got Me Back Into Fragrance After Not Wearing It for 5 Years

By Dory Zayas

Florence Pugh Remixed Princess Diana's Mixie Haircut for 2024

By Marci Robin

With all the unexpected pain and confusion 2020 brought, it’s easy to view the year as a wash. But Saulsbury says she doesn’t see it that way and neither do an astounding number of her clients. "I talk to a lot of people who say 2020 helped them sit with their feelings in a way they hadn’t before, to figure out what they wanted, and to figure out what’s important to them," she says. "So many people have lost their lives. It makes sense that we’re thinking about ours in a different way." Or, in other words: After a long night, dawn is inevitable. — Ashley Abramson is a writer in Minneapolis.

In a June interview , Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom estimated that the COVID-19 pandemic had caused the layoffs of 3 in 10 Americans, asked 2 out of 10 to risk their lives for "essential" business, and pushed the grateful others to the gauzy line between work-life balance. As organizations in our society — corporations, universities, government agencies — whittle down budgets, American workers feel pressure to make themselves as indispensable as possible. For those who previously worked office jobs (even as that adjective becomes less and less useful) that pressure is more than likely bearing down on them at their kitchen table or bedroom desk. A study published this past summer that observed 3.1 million employees found that workdays under lockdown had become almost an hour longer on average — and that was just a couple of months into what’s sure to be a lasting shift.

Lasting, because this whole setup is... actually working pretty well. So are we: A May survey by Global Workplace Analytics and workplace consulting firm Iometrics found that around 80 percent of employees believe they’re more productive when working from home (and 70 percent of managers say it’s either the same or better). Seventy-six percent want to work from home at least one day a week even after the pandemic is sorted out, and most would prefer at least two days at home, with fewer than 10 percent itching to return to their cubicle full-time.

But having your home suddenly transformed into your workspace can create problems for those of us hoping to delineate, instead of blur, our work-life balance. In the before times, most people were expected to work during the hours when they were in the office. When your office is also your house, does that mean you’re on the clock 24/7? Working from home might mean you are less distracted by corporate responsibilities, but most companies are ill-equipped to unburden their employees of their home responsibilities, which did not magically vanish when they were asked to turn their living room into a Zoom set. 

"You're forced to engage in multiple roles," explains Tessa West , an associate professor in the psychology department at New York University. "You’'e a mother, you're a spouse, you're taking care of a dog, you're also trying to work — chronic stress really piles up." (According to a report from Boston Consulting Group, parents in the U.S. are spending nearly twice as much time managing chores and schooling, with mothers devoting 15 more hours per week on average than fathers.)

One way to attempt some sort of physical barrier between work and nonwork hours is to carve out a home office, even if it’s just a corner of a room. Remote work support is something Anita Kamouri , vice president and cofounder of Iometrics, is adamant that companies need to provide for remote employees: "You can't just be sitting at a kitchen table for eight hours a day." California, Iowa, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., all have labor laws that say companies must pay for "necessary expenditures" for employees to do their jobs from home, though what counts as "necessary" varies widely depending on your position — and has likely changed since the pandemic.

Once that company-funded (best of luck!) home office is set up, it's on employees to manage their own time. West and Kamouri agree that flexible workers who are good at multitasking and don't get distracted by "chronic uncertainty" will most easily thrive in our new reality. Their suggestion is as straightforward as it is effective: Make a daily schedule. It's the only way to keep yourself on track and ensure your work time doesn't entirely bleed into your personal time.

But even with the most rigid of boundaries, a crisis of this scale amplifies the idea of "work" beyond what you do for money. For essential and employed contingents , its associated stress can take on monstrous new forms: the fear of getting sick, of losing a paycheck, of losing a home. At this moment, work transcends what we do for money. It's how we get through each day. — Kara McGrath is Allure.com’s deputy editor.

woman staring at herself in the mirror in a bath dyeing her hair

On the second day of June, Instagram was swarmed with black squares in the name of solidarity, which, oddly enough, made a spectacle of a movement, but not in the best light (or filter, rather). Pitch-black boxes — intended to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter campaign in response to the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery — flooded the platform, effectively drowning out the voices of organizers and protesters.

The BlackLivesMatter hashtag, and indeed parts of the movement, fell victim to a mass gesture of performative activism, which gave nothing to the minority forced to social distance during one of the most significant political times in their lives. What we have known about social media became heartbreakingly clear: People were interested in change, but they were more interested in appearing interested.

#BlackoutTuesday did nothing to relieve the traumas of racism . It did ignite a discussion about what constitutes protest. Social media is reactionary. It prioritizes immediate user responses to everything from cute cat videos to racial injustice and socioeconomic inequity. The Movement for Black Lives has helped illuminate centuries of deeply entrenched American racism. It is impossible to respond and synthesize that quickly. Hiring a graphic designer to crank out a social post containing a Black hand "standing together" with a white one is not enough. The Black community has to be seen, heard, and, in some cases, hired to work toward actual change. Everybody lives on the internet. But the work happens in the real world. — Jennet Jusu is a writer and graphic designer in Brooklyn.

It’s 4:45 p.m. on a Wednesday. Specifically, it’s 4:45 p.m. on the 29th Wednesday I've spent working from home. My gaze floats to the bar cart in my living room-slash-office. I wonder if I'm still technically on the clock, but then remember there no longer is a clock. Some days I wake up at the crack of dawn and crash by sundown; other days I struggle to be up and dressed for a Zoom call at 9 a.m., but then work well into the evening. So if time is merely a construct, does that mean happy hour is now... any hour? (Reader, I poured myself a glass of Good Clean Wines ' red.)

According to data from Drizly, an online platform through which you can order all manner of alcohol straight to your door, the answer is yes. During 2019, 63 percent of orders were placed between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. But this year, just 54 percent of orders were placed during those typically "happy" hours. And from early morning to late night, the orders were much, much larger: The average value of a single order increased by nearly 50 percent between April and June as lockdowns took hold across the country. Drizly experienced a 136 percent increase in customers during that same quarter.

Those numbers suggest a U-turn in the way we collectively drink. Before the pandemic, the sober-curious movement — the premise of which is controlled, conscious consumption — was on an upward trajectory, fueled by social media-friendly initiatives like Dry January and Sober October. Of course, it's hard to say how people are consuming in the confines of their own home, even if we can track when and how much alcohol is delivered to their doorstep. But people were certainly talking a lot about only drinking a little.

Based on an informal poll of my friends and my feeds, that talk has largely ceased. It's no secret that people experiencing acute stress may be more likely to seek out substances like alcohol that might help them deal with it. And when stress is accompanied (and perhaps caused) by a warping of the very concept of time, well, as many of us have learned, that likelihood increases. "I think it's a combination of stress and autonomy. Without our normal routine to rely on, we might see ourselves behave in new, out-of-character ways," says Ursula Whiteside , a clinical psychologist with the University of Washington in Seattle and CEO of NowMattersNow.org. "A lot of the time, we stay on track because we have somewhere to be and something to do, but so much of that structure is gone."

And even when there’s a Zoom meeting at 3 p.m., if you turn off your webcam, you're pretty much on your own. "Alcohol consumption is something that's so personal and at the same time ingrained in many, many aspects of life, ranging from celebration to devastation," says Hilary Sheinbaum , a New York City-based writer and author of The Dry Challenge. "I've talked to friends who have consumed more alcohol in the past few months than ever before; [but] on the other hand, some have been drinking less because they have fewer opportunities to [do so] in social situations."

If you are in the former camp, consider exploring online resources provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism . "In general, any increase in drinking during the pandemic could be a cause for concern," says George F. Koob , the organization’s director, "particularly if the increase stems from an attempt to cope with the stress and anxiety associated with the crisis."

The urge to sip something as the sun sets over your home office might best be satiated by a new wave of nonalcoholic and lower-ABV (alcohol by volume) beverages, all of which still have feel-good vibes. There’s Ghia , the nonalcoholic aperitif launched by former Glossier executive Mélanie Masarin , which packs botanicals like elderflower, ginger, and rosemary extracts into one aesthetically pleasing bottle. Recess peddles what is essentially souped-up sparkling water, bursting with buzzy ingredients like hemp extract (for calming) and ginseng (for focus). The brand Kin ’s "euphoric" cocktails are dosed with nootropics, compounds that may support cognitive function.

Lower-ABV options include hard kombucha from brands like Kombrewcha and Jiant , and Wild Arc Farm ’s piquette, a fresh, fizzy take on white wine (with a lot less of the white wine). Cheers! There’s something for everybody. — Dianna Mazzone is Allure’s senior beauty editor.

woman draped in fabric with two babies dressed as angels at laptop

Global events have always influenced the way humans groom, usually in unpredictable ways. During WWII, beauty was a propaganda tool . Women were urged to wear makeup as a sign of patriotism, a way to maintain their femininity while working jobs that were traditionally filled by men, and as a means to lift the spirits of husbands and brothers and male strangers fighting overseas. Global hardships always impact the beauty industry and, in return, how we take care of ourselves.

For the first time in decades, the beauty industry is poised to shrink 15 percent overall , undoing years of growth in a fraction of that time. In March we were instructed on what was essential to live; beauty was not on the list. Malls, department stores, and stand-alone beauty retailers turned off their lights. Local, neighborhood beauty supply stores, which often carry essential supplies beyond synthetic hair and lip gloss, also closed. As we prepared to limit trips to the grocery store, we took stock and used what we had in our beauty cabinets. We canceled our hair appointments. We had to reorient ourselves.

Theresa Schneider, an account manager in Cincinnati, and one of many who had to sever her aesthetic rituals, is adjusting how she takes care of herself in a virtual work world where she's still expected to look presentable for Zoom meetings. "Through these video experiences, I've had to become comfortable ‘in the skin I’m in,'" she says. "But I miss chatting it up with my hairdresser and the amazing shampoo head and neck massages. They are not the same when you do it yourself."

Salons are feeling her absence. Soaring online sales for nail polish and hair color suggest that people are primping in private. Salons are trying their best (many, if not all, working at reduced capacity), but finding it impossible to forecast their futures. Some Black women, in particular, have taken this opportunity to play at home and experiment with styles they rarely had time to try in the not-so-distant past. Samira Ibrahim, a marketing consultant in Los Angeles, used to get braids done every two to three months, but is doing her natural hair for the first time in a long while. "To be honest, I think a lot of it has to do with the respectability politics of workplaces," she says of having the space to reconsider her hair. "I've been way more relaxed." (She's referring to her hair, but still — what a phrase to say in 2020!)

With the notable exceptions of eye and brow makeup, cosmetics sales are down across the board ; prestige brands alone are seeing a 55 to 75 percent revenue loss , according to McKinsey. What people are buying: the appearance of wellness. Luxury retailer Violet Grey describes its best-sellers as "natural" makeup. People want to look good, but now have time to redefine and, maybe, embrace what "looking good" means for them.

A recent boom in plastic surgery might suggest something else: that people are more insecure than ever after gazing at themselves for hours on end. But it's important to note that this spike occurs after a suspension of elective procedures. If you rescheduled every social event you had to cancel in March, April, and May, you might be seeing a boom in your personal life. This is all to say, it remains to be seen how literally the face of beauty will change when things approach normal again.

"I'm okay not wearing makeup when I do go into the office, shopping, out to dinner," my mother told me recently. "I look just fine without it!" When I was growing up, my mom was a licensed hairstylist. Experimenting with beauty products was a way of life. Knowing my mother, an older version of myself, feels content without wearing makeup on Zoom calls surely means I can do the same. The message feels clear: Take me as I am. We'll see if it sticks. — Darian Symoné Harvin is a writer in Los Angeles.

Humans are not Earth's best tenants. We probably don't even crack the top 10. But in a general effort to clean up the place, we began to use information that environmentalists and climate scientists had been sharing with us for years. Then a pandemic happened. In some ways, the planet is one of the few entities that has seen a major upside: As flights were canceled and cars remained in park, air pollution fell to unprecedented levels around the world.

"I've lived in New Delhi my whole life and there's never been a blue sky," said Indian beauty editor Vasudha Rai when Allure checked in with her in the spring. "Now I sit in my garden, look at that blue sky, inhale and exhale." As the world has eased restrictions, reopening slowly, most of its inhabitants have kept the radius of their travel shrunken significantly . More families are choosing a bubble lifestyle (living and socializing with a small, core group of people who agree on the same terms of quarantine) and enjoying the privileges of shared living. A September McKinsey poll found that post-pandemic, those surveyed anticipated walking and biking more than they had prior to the coronavirus and eschewing air travel for car travel. (That said, the airline industry — one of the major antagonists in the climate crisis — is expected to recover .)

We've made at least temporary (but hopefully not) lifestyle changes that reduce our Earth-warming carbon emissions, but we’ve taken a bad turn on the ocean-choking waste part of our planetary abuse. COVID-19's early days also came with an immediate dive back into the familiarity of single-use products we had finally started to avoid.

Disinfectant wipes, latex gloves, and multiple layers of packaging felt like protection against the unknown. The National Waste & Recycling Association estimated that, in some cases, individuals created as much as 30 percent more waste than pre-COVID. But as individuals worked at home, ate meals at home, hosted (virtual) events at home, we also gained a new consciousness of exactly what we consume — and just how much we send out in the trash. A newfound, conscience-soothing passion for recycling rose in some of us, sorting and sifting in the absolute, by-the-book, right way. But, as Allure has told you before and will keep repeating: Only nine percent of all plastic waste ever produced has actually been turned into something that we are able to use again (i.e., recycled).

"We have somehow twisted recycling into [being] about doing the right thing," says Tom Szaky , CEO of TerraCycle, a recycling company that prides itself of being able to recycle the unrecyclable. "The only things recycled anywhere in the world are the things that can be recycled at a profit." And, for the most part, there’s simply no market there. It's beyond time to redefine recycling not as a moral imperative but as a mercenary one — and to remember that new definition before the plastic ever makes it into your hand.

Just in the past few weeks, as of this writing, with so much more information on how the virus travels (in the air and not on surfaces, so wear your masks and socially distance, people!), there has been a recommitment to waste reduction in many areas. But for better or worse, the onus really remains on individuals for now. "Companies have no obligation to solve the waste problem that [a product] creates after it goes to the consumer," says Kate Kurera , deputy director of Environmental Advocates NY. So the choices we make matter. Wildly. Money is power. Withholding it pressures companies that are not living up to your sustainability standards to change.

Call your congresspeople and senators to ask for waste and recycling regulations. Keep an eye on the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent proposal for a National Recycling Strategy and Senator Tom Udall’s Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act . Call and write to your favorite companies and ask them to make choices more in line with a movement toward zero waste. Use those woven grocery totes. Use the ever-proliferating (and ever-more-charming) reusable, machine-washable masks. And use your voice. — Cotton Codinha is a writer in Brooklyn.

Read more stories about health:

Why Are People Still Catcalling During a Pandemic?

The Importance of Creating Communication Boundaries With Friends Right Now

How to Deal With the Aftermath of Cutting Off a Toxic Family Member

Now, watch Selena Gomez's glowing makeup routine:

Don't forget to follow Allure on Instagram and Twitter .

Allure Daily Beauty Blast

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions ), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from Allure. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

We Tried The New Ami Colé Skin Enhancing Foundation Stick on Five Different Skin Tones

By Annie Blay

A New California Bill Aims to Ensure Incarcerated People of Color Have Access to Suitable Hair Products

By Leah Prinzivalli

What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

essay about life in pandemic

  • Share article

In this video, Navajo student Miles Johnson shares how he experienced the stress and anxiety of schools shutting down last year. Miles’ teacher shared his experience and those of her other students in a recent piece for Education Week. In these short essays below, teacher Claire Marie Grogan’s 11th grade students at Oceanside High School on Long Island, N.Y., describe their pandemic experiences. Their writings have been slightly edited for clarity. Read Grogan’s essay .

“Hours Staring at Tiny Boxes on the Screen”

By Kimberly Polacco, 16

I stare at my blank computer screen, trying to find the motivation to turn it on, but my finger flinches every time it hovers near the button. I instead open my curtains. It is raining outside, but it does not matter, I will not be going out there for the rest of the day. The sound of pounding raindrops contributes to my headache enough to make me turn on my computer in hopes that it will give me something to drown out the noise. But as soon as I open it up, I feel the weight of the world crash upon my shoulders.

Each 42-minute period drags on by. I spend hours upon hours staring at tiny boxes on a screen, one of which my exhausted face occupies, and attempt to retain concepts that have been presented to me through this device. By the time I have the freedom of pressing the “leave” button on my last Google Meet of the day, my eyes are heavy and my legs feel like mush from having not left my bed since I woke up.

Tomorrow arrives, except this time here I am inside of a school building, interacting with my first period teacher face to face. We talk about our favorite movies and TV shows to stream as other kids pile into the classroom. With each passing period I accumulate more and more of these tiny meaningless conversations everywhere I go with both teachers and students. They may not seem like much, but to me they are everything because I know that the next time I am expected to report to school, I will be trapped in the bubble of my room counting down the hours until I can sit down in my freshly sanitized wooden desk again.

“My Only Parent Essentially on Her Death Bed”

By Nick Ingargiola, 16

My mom had COVID-19 for ten weeks. She got sick during the first month school buildings were shut. The difficulty of navigating an online classroom was already overwhelming, and when mixed with my only parent essentially on her death bed, it made it unbearable. Focusing on schoolwork was impossible, and watching my mother struggle to lift up her arm broke my heart.

My mom has been through her fair share of diseases from pancreatic cancer to seizures and even as far as a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. It is safe to say she has been through a lot. The craziest part is you would never know it. She is the strongest and most positive person I’ve ever met. COVID hit her hard. Although I have watched her go through life and death multiple times, I have never seen her so physically and mentally drained.

I initially was overjoyed to complete my school year in the comfort of my own home, but once my mom got sick, I couldn’t handle it. No one knows what it’s like to pretend like everything is OK until they are forced to. I would wake up at 8 after staying up until 5 in the morning pondering the possibility of losing my mother. She was all I had. I was forced to turn my camera on and float in the fake reality of being fine although I wasn’t. The teachers tried to keep the class engaged by obligating the students to participate. This was dreadful. I didn’t want to talk. I had to hide the distress in my voice. If only the teachers understood what I was going through. I was hesitant because I didn’t want everyone to know that the virus that was infecting and killing millions was knocking on my front door.

After my online classes, I was required to finish an immense amount of homework while simultaneously hiding my sadness so that my mom wouldn’t worry about me. She was already going through a lot. There was no reason to add me to her list of worries. I wasn’t even able to give her a hug. All I could do was watch.

“The Way of Staying Sane”

By Lynda Feustel, 16

Entering year two of the pandemic is strange. It barely seems a day since last March, but it also seems like a lifetime. As an only child and introvert, shutting down my world was initially simple and relatively easy. My friends and I had been super busy with the school play, and while I was sad about it being canceled, I was struggling a lot during that show and desperately needed some time off.

As March turned to April, virtual school began, and being alone really set in. I missed my friends and us being together. The isolation felt real with just my parents and me, even as we spent time together. My friends and I began meeting on Facetime every night to watch TV and just be together in some way. We laughed at insane jokes we made and had homework and therapy sessions over Facetime and grew closer through digital and literal walls.

The summer passed with in-person events together, and the virus faded into the background for a little while. We went to the track and the beach and hung out in people’s backyards.

Then school came for us in a more nasty way than usual. In hybrid school we were separated. People had jobs, sports, activities, and quarantines. Teachers piled on work, and the virus grew more present again. The group text put out hundreds of messages a day while the Facetimes came to a grinding halt, and meeting in person as a group became more of a rarity. Being together on video and in person was the way of staying sane.

In a way I am in a similar place to last year, working and looking for some change as we enter the second year of this mess.

“In History Class, Reports of Heightening Cases”

By Vivian Rose, 16

I remember the moment my freshman year English teacher told me about the young writers’ conference at Bread Loaf during my sophomore year. At first, I didn’t want to apply, the deadline had passed, but for some strange reason, the directors of the program extended it another week. It felt like it was meant to be. It was in Vermont in the last week of May when the flowers have awakened and the sun is warm.

I submitted my work, and two weeks later I got an email of my acceptance. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the empty house; everyone was out, so I was left alone to celebrate my small victory. It was rare for them to admit sophomores. Usually they accept submissions only from juniors and seniors.

That was the first week of February 2020. All of a sudden, there was some talk about this strange virus coming from China. We thought nothing of it. Every night, I would fall asleep smiling, knowing that I would be able to go to the exact conference that Robert Frost attended for 42 years.

Then, as if overnight, it seemed the virus had swung its hand and had gripped parts of the country. Every newscast was about the disease. Every day in history, we would look at the reports of heightening cases and joke around that this could never become a threat as big as Dr. Fauci was proposing. Then, March 13th came around--it was the last day before the world seemed to shut down. Just like that, Bread Loaf would vanish from my grasp.

“One Day Every Day Won’t Be As Terrible”

By Nick Wollweber, 17

COVID created personal problems for everyone, some more serious than others, but everyone had a struggle.

As the COVID lock-down took hold, the main thing weighing on my mind was my oldest brother, Joe, who passed away in January 2019 unexpectedly in his sleep. Losing my brother was a complete gut punch and reality check for me at 14 and 15 years old. 2019 was a year of struggle, darkness, sadness, frustration. I didn’t want to learn after my brother had passed, but I had to in order to move forward and find my new normal.

Routine and always having things to do and places to go is what let me cope in the year after Joe died. Then COVID came and gave me the option to let up and let down my guard. I struggled with not wanting to take care of personal hygiene. That was the beginning of an underlying mental problem where I wouldn’t do things that were necessary for everyday life.

My “coping routine” that got me through every day and week the year before was gone. COVID wasn’t beneficial to me, but it did bring out the true nature of my mental struggles and put a name to it. Since COVID, I have been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I began taking antidepressants and going to therapy a lot more.

COVID made me realize that I’m not happy with who I am and that I needed to change. I’m still not happy with who I am. I struggle every day, but I am working towards a goal that one day every day won’t be as terrible.

Coverage of social and emotional learning is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation, at www.novofoundation.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the March 31, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

Teacher and student a world apart

Sign Up for The Savvy Principal

Edweek top school jobs.

Kid looking worried with a globe in background.

Sign Up & Sign In

module image 9

How COVID-19 pandemic changed my life

essay about life in pandemic

Table of Contents

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the biggest challenges that our world has ever faced. People around the globe were affected in some way by this terrible disease, whether personally or not. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many people felt isolated and in a state of panic. They often found themselves lacking a sense of community, confidence, and trust. The health systems in many countries were able to successfully prevent and treat people with COVID-19-related diseases while providing early intervention services to those who may not be fully aware that they are infected (Rume & Islam, 2020). Personally, this pandemic has brought numerous changes and challenges to my life. The COVID-19 pandemic affected my social, academic, and economic lifestyle positively and negatively.

essay about life in pandemic

Social and Academic Changes

One of the changes brought by the pandemic was economic changes that occurred very drastically (Haleem, Javaid, & Vaishya, 2020). During the pandemic, food prices started to rise, affecting the amount of money my parents could spend on goods and services. We had to reduce the food we bought as our budgets were stretched. My family also had to eliminate unhealthy food bought in bulk, such as crisps and chocolate bars. Furthermore, the pandemic made us more aware of the importance of keeping our homes clean, especially regarding cooking food. Lastly, it also made us more aware of how we talked to other people when they were ill and stayed home with them rather than being out and getting on with other things.

Furthermore, COVID-19 had a significant effect on my academic life. Immediately, measures to curb the pandemic were announced, such as closing all learning institutions in the country; my school life changed. The change began when our school implemented the online education system to ensure that we continued with our education during the lockdown period. At first, this affected me negatively because when learning was not happening in a formal environment, I struggled academically since I was not getting the face-to-face interaction with the teachers I needed. Furthermore, forcing us to attend online caused my classmates and me to feel disconnected from the knowledge being taught because we were unable to have peer participation in class. However, as the pandemic subsided, we grew accustomed to this learning mode. We realized the effects on our performance and learning satisfaction were positive, as it seemed to promote emotional and behavioral changes necessary to function in a virtual world. Students who participated in e-learning during the pandemic developed more ownership of the course requirement, increased their emotional intelligence and self-awareness, improved their communication skills, and learned to work together as a community.

essay about life in pandemic

If there is an area that the pandemic affected was the mental health of my family and myself. The COVID-19 pandemic caused increased anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns that were difficult for my family and me to manage alone. Our ability to learn social resilience skills, such as self-management, was tested numerous times. One of the most visible challenges we faced was social isolation and loneliness. The multiple lockdowns made it difficult to interact with my friends and family, leading to loneliness. The changes in communication exacerbated the problem as interactions moved from face-to-face to online communication using social media and text messages. Furthermore, having family members and loved ones separated from us due to distance, unavailability of phones, and the internet created a situation of fear among us, as we did not know whether they were all right. Moreover, some people within my circle found it more challenging to communicate with friends, family, and co-workers due to poor communication skills. This was mainly attributed to anxiety or a higher risk of spreading the disease. It was also related to a poor understanding of creating and maintaining relationships during this period.

Positive Changes

In addition, this pandemic has brought some positive changes with it. First, it had been a significant catalyst for strengthening relationships and neighborhood ties. It has encouraged a sense of community because family members, neighbors, friends, and community members within my area were all working together to help each other out. Before the pandemic, everybody focused on their business, the children going to school while the older people went to work. There was not enough time to bond with each other. Well, the pandemic changed that, something that has continued until now that everything is returning to normal. In our home, it strengthened the relationship between myself and my siblings and parents. This is because we started spending more time together as a family, which enhanced our sense of understanding of ourselves.

essay about life in pandemic

The pandemic has been a challenging time for many people. I can confidently state that it was a significant and potentially unprecedented change in our daily life. By changing how we do things and relate with our family and friends, the pandemic has shaped our future life experiences and shown that during crises, we can come together and make a difference in each other’s lives. Therefore, I embrace wholesomely the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic in my life.

  • Haleem, A., Javaid, M., & Vaishya, R. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 pandemic in daily life.  Current medicine research and practice ,  10 (2), 78.
  • Rume, T., & Islam, S. D. U. (2020). Environmental effects of COVID-19 pandemic and potential strategies of sustainability.  Heliyon ,  6 (9), e04965.
  • ☠️ Assisted Suicide
  • Affordable Care Act
  • Breast Cancer
  • Genetic Engineering

essay about life in pandemic

COVID-19: Where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going

One of the hardest things to deal with in this type of crisis is being able to go the distance. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel

Where we're going

Living with covid-19, people & organizations, sustainable, inclusive growth, related collection.

Emerging stronger from the coronavirus pandemic

The Next Normal: Emerging stronger from the coronavirus pandemic

Sandro Galea M.D.

COVID-19 Was a Turning Point for Health

Our new book focuses on the lessons of the pandemic..

Posted February 15, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

  • To think comprehensively about COVID-19 is to think not just about the past but also about the future.
  • The narratives we accept about the pandemic will do much to shape our ability to create a healthier world.
  • Understanding the pandemic, and learning from it, means coming to terms with the emotions of that time.

In 2021, the United States was at a turning point. We had just lived through the acute phase of a global pandemic. During that time, the country had experienced an economic crisis, civil unrest, a deeply divisive federal election, and a technological revolution in how we live, work, and congregate. The emergence of COVID-19 vaccines allowed us, finally, to look ahead to a post-pandemic world, but what would that world be like? Would it be a return to the pre-COVID-19 status quo, or would it be something radically new?

It was with these questions in mind that, in 2021, I partnered with my colleague Michael Stein to write a series of essays reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic. Our aim was to engage with the COVID moment through the lens of cutting -edge public health science. By exploring the pandemic’s intersection with topics like digital surveillance, vaccine distribution, big data, and the link between science and political decision-making , we tried to sketch what the moment meant while it unfolded and what its implications might be for the future. If journalism is “the first rough draft of history,” these essays were, in a way, our effort to produce just such a draft, from the perspective of a forward-looking public health. I am delighted to announce that a book based on this series of essays has just been published by Oxford University Press: The Turning Point: Reflections on a Pandemic .

The book includes a series of short chapters, structured in five sections that address the following themes:

This section looks at the COVID-19 moment through the lens of what we might learn from it, toward better addressing future pandemics. It tackles challenges we faced in our approach to testing, our successes and shortcomings in implementing contact tracing, the intersection of the pandemic and mass incarceration, and more. Many of these lessons emerged organically from the day-to-day experience of the pandemic, reflecting “unknown unknowns”—areas where we encountered unexpected deficits in our knowledge, which were revealed by the circumstances of the pandemic. Chapter 8, for example, explores the necessity of public health officials speaking with care, mindful that our words may be used to justify authoritarian approaches in the name of health, a challenge we saw in the actions of the Chinese government during the pandemic.

Our understanding of large-scale health challenges like pandemics depends on more than collections of data and a timeline of events. It depends on our stories. The narratives we accept about the pandemic will do much to shape our ability to create a healthier world before the next contagion strikes. This section explores the stories we told during COVID-19 about what was happening to us and looks ahead to the narratives that will likely define our recollections of the pandemic moment. It addresses narratives around the virtues and limits of expertise, the role of the media as both a shaper of stories and a character in them, the hotly contested narrative around vaccines, and the role scientists, physicians, and epidemiologists played in shaping the story of the pandemic as it unfolded.

This section explores how our values informed what we did during COVID-19 through the ethical considerations that shaped our engagement with the moment. These include the ethical tradeoffs involved in questions of digital surveillance, scientific bias, vaccine mandates, balancing individual autonomy and collective responsibility, and the role of the profit motive in creating critical treatments. At times, these reflections reach back into history, grappling with past moments when we failed in our ethical obligations to support the health of all, as in a chapter discussing how the legacy of medical racism shaped our engagement with communities of color during the pandemic. Such soul-searching is core to our ability to evaluate our performance during COVID-19 and face the future grounded in the values that support effective, ethical public health action.

As human beings, we do not process events through reason alone. We are deeply swayed by emotion . This is particularly true in times of tragedy like COVID-19. Understanding the pandemic, and learning from it, means coming to terms with the emotions of that time, the feelings that attended all we did. Grief and loss, humility and hope, trust and mistrust , compassion and fear —both individual and collective—were all core to the experience of the pandemic. The simple act of recognizing our collective grief, as several chapters in this section try to do, can help us move forward, acknowledging the emotions that attend tragedy as we work toward a better world.

To think comprehensively about COVID-19 is to think not just about the past but about the future. We seek to understand the pandemic to prevent something like it from ever happening again. This means creating a world that is fundamentally healthier than the one that existed in 2019. This final section looks to the future from the perspective of the COVID-19 moment, with an eye toward using the lessons of that time to create a healthier world, as in Chapter 50, which addresses the challenge of rebuilding trust in public health institutions after it was tested during the pandemic. The section also touches on leadership and decision-making, shaping a better health system, shoring up our investment in health, the future of remote work, and next steps in our efforts to support health in the years to come.

I end with a note of gratitude to Michael Stein, who led on the development of this book. It is, as always, a privilege to work with him and learn from him. I look forward to continued collaborations in the months and years to come, and to hearing from readers of The Turning Point as we engage in our collective task of building a healthier world, informed by what we have lived through and looking to the future.

A version of this essay appeared on Substack.

Sandro Galea M.D.

Sandro Galea, M.D., is the Robert A. Knox professor and dean of the Boston University School of Public Health

  • Find a Therapist
  • Find a Treatment Center
  • Find a Support Group
  • International
  • New Zealand
  • South Africa
  • Switzerland
  • Asperger's
  • Bipolar Disorder
  • Chronic Pain
  • Eating Disorders
  • Passive Aggression
  • Personality
  • Goal Setting
  • Positive Psychology
  • Stopping Smoking
  • Low Sexual Desire
  • Relationships
  • Child Development
  • Therapy Center NEW
  • Diagnosis Dictionary
  • Types of Therapy

January 2024 magazine cover

Overcome burnout, your burdens, and that endless to-do list.

  • Coronavirus Disease 2019
  • Affective Forecasting
  • Neuroscience

Elizabeth Lesser Shares How She Lifted Herself Out of Pandemic Despair

The cofounder of the Omega Institute admits that even as a teacher of mindfulness, sometimes, she is her own worst student.

illustration

When it became apparent that a virus was spreading around the globe, my first reaction was one of disbelief: We’ll surely eradicate this before it turns into a pandemic! Soon enough my disbelief morphed into fear, and then horror and grief for those who were sick and dying in Asia, Europe, and slowly, steadily...everywhere. Along with those feelings came a strange kind of optimism, a faith that we all might learn something important. Like when I watched videos of people in Italy under lockdown standing on their balconies holding candles and singing songs of hope into the darkened streets. Or as travel ceased and traffic stood still and the world got a little quieter, the air a little cleaner—I could almost hear the trees breathing sighs of relief.

In the early spring of 2020, when the pandemic took hold here in the United States and life as we knew it ground to a halt, I wondered, even with the trauma and loss, could this be the Great Slowdown we needed? People retweeted the quote “Mother Nature has sent us to our rooms.” Could that message portend a teachable moment? Maybe doing less, and doing with less, would reveal the value of enough instead of chasing after more, more, more. Maybe now we’d start to truly appreciate the people whose work keeps us alive and well: the farmers, truckers, grocery baggers; the staff who work in our hospitals; the home health aides who care for our parents; the daycare instructors and school teachers who safeguard our children’s future. And maybe, just maybe, the pandemic would finally confirm for us thick-headed humans this plain truth: What happens to even just one of us affects all of us.

My grand optimism began to waver as the weeks of isolation became months and Covid-19 cases doubled, then tripled. Schools closed. Hospitals ran out of masks and ventilators; millions of people got sick, and hundreds of thousands died. People lost their jobs, their homes, their loved ones, their mental health, their way of life. Almost no individual, community, or business was untouched by fear or pain or loss, including my own nonprofit center, which for 40 years had been teaching people to meditate, to heal, to spin trauma into the gold of growth.

.css-meat1u:before{margin-bottom:1.2rem;height:2.25rem;content:'“';display:block;font-size:4.375rem;line-height:1.1;font-family:Juana,Juana-weight300-roboto,Juana-weight300-local,Georgia,Times,Serif;font-weight:300;} .css-mn32pc{font-family:Juana,Juana-weight300-upcase-roboto,Juana-weight300-upcase-local,Georgia,Times,Serif;font-size:1.625rem;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:0.0075rem;line-height:1.2;margin:0rem;text-transform:uppercase;}@media(max-width: 64rem){.css-mn32pc{font-size:2.25rem;line-height:1;}}@media(min-width: 48rem){.css-mn32pc{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-mn32pc{font-size:2.75rem;line-height:1;}}.css-mn32pc b,.css-mn32pc strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-mn32pc em,.css-mn32pc i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;} “What happens to even just one of us affects all of us.”

As 2020 came to a close, I began to wonder if my dream of the Great Slowdown was becoming a sorrowful nightmare: the Great Meltdown. As a teacher of mindfulness, sometimes I am my own worst student; life during lockdown tested me greatly, and watching the news or doom-scrolling through social media didn’t help. I began to flunk out of inner-peace school, started reacting to stress in decidedly unenlightened ways, yelling at the TV or exploding in anger during interminable Zoom meetings.

I gave in to despair when we had to let go of another staff member at work, or when I couldn’t see my kids, who live in far-flung places. I had stopped accessing my “balcony brain”—that part of myself that can calmly observe any situation, pause before reacting, and make wise, compassionate decisions. I was spending more time in my “basement brain,” heeding the vigilant, volatile caveman within. Eventually, my burnout caught up with me, and I landed in the emergency room with a gastrointestinal issue. It was then that my darling husband suggested I try some of my own medicine—the stuff I have written several books about. “You know,” he said gently, “things like meditation and exercise. Things for your trauma and grief. Things for your soul.” Duh!

lesser cassandra

So here’s what I did. I turned to the words of some of my greatest teachers. I keep a basket of their quotes on my desk. I’m always adding to it—beautiful lines from poets, mind-blowing bits from scientists, motivation from activists, quiet wisdom from spiritual leaders. I often choose one to guide me through the day. This time, I decided that whatever quote my hand touched first would serve as my GPS back into what I call the four landscapes of the human journey: mind, body, heart, and soul.

The first words I picked gave me goosebumps: “Today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.” The phrase is attributed to Rosa Parks, and I felt as though she had reached down from the heavens to remind me that everything I needed was already within me. I could be that little acorn again and reroot and rise strong. I knew how to do that. I had done so before in other difficult times. I had held my ground in the shattered aftermath of divorce and come out the other side a stronger and more empathetic person. I had rooted myself in my inner strength when I was my sister’s bone marrow donor. And when we lost her, I found in those ashes the true heart of friendship. Here I was again, trying, like so many of us, to reemerge from the pandemic with lessons learned, inner strength, and something of value to offer.

I followed Mrs. Parks’ guidance and went back to the tools that never fail me: Meditation to activate my “balcony brain” and lift the veil from my clouded mind. Exercise to reclaim my body and physical vitality. The simple prayer of putting my hand on my heart and feeling flooded with forgiveness and tenderness, hope and gratitude. Walks in nature and dips back into my favorite spiritual texts to reconnect with my all-knowing soul. As I felt my strength returning, I was reminded how despair and negativity can spread like a virus, too. When they do, taking the soul’s vaster view and being an agent of uplift feels almost revolutionary. Doing so is an act of sanity and an offering of healing.

Historically, pandemics have jump-started innovation or they have slid humanity backwards into oppression. This is our era; we get to choose. Life after Covid-19 does not have to be a Great Meltdown, or a Great Slowdown. Maybe, just maybe, it will be a Great Wake-up—a global event that breaks us open and waters the seeds of our best selves. Because each one of us can be that acorn, holding our ground, lifting our sights, and, together, becoming a forest of mighty oaks.

preview for Oprah Reveals the Summer 2021 O Quarterly

Elizabeth Lesser is the author of Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, The Human Story Changes as well as the bestselling Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most . She is the cofounder of Omega Institute, has given two popular TED talks, and is a member of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul 100.

From The Magazine

powerful black bear with a shiny hide rests on a huge rock canadian rockies, province of alberta, moraine lake the concept of ecological, photographic and active tourism

The Essential Guide to Wigs

heart ripple in water

10 Ways to Spark Change in Your Community

shifting perspective

Spending Less Added Value to My Life

shifting perspectives

How One Woman Found Freedom—and Joy—in Failure

shifting perspectives

She Found Love Where She Least Expected It

vision illo

Expert Tips on How to Shift Your Perspective

shifting perspectives

Facing Childhood Trauma Led a Grown Son to Healing

shifting perspectives

One Woman Discovers That Joy Can Be Easy

people dancing in black and white

How to Make Your Life More Joyful—Right Now

cocktails

4 Perfect HolidayCocktails and Mocktails

peony

The Power of the Thank-You Note

Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.”  Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences  57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.”  Prospects  49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.”  BioRxiv  (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.”  Jama  323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

Cite this page

Similar essay samples.

  • Social Capital Theory: Networks, Trust and Gender in Ethnic Economies
  • Essay on Hollandsworth Proposal To Build a Factory in the UK To Produc...
  • Essay on Information Technology Solutions and Strategies
  • Study on AS and transcription factor mRNA levels in leukaemic patient ...
  • THE INFLUENCE OF GREYWATER REUSE ON DOMESTIC WASTEWATER QUANTITY AND ...
  • By considering a complex decision within Construction or Development, ...
  • Share full article

Advertisement

Subscriber-only Newsletter

David Wallace-Wells

American cities aren’t doomed after all.

An illustration of a large white cube with two empty chairs in the center. The cube is floating in a black void, and surrounding the cube are layers of transparent cubes outlined in various colors.

By David Wallace-Wells

Opinion Writer

For a year or two, as first-wave pandemic panic gave way to a more generalized perception of ragged social disorder, it was hard to read or talk about the plight of American cities without encountering the chilling phrase “doom loop.”

At first, the term referred to an intuition that the economic and social dislocation of the pandemic would not only linger after Covid-19 retreated but also unmake the American city: If workers didn’t have to return to the office, they could leave the city, taking with them the money they spent on taxes and retail. This would shrink the tax base and hollow out the urban core, leading to decreased public spending on public safety and housing and eventually to a self-perpetuating cycle that looked like an existential threat.

But in conversation and in print, “doom loop” quickly came to signify something broader: a perception of generalized and pretty terrifying Covid-era urban decline, characterized by homelessness and out-in-the-open crime and drug use, that not only recalled the legendarily wild and violent cities of the 1970s and 1980s but also threatened to metastasize well beyond those memories. On the right, they were calling places like New York and San Francisco and Seattle trashed or lawless . Centrist publications were using phrases like “ failed cities ” and “ ungovernable ,” and progressive ones were lamenting that even committed locals no longer believed that cities’ problems could be fixed.

In some cities, a certain unease remains. But to the extent that we have data with which to fact-check the vibes, it turns out that the doom loop wasn’t really much of a loop at all. It was a blip. And by some measures, it was not all that doomy to begin with.

American cities did get a bit more dangerous when all social and public life was suddenly suspended and then haphazardly, gradually and only partly stitched back together. But they also were emptied out — first by shelter-in-place guidelines, then by extended school closings and work-from-home policies and then by some amount of continuing pandemic precaution by individuals and communities. Large-scale protests against police brutality rattled some Americans and, in some places, probably produced a police pullback distressing and disconcerting to others. And as recently as the death of Jordan Neely at the hands of Daniel Penny in New York City last May, there was a certain kind of conventional wisdom that American cities were going through a protracted and open-ended crisis.

But by then, many measures of social disorder were already on their way back to prepandemic levels. And by now, it is safe to say that by most objective measures, the worst of that “crisis” is well behind us . There was some cause for alarm, of course. But it also looks as though the passing panic might have been powered as much by pandemic anxiety and simple agoraphobia as by genuine urban anarchy.

Some of the doom loop fears were illusions at the time — or perhaps it would be better to say propaganda. This past December, for instance, the country’s largest retail trade association retracted its much-repeated claim that organized crime was responsible for a large pandemic surge in missing merchandise. Nationally, lost inventory — known in the retail world as shrink — was actually flat in 2020 compared with 2019, as Kevin Drum has highlighted , and down again in 2021 compared with 2020. The experience of individual cities varies, of course — in New York retail theft is still running relatively high — but across 24 cities reporting data to the Council on Criminal Justice, shoplifting actually fell significantly at the beginning of 2020. And average monthly shoplifting rates have stayed well below prepandemic levels .

Each of these measures comes with some amount of uncertainty; we can’t really say for sure how much shoplifting is getting reported and how much not and whether that ratio might have changed in recent years. (My guess: We’re probably missing a lot, though the ratio probably hasn’t changed all that much.) But more conspicuous kinds of crime are harder to overlook, and there, too, different data sets are also in broad agreement that even those crime rates that did rise at the outset of the pandemic are now well past those peaks, reassuringly close to or below the levels from 2019 and earlier years.

As the data analyst Jeff Asher wrote in a national overview, property crime in 2023 may have been lower than in any year going back to 1961. According to the F.B.I., the violent crime rate, which rose by 4.6 percent nationally in the first year of the pandemic, fell each of the next two years, returning to below-prepandemic levels in 2022; even a conservative projection, Asher wrote, shows that last year, the national violent crime rate may have fallen to its lowest since 1969.

Homicide made a more conspicuous jump in 2020 — indeed the largest jump in modern records, though overall rates stayed well below the levels experienced as normal in American cities just a few decades earlier. Nationally, homicide rates remained high in 2021 and then, after falling a bit in 2022, had what might have been the largest national decline in total homicides in 2023.

In New York City, homicide rates rose in 2020 and 2021 but did not reach the level experienced as recently as 2011 ; in San Francisco, there were fewer killings in 2020 than in 2017. A report by the Council on Criminal Justice released last month showed rates across 32 major American cities have fallen substantially, though they remain above prepandemic levels. As Jeff Asher wrote in a national review , many cities are now recording fewer annual homicides than they have in years or even decades. And while murders are still rising in Memphis and Washington, “they are the outliers this year, not the norm.”

Homelessness is a more nuanced story. According to an authoritative annual report published in December by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of Americans experiencing unsheltered homelessness was 256,000 in 2023, up from 226,000 just before the pandemic — an increase of about 13 percent. The lowest number in recent history, according to HUD, was 173,000 in 2015; the highest was 255,000 in 2007. The recent increases are tragic and demand public attention but also are gradual; for every 10 unsheltered Americans on the eve of the pandemic, there are now 11.

The bulk of the homelessness is concentrated in a handful of states: California, which accounts for more than a quarter of the national total, New York, Florida, Washington and Texas. But in California as a whole, homelessness grew only 6 percent from 2020 to 2022, according to HUD; in New York State, it fell by almost 19 percent.

In certain cities, there was more disconcerting growth. Nearly a quarter of national homelessness is experienced in New York City and Los Angeles, according to HUD. The population in New York grew from nearly 78,000 just before the pandemic to 88,000 in 2023; in Los Angeles the number of people experiencing homelessness grew by about 12 percent from 2022 to 2023. And although San Francisco is often described as the country’s homelessness epicenter, from 2013 to 2022, homelessness grew by just 6 percent there; between 2019 and 2022, the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in the city actually fell to 4,400 from 5,200. In general, the pandemic years have not been a new era for urban homelessness in America but an extension of the longer-term trend: Homelessness is steadily growing, and its concentration in a small number of cities suggests, among other remedies, the straightforward need for much more housing supply .

Drug use appears to be a growing problem, though the data can be patchy and the pattern varies from city to city. In San Francisco, alcohol and drug use rates among the homeless grew to 52 percent from 41 percent from 2017 to 2022, according to one survey. In Los Angeles, overdose deaths among the city’s homeless roughly doubled between 2019 and 2021 , and in New York, overdoses in shelters nearly doubled over the same period. In Portland, Ore., drug use helped drive a 53 percent increase in deaths among the homeless in 2021.

But the more enduring legacy of urban “doom” may simply be that cities remain emptier than they were. New York had one of the more successful postpandemic recoveries in commercial real estate , but visits to offices are still 19 percent below prepandemic levels ; as of February 2023, subway ridership was only about 66 percent of prepandemic levels. Nationwide, visits to offices are down 38 percent from previous levels; in San Francisco, they are down 53 percent. According to the University of Toronto’s Downtown Recovery project , foot traffic in many high-profile cities is hovering at or below 70 percent of previous levels; in 90 percent of cities’ downtowns , car traffic remains below pre-Covid levels.

These figures reflect pretty large shifts, especially given how far past the worst of the pandemic we are, and represent pretty big challenges for cities built for and accustomed to much higher levels of activity. They also help explain why so many American cities still feel quite a bit different, even now in 2024, from how they did in 2019 and highlight something about the way the country experienced and processed the “urban crisis” of the years in between: Cities were in certain ways scarier and more violent places in the darkest days of the pandemic, but they were also just so much eerier than before, with so many fewer people around — to witness, to engage with, sometimes to avoid.

In a lot of places, they still are, with cities both much busier than they were three years ago and much less busy than two years before that. But even the guy who popularized pandemic usage of the phrase “doom loop” thinks things are looking up .

  • Newsletters
  • Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

The Loss of Things I Took for Granted

Ten years into my college teaching career, students stopped being able to read effectively..

Recent years have seen successive waves of book bans in Republican-controlled states, aimed at pulling any text with “woke” themes from classrooms and library shelves. Though the results sometimes seem farcical, as with the banning of Art Spiegelman’s Maus due to its inclusion of “cuss words” and explicit rodent nudity, the book-banning agenda is no laughing matter. Motivated by bigotry, it has already done demonstrable harm and promises to do more. But at the same time, the appropriate response is, in principle, simple. Named individuals have advanced explicit policies with clear goals and outcomes, and we can replace those individuals with people who want to reverse those policies. That is already beginning to happen in many places, and I hope those successes will continue until every banned book is restored.

If and when that happens, however, we will not be able to declare victory quite yet. Defeating the open conspiracy to deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage with those books in the first place. As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators. I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding. Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways. Considerable class time is taken up simply establishing what happened in a story or the basic steps of an argument—skills I used to be able to take for granted.

Since this development very directly affects my ability to do my job as I understand it, I talk about it a lot. And when I talk about it with nonacademics, certain predictable responses inevitably arise, all questioning the reality of the trend I describe. Hasn’t every generation felt that the younger cohort is going to hell in a handbasket? Haven’t professors always complained that educators at earlier levels are not adequately equipping their students? And haven’t students from time immemorial skipped the readings?

The response of my fellow academics, however, reassures me that I’m not simply indulging in intergenerational grousing. Anecdotally, I have literally never met a professor who did not share my experience. Professors are also discussing the issue in academic trade publications , from a variety of perspectives. What we almost all seem to agree on is that we are facing new obstacles in structuring and delivering our courses, requiring us to ratchet down expectations in the face of a ratcheting down of preparation. Yes, there were always students who skipped the readings, but we are in new territory when even highly motivated honors students struggle to grasp the basic argument of a 20-page article. Yes, professors never feel satisfied that high school teachers have done enough, but not every generation of professors has had to deal with the fallout of No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Finally, yes, every generation thinks the younger generation is failing to make the grade— except for the current cohort of professors, who are by and large more invested in their students’ success and mental health and more responsive to student needs than any group of educators in human history. We are not complaining about our students. We are complaining about what has been taken from them.

If we ask what has caused this change, there are some obvious culprits. The first is the same thing that has taken away almost everyone’s ability to focus—the ubiquitous smartphone. Even as a career academic who studies the Quran in Arabic for fun, I have noticed my reading endurance flagging. I once found myself boasting at a faculty meeting that I had read through my entire hourlong train ride without looking at my phone. My colleagues agreed this was a major feat, one they had not achieved recently. Even if I rarely attain that high level of focus, though, I am able to “turn it on” when demanded, for instance to plow through a big novel during a holiday break. That’s because I was able to develop and practice those skills of extended concentration and attentive reading before the intervention of the smartphone. For children who were raised with smartphones, by contrast, that foundation is missing. It is probably no coincidence that the iPhone itself, originally released in 2007, is approaching college age, meaning that professors are increasingly dealing with students who would have become addicted to the dopamine hit of the omnipresent screen long before they were introduced to the more subtle pleasures of the page.

The second go-to explanation is the massive disruption of school closures during COVID-19. There is still some debate about the necessity of those measures, but what is not up for debate any longer is the very real learning loss that students suffered at every level. The impact will inevitably continue to be felt for the next decade or more, until the last cohort affected by the mass “pivot to online” finally graduates. I doubt that the pandemic closures were the decisive factor in themselves, however. Not only did the marked decline in reading resilience start before the pandemic, but the students I am seeing would have already been in high school during the school closures. Hence they would be better equipped to get something out of the online format and, more importantly, their basic reading competence would have already been established.

Less discussed than these broader cultural trends over which educators have little control are the major changes in reading pedagogy that have occurred in recent decades—some motivated by the ever-increasing demand to “teach to the test” and some by fads coming out of schools of education. In the latter category is the widely discussed decline in phonics education in favor of the “balanced literacy” approach advocated by education expert Lucy Calkins (who has more recently come to accept the need for more phonics instruction). I started to see the results of this ill-advised change several years ago, when students abruptly stopped attempting to sound out unfamiliar words and instead paused until they recognized the whole word as a unit. (In a recent class session, a smart, capable student was caught short by the word circumstances when reading a text out loud.) The result of this vibes-based literacy is that students never attain genuine fluency in reading. Even aside from the impact of smartphones, their experience of reading is constantly interrupted by their intentionally cultivated inability to process unfamiliar words.

For all the flaws of the balanced literacy method, it was presumably implemented by people who thought it would help. It is hard to see a similar motivation in the growing trend toward assigning students only the kind of short passages that can be included in a standardized test. Due in part to changes driven by the infamous Common Core standards , teachers now have to fight to assign their students longer readings, much less entire books, because those activities won’t feed directly into students getting higher test scores, which leads to schools getting more funding. The emphasis on standardized tests was always a distraction at best, but we have reached the point where it is actively cannibalizing students’ educational experience—an outcome no one intended or planned, and for which there is no possible justification.

We can’t go back in time and do the pandemic differently at this point, nor is there any realistic path to putting the smartphone genie back in the bottle. (Though I will note that we as a society do at least attempt to keep other addictive products out of the hands of children.) But I have to think that we can, at the very least, stop actively preventing young people from developing the ability to follow extended narratives and arguments in the classroom. Regardless of their profession or ultimate educational level, they will need those skills. The world is a complicated place. People—their histories and identities, their institutions and work processes, their fears and desires—are simply too complex to be captured in a worksheet with a paragraph and some reading comprehension questions. Large-scale prose writing is the best medium we have for capturing that complexity, and the education system should not be in the business of keeping students from learning how to engage effectively with it.

This is a matter not of snobbery, but of basic justice. I recognize that not everyone centers their lives on books as much as a humanities professor does. I think they’re missing out, but they’re adults and they can choose how to spend their time. What’s happening with the current generation is not that they are simply choosing TikTok over Jane Austen. They are being deprived of the ability to choose—for no real reason or benefit. We can and must stop perpetrating this crime on our young people.

comscore beacon

  • Open access
  • Published: 14 February 2024

Posttraumatic growth of medical staff during COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review

  • Qian Li 1 ,
  • Yirong Zhu 1 ,
  • Xuefeng Qi 1 ,
  • Haifei Lu 1 ,
  • Nafei Han 1 ,
  • Yan Xiang 1 ,
  • Jingjing Guo 1 &
  • Lizhu Wang 1  

BMC Public Health volume  24 , Article number:  460 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

50 Accesses

Metrics details

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed unprecedented stress and challenges upon medical staff, potentially resulting in posttraumatic growth (PTG). This scoping review aims to synthesize the existing knowledge on PTG among medical staff during the pandemic by identifying its current status and potential influencing factors. The findings may provide a foundation for future research and interventions to enhance the medical staff’s psychological resilience and well-being.

Literature was systematically searched on PTG among medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic from 01 January 2020 to 31 December 2022. The following databases were searched: PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Biomedical Literature Service System (SinoMed), and Wanfang Data. Eligibility criteria included: (1) medical staff as research subjects; (2) a focus on “posttraumatic growth” or “alternative posttraumatic growth” related to the COVID-19 outbreak and pandemic; (3) discussion of the situation and influencing factors of PTG; and (4) study types, such as qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Two researchers independently selected and extracted study characteristics (study design, study population, region, measurement instruments, and primary outcomes) from the included literature. The data were synthesized qualitatively and descriptively.

Thirty-six papers from 12 countries met the inclusion criteria. Moderate PTG levels were observed among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, with emphasis on “interpersonal relationships,” “changes in life philosophy,” and “growth in personal competence.” Influencing factors included trauma exposure, sociodemographics, psychological characteristics (resilience and positive qualities), coping, and social support.

Conclusions

This review discovered moderate PTG levels among medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, with critical areas in interpersonal relationships, life philosophy, and personal competence. The identified influencing factors can inform future research and interventions to enhance healthcare workers’ psychological resilience and well-being.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Posttraumatic growth (PTG) has been defined as “positive psychological change that occurs following a struggle with highly challenging life circumstances” and through establishing perspectives for a “new normal” when the old normal is no longer an option [ 1 ]. The positive transformation developed five domains: development of deeper relationships, openness to new possibilities, a greater sense of personal strength, a stronger sense of spirituality, and a greater appreciation of life; followed by the development of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), which has been translated into more than 20 languages and extensively validated worldwide [ 1 , 2 ]. PTG is associated with PTGI across numerous cultures and many different traumatized populations, including those who have survived natural disasters [ 3 ], bereavement [ 4 ], cancer [ 5 ], human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) [ 6 ], suicide [ 7 ], assault [ 8 ], refugee [ 9 ], and combat veterans [ 10 ], and so on.

Furthermore, people with a strong connection to trauma victims, such as health personnel, family members, caregivers, social workers, and psychotherapists, have also demonstrated vicarious posttraumatic growth (VPTG) in the context of secondary trauma or alternative trauma [ 11 ]. It is particularly prevalent among professionals working with trauma survivors. They may experience personal and professional growth due to witnessing their clients’ resilience and ability to overcome adversity. These experiences include positive changes in self-cognition, interpersonal relationships, life values, increased compassion, sensitivity, and insight [ 12 ], and extraordinary growth in the context of one’s professional identity, which is professional’s job satisfaction and self-competence by witnessing the growth of their clients [ 13 , 14 ].

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a profound global impact since its discovery in December 2019. As of March 11, 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that the cumulative global cases of COVID-19 have surpassed 759 million, with nearly 6.9 million deaths [ 15 ]. Despite the WHO’s announcement on May 5, 2023, that the COVID-19 pandemic will no longer be classified as a global public health emergency, it is important to note that the threat to global health has not been eradicated. With the lifting of the state of emergency, it is imperative to address the psychological ramifications stemming from the pandemic [ 16 ]. The global healthcare system has been strained by the pandemic, placing a significant burden on healthcare workers (HCWs), particularly those in direct contact with COVID-19-diagnosed patients. This has resulted in a range of mental health issues, including pain, anxiety, burnout, depression, insomnia, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), denial, and fear, which have adversely affected medical personnel, regardless of their direct or indirect exposure to trauma [ 17 ]. Despite the difficulties encountered, healthcare professionals can endeavor to adapt to demanding circumstances and rebound from traumatic experiences, which may result in favorable outcomes such as posttraumatic growth (PTG) or vicarious posttraumatic growth (VPTG). This inherent resilience among medical personnel is underpinned by their specialized training and extensive experience in crisis management, enabling them to navigate the uncertainties and pressures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic [ 18 ]. Furthermore, the daily exposure to life-and-death situations, coupled with a strong sense of professional duty, equips healthcare workers with the capacity to maintain composure and professionalism even in the face of overwhelming challenges [ 19 ]. These qualities not only facilitate their ability to cope but also lay the foundation for potential positive psychological outcomes such as PTG. Therefore, the exploration of PTG becomes integral in understanding how healthcare professionals not only withstand the adversities brought about by the pandemic but also use these experiences as catalysts for personal and professional development. The study of PTG is crucial not just for mitigating the negative psychological consequences of trauma but for promoting a resilient healthcare workforce, capable of not only enduring but thriving in the aftermath of significant challenges.

To the best of our knowledge, existing research on the level of PTG and its influencing factors among medical staff has presented some variability across different regions during the COVID-19 pandemic. A preliminary search for existing scoping reviews in systematic review databases, such as JBI, Cochrane, TRIP database, and PROSPERO, on 01 October 2022, revealed no systematic reviews or scoping reviews on this topic or any currently in progress. Consequently, this study, grounded in the scoping review methodology of Arksey and O’Malley [ 20 ], aims to (a) map the prevalence and characteristics of PTG in healthcare settings during the COVID-19 pandemic (b) identify key factors that may influence its development and (c) highlight the knowledge gaps for future research and interventions aimed at enhancing the psychological resilience and well-being of healthcare workers in the face of public health crises.

This scoping review followed the scoping review framework developed by Arksey and O’Malley [ 20 ], including five stages: (1) identifying the research questions; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection; (4) charting the data; and (5) collating, summarizing and reporting the results. The results were based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist [ 21 ]. The PRISMA-ScR was intended to guide the reporting of this scoping review based on the relevance, credibility, and contribution of evidence. The completed PRISMA-ScR checklist can be found in Additional file 1 .

Search strategy

The literature was systematically reviewed between 01 January 2020 and 31 December 2022 using the following databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Biomedical Literature Service System (SinoMed), and Wanfang Data. A search strategy was developed by combining key and MESH terms by two research team members. The third member approved it of the research team and finally confirmed it by consulting the medical librarian. Here are the specific details: “COVID-19“[Mesh], “SARS-CoV-2“[Mesh], “COVID-19”, “SARS-CoV-2”, “coronavirus disease 2019”, “2019n-cov”; “Posttraumatic Growth, Psychological“[Mesh], “posttraumatic growth”, “post-traumatic growth”, “vicarious posttraumatic growth”, “secondary posttraumatic growth”, “alternative posttraumatic growth”; “Medical Staff“[Mesh], “Health Personnel“[Mesh], “Healthcare workers”, “health care provider”, “front line workers”, “medical workers”, “medical staff”, “healthcare professionals”, “nurse*”, “doctor*”, “physician”, “paramedic”, and adjusted in each database. The medrxiv.org and the references cited by the retrieved articles were also searched for additional references. The search strategies are detailed in Additional file 2 .

Study selection and eligibility criteria

Inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) the population described in the literature consisted of HCWs, including doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who were directly or indirectly involved in the diagnosis, treatment, or care of patients with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19; (2) the research topic was “posttraumatic growth” or “alternative posttraumatic growth” associated with the COVID-19 outbreak and pandemic; (3) the situation and influencing factors of PTG were discussed in the literature; and (4) the study types included qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies.

Exclusion criteria were as follows: (1) participants were medical students in clinical placement; (2) the study type was an intervention study; (3) the literature types were research protocol, conference literature, case reports, reviews, official reports, book reviews, letters to the editor, editorials, and studies published in preprint servers but not in peer-reviewed journals; and (4) duplicate and unavailable full-text, non-Chinese and non-English literature.

Data extraction

The retrieved literature was imported into the NoteExpress software, and duplicates were checked. The title and abstract of citations were independently reviewed by two reviewers for the first screening level to identify articles that met the minimum inclusion criteria. A subsequent review of the full-text articles was conducted by two reviewers for the second screening level. Studies were excluded if they did not meet the eligibility criteria or were unrelated to the research question and purpose. Disagreements were discussed with a third researcher and resolved by consensus if there were any disagreements and uncertainties relating to study selection.

A form was developed to confirm the relevance and extract study characteristics from the included sources of evidence. Then, two reviewers independently charted the extracted data from each eligible article, and disagreements among reviewers were discussed. This process aimed to create a descriptive summary of the results, including aims, study design, nation, participants, tools/method, and main findings.

Evidence was combined qualitatively and descriptively after collecting the relevant data. The similarities and differences between the included studies, their relationship, situation, and risk factors of PTG were reported.

Data integration methodology

This study employed a rigorous data integration approach to systematically synthesize and compare the results obtained from quantitative and qualitative research. This integration process aimed to gain a comprehensive understanding of PTG among medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following steps were adopted: (1) Identification of Common Themes: A detailed analysis of quantitative studies was conducted to identify key themes and patterns related to the characteristics and influencing factors of PTG. Concurrently, qualitative studies were thoroughly reviewed, employing content analysis to extract detailed individual experiences and nuanced insights on PTG. (2) Comprehensive Comparison: A comprehensive comparison table was established, encompassing the key statistical outcomes from quantitative research and the main themes from qualitative research. This table visually highlighted the consistencies and differences between the quantitative and qualitative research in terms of PTG characteristics and influencing factors. (3) Synthesis of Research Findings: The common themes from both research methodologies were synthesized. This included combining trends from quantitative data with profound insights from qualitative data to reveal a more comprehensive picture of PTG. Additionally, a detailed comparison and discussion were conducted to understand the perspectives and experiences captured by each research method in terms of PTG features and influencing factors. (4) Verification of Integrated Results: To ensure the accuracy and reliability of the integration process, the synthesized results were subjected to rigorous review by multiple researchers.

Search results

The primary search discovered 325 papers, including 24 Chinese and 301 English articles. After removing duplicates, 133 papers were left. We selected 110 articles for full-text reading based on screening titles and abstracts. We excluded 74 articles due to unrelated topics (n = 13), ineligible study populations (n = 22), noncompliant study designs (n = 34), not in English or Chinese (n = 2), and unobtainable full texts (n = 3). Finally, our analysis included 36 studies. Figure  1 presents a flowchart of the search strategy and the selection process based on identified criteria.

figure 1

Flow diagram of screening of articles based on identified criteria

Characteristics of sources of evidence

Five of the 36 articles were in Chinese, with the remaining 31 in English. Three were published in 2020, 15 in 2021, and 18 in 2022 (one of the studies was online in 2022 and published in 2023). The study included18 articles from China, four from Turkey, three from the United States, three from Korea, one from other countries, such as Greece, Italy, Canada, Spain, Israel, Serbia, and Palestine, and one from a global study covering three countries (Israel, Canada, and France).

The study population included 17 papers on frontline medical staff (care for COVID-19-diagnosed patients), four papers on nurses diagnosed with COVID-19 infection, and 15 on medical workers. It involves the emergency department, intensive care unit, dentistry, psychiatric department, and outpatient department. The medical institutions involved hospitals designated to treat patients diagnosed with COVID-19, general hospitals, communities, clinics, and other hospitals. The PTG level was measured at one to three-time points in 23 cross-sectional and six longitudinal studies, primarily using online questionnaires. Six qualitative articles utilized semi-structured interviews and questionnaires via telephone, video, or face-to-face interviews. Scale and open-question surveys were used in one mixed mothed record. Table  1 represents the general characteristics of the included literature.

Synthesis of results

Quantitative results.

The level of posttraumatic growth

The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), a 21-item scale developed by Tedeschi and Calhoun [ 2 ] in 1996, measures PTG, including five dimensions: relationship with others, new possibilities, personal strength, spiritual change, and appreciation of life. It is scored on a 6-point Likert scale from 0 to 5, ranging from “not at all” to “very much.” Researchers in various regions have modified this scale based on cultural adaptation. Most Chinese studies used the revised version of the 20-item PTGI by Wang Ji [ 58 ], deleting item 18, “My religious beliefs are stronger,” due to its low correlation with the total score and local culture in China. It adopted the Likert 6-point scale with a score of 0–100. Six studies [ 28 , 32 , 36 , 37 , 43 , 44 ] used a 10-entry short version of the PTGI scale (PTGI-SF), adopting a Likert 6-point scale with a total score of 0 to 50 [ 59 ]. Tedeschi et al. [ 60 ] updated the list with four new items in the spiritual and existential change subscale to better capture spiritual and existential change in non-religious cultures, comprising PTGI-X with 25 items scored from 0 to 125 with a 6-point Likert scale. Two studies included in this review used it as a measurement [ 25 , 55 ]. PTG levels reached moderate and above with mean item scores of PTGI > 3 or total scores > 60 in two studies [ 24 , 38 ]. However, another study indicates that people who scored higher than the 60th percentile might have grown [ 37 ].

HCWs experienced varying PTG levels following direct or indirect trauma during the COVID-19 epidemic. A total of 28 studies in the included literature reported specific PTGI scores, with moderate PTG levels in general and high scores on the dimension of “relating to others”, “appreciation of life”, and “personal strength” more frequently mentioned. Table  2 presents the details.

The influencing factors of posttraumatic growth

COVID-19 could be categorized as a new type of mass trauma. Different types of trauma-related scenarios or characteristics may influence PTG levels. COVID-19-exposed HCWs, such as those working in intensive care units (ICUs) or frontline or sentinel hospitals where confirmed cases are treated, had higher PTG levels [ 23 , 29 , 37 , 45 , 51 ]. HCWs diagnosed with COVID-19 or have a family member, friend, or colleague who has been diagnosed had higher PTG levels [ 51 , 56 ].

The PTG levels of HCWs differed at different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. A longitudinal study of frontline HCWs (n = 134) in China showed that Time 1 (Feb 2020) to Time 2 (Mar 2020) participants revealed an increase in PTG, while Time 3 (May 2020) participants indicated a decrease in PTG [ 42 ]. Another three-wave longitudinal study (n = 565) from China discovered that PTG gradually increased over two years of follow-up among HCWs, and four types of PTG trajectory were identified: persistent, steady increase, high with a drop, and fluid trajectory [ 22 ]. However, one study (two-point survey) from Turkey indicated that PTGI scores decreased significantly over time among 66 HCWs participated in the study [ 24 ]. Another two-wave survey from the U.S. radiology staff revealed a consistent trend toward lower PTGI [ 23 ].

The severity of the traumatic event and PTG in HCWs may have a positive or negative correlation. Researchers have also discovered that PTG was negatively correlated with trauma [ 28 ] and PTSD symptoms [ 47 ]. Another study indicated that PTG was positively correlated with PTSD [ 36 ].

Demographic characteristics

Gender, age, work years, job title, education level, marital status, child status, religion, and race may be associated with PTG. Most studies discovered higher PTG levels among HCWs with older age [ 22 , 23 ], longer working years [ 33 , 38 ], higher job titles [ 51 ], and higher education levels [ 22 , 51 ]. However, some studies revealed that PTG was negatively correlated with age [ 25 , 34 ] and professional title [ 47 ]. Not coincidentally, gender differences were also observed across studies. A survey of 455 nurses from China indicated that women had lower PTGI scores than men [ 29 ]. A survey of 673 HCWs from Greece showed that women scored higher on all VPTG subscales [ 34 ]. However, another large (n = 12,596) study from China demonstrated a greater trauma response in women than in men but no difference in PTG [ 37 ]. Similarly, a study from Serbia produced consistent results [ 56 ].

Additionally, HCWs with religious beliefs [ 32 , 33 ], married [ 29 ], with children [ 39 ], and working part-time [ 32 ] had higher PTG levels. PTG levels differed between physicians and nurse assistants [ 43 ], and whether they were white [ 36 ] or born locally also differed from PTG levels [ 33 ]. Disaster training, rescue, critical patient resuscitation, and infectious disease treatment experience contribute to a higher PTG level [ 51 ].

Psychological factors or personal traits

Positive emotions or psychology or personal traits can promote PTG, such as resilience [ 22 , 26 , 33 , 42 ], occupational resilience [ 50 ], occupational identity [ 45 ], self-efficacy [ 47 ], deliberate rumination [ 30 , 38 , 55 ], subjective well-being [ 28 ], coherence [ 28 ], harmonious passion [ 43 ], frontline job confidence [ 38 ], risk awareness [ 38 ], transformative power of pain [ 31 ], trust, reciprocity, and identification [ 41 ], being psychological comfort [ 39 ], and positive emotions and dispositional gratitude [ 36 ], as mentioned in most studies.

Negative emotions or psychological or personal traits can inhibit the PTG onset; examples include COVID-19-related stress/anxiety/concern [ 28 ] and job burnout [ 28 , 42 ]. However, similar to trauma, the stress/anxiety/concern associated with COVID-19 has also revealed a double-edged sword effect on PTG. For instance, research from China exhibited that higher COVID-19-related worries and psychological distress meant a higher PTG level [ 32 ]. Studies from other regions have demonstrated the same effect [ 43 , 44 ]. An increased stress mindset, determining the stress response, is associated with higher PTG levels [ 25 ].

Coping and social support

A positive coping style can contribute to PTG, including conducting psychological interventions/training, engaging in online counseling, and phone app of application self-relaxation [ 25 , 29 , 38 , 47 , 56 ].

A positive association has been demonstrated between PTG and social support, including support from organizations [ 26 , 50 ], societies [ 30 , 45 , 47 , 53 ], families [ 39 , 52 ], and friends [ 39 ]. Additionally, good working relationships, such as nurse-patient satisfaction [ 51 ] and job satisfaction [ 32 ], can promote PTG in HCWs.

Seven studies explored the path analysis of the PTG influencing factors and discovered the mediating and moderating factors under their respective theoretical models, such as organizational support [ 50 ], social support [ 30 , 57 ], coping strategies [ 25 , 34 ], resilience [ 53 ], psychological security [ 41 ], expressive suppression [ 53 ], deliberate rumination [ 30 ], emotional exhaustion [ 42 ], self-disclosure [ 30 ], and positive psychological capital [ 57 ].

Qualitative results

Six qualitative studies [ 27 , 35 , 40 , 46 , 48 , 54 ] described the specific experiences of HCWs when confronted with or diagnosed with COVID-19 through three periods of stress/negativity, adjustment to adaptation, and growth, presenting PTG occurrence. The qualitative part of another mixed study [ 49 ] identified three themes: quality of workplace relationships, sense of emotional-relational competence, and clinical-technical competence. Each theme has two broad macro categories: growth and block.

Change in relationships with others

Six of the Seven studies contributed to this theme. Improved interpersonal relationships include with family, friends, colleagues, and patients. Family, friends, and colleagues’ warm love and support bring their relationship closer and more intimate. A nurse diagnosed with COVID-19 remarked, “My boyfriend cared for me, encouraged me, and gave me strength after I got sick; I will cherish the relationship between us” [ 54 ]. “When I saw my son at the gate of the community after I came back from isolation, I burst into tears and held him tightly in my arms” [ 27 ]. As healthcare worker spends more time with a patient, their empathy and compassion for the patient gradually intensifies. Like comrades who fought back the “enemy” (COVID-19), both sides cheered and encouraged each other to overcome difficulties and diseases, improving the relationship between doctors and patients. One nurse said, “When the test result returned negative for the first time after being admitted, I was so happy and cried together with the patients” [ 48 ]. Additionally, the experience of being a patient after a COVID-19 diagnosis also influences how HCWs treat patients, and role reversal and empathy improve the relationship with patients to some extent [ 27 , 54 ]. During this particular time, colleagues’ help, care, and encouragement in caring for infected patients promote teamwork and interpersonal relationships [ 27 , 35 , 48 , 49 , 54 ].

Increase in individual strength

This resulted in a shift in participants’ mental and professional perceptions of themselves. At a psychological level, HCWs reported that the experience had made them more courageous, strong, and optimistic. “I think I am a little more brave and strong than I thought I would be” [ 54 ]. In the face of difficulties or trauma, resilience allows individuals to make positive choices and respond rationally to stress. This facilitates guiding individuals to reconstruct non-adaptive states and activate their potential to resist crises to resolve difficulties. Most HCWs described their experiences exploring and reconfiguring their strengths [ 27 ].

At the professional level, HCWs had a positive attitude toward gaining work experience related to a new infectious disease [ 48 , 49 ]. They viewed their current experience as a valuable opportunity to learn new skills and enhance their work, gradually moving from unfamiliarity at the beginning to completing the work previously given to the nurse aides and being able to quickly shift and focus on enhancing the quality of care and improving patient well-being. This adds significance to their experience [ 48 ].

Changes in the philosophy of life and priorities

Four of the seven studies contributed to this theme. Interviewees mentioned a new appreciation of life and the future after experiencing trauma. They will re-examine life’s meaning and re-plan their future priorities, such as“I felt the need to live more meaningfully as the disease gave me another chance to live. I became more attached to life and realized how valuable it is …” [ 40 ].

Most life priorities change are reflected in the increased priority given to physical health. “Nothing is better than a healthy life, and nothing is as important as health” [ 27 ]. “… I realized that health is more important than anything else. Thus, I decided to stop worrying about some things, stop overthinking, and stop to give importance. I realized that health is the most important thing” [ 40 ]. Moreover, it is reflected in other meaningful and fun things, such as “I will get better for myself and my family. I will spend more time with them, cherish every day, and enjoy the fun of life. I still have many important tasks to complete” [ 27 ].

Self-identification of profession

Participants in four studies described greater vocational identity. Most participants expressed satisfaction and pride that they were making a concrete contribution to the fight against the global pandemic. Their pride was further enhanced with increased social recognition of HCWs caring for COVID-19 patients. All of these enhanced their professional identity. “The work that I am doing is truly helping others. I am contributing during this national disaster situation. I am here at this historical moment…” [ 48 ], “I am proud to be a nurse and to have assisted on the front lines” [ 35 ], and “I think every HCW is a hero” [ 54 ]. As child and adolescent psychiatrists, they have experienced a successful transition from “who we are” and “what we can do now” to “who we will become” during the pandemic and then engendered a reevaluation of and a recommitment to psychiatry [ 46 ].

Spiritual change

One research reported a change in spirituality [ 40 ]. After being diagnosed with COVID-19, the nurses questioned their spiritual lives and changed. “Inevitably, death anxiety enters your mind, and you question yourself. I realized how spiritually weak I was and made a promise to myself. I would pay more attention to my prayers after the treatment … I was angry with myself as I was living in this way….” “Thus, I realized that everything was in vain; the only real thing is after death. … I started to question my mistakes and sins and plan to get rid of them … I turned to God more.” Many of them rely on religious beliefs to manage stress.

Integration of quantitative and qualitative research

To provide a clearer understanding of the consistency and divergence between quantitative and qualitative studies in the PTG of HCWs, we have established Table  3 to compare the associations of these two research methods regarding PTG characteristics and influencing factors.

Through the comparison presented in the table, we observe a notable coherence and complementarity in understanding the characteristics and influencing factors of PTG among HCWs during the COVID-19 pandemic. In terms of PTG characteristics, the themes distilled from qualitative studies correspond closely with the five dimensions measured in quantitative PTG scales. This alignment elucidates the specific contexts and manifestations of these dimensions, providing a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of what PTG looks like for HCWs in the context of the pandemic. Regarding influencing factors, there is a synergistic relationship between the themes identified in qualitative research and the factors statistically derived from quantitative studies. For instance, qualitative themes such as “Work-related stressors” and “Psychological stress and emotional reactions” offer a vivid explanation of HCWs’ early responses to the “Trauma” of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, qualitative findings explicate how internal and external factors foster PTG, detailing the process of its formation. This consistency and complementarity between qualitative and quantitative approaches highlight the importance and value of employing a combined methodological perspective for a holistic understanding of PTG.

This literature review aimed to provide insight into the existing evidence base of what PTG looks like in HCWs and internal and external factors that may contribute to and hinder this phenomenon.

Summary of findings

Thirty-six papers from 12 countries met the inclusion criteria. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, HCWs faced tremendous stress and strain, generating associated mental health problems. They were also stimulated to adapt and adjust, generating PTG; the most notable included “interpersonal relationships,” “changes in life philosophy,” and “growth in personal power”. The factors influencing PTG were the level of trauma exposure, sociodemographics, and the psychological traits of the traumatized individual, such as psychological resilience, positive psychological qualities, and coping and social support.

Integrated discussion

Our study reveals the alignment and complementarity between qualitative and quantitative research. The integration of these methodologies not only enriches our understanding of PTG’s features but also enhances our grasp of its complexity. The themes identified in qualitative research correspond to the dimensions of the PTGI used in quantitative studies, elucidating the specific contexts and manifestations of these dimensions within the healthcare environment. For example, the growth in the personal strength dimension of PTGI, when reflected in the workplace, manifests as enhanced skills, increased confidence, professional identity, and a sense of accomplishment [ 46 , 48 , 54 ]. Moreover, the detailed backgrounds and descriptions provided by qualitative research help explain how factors identified in quantitative studies facilitate PTG. For instance, quantitative data may show a correlation between social support and increased PTG, but qualitative insights explain the mechanisms and reasons behind these relationships [ 27 , 48 , 54 ].

Qualitative research, with its intricate depiction of the phenomenon, addresses the limitations of quantitative research, enriching our understanding across various dimensions. This profound understanding aids in a more nuanced grasp of the essence and complexity of posttraumatic growth. Ultimately, this integrative approach not only broadens our comprehension of PTG but also underscores the value of combining qualitative and quantitative methods in mental health research. It provides a blueprint for future studies, demonstrating the importance of methodological diversity for a comprehensive understanding of complex psychological phenomena.

What does posttraumatic growth look like?

The variation in cultural backgrounds, measurement instruments, dimensions, and the reliability and validity of PTG assessments made it difficult to compare specific values across studies. Discrepancies in PTG levels might also be attributed to differences in survey time frames, health service contexts, pandemic control measures, and individuals’ subjective appraisals of COVID-19-related stressors. The criteria for classifying different PTG levels varied across studies. Several studies [ 24 , 37 , 38 ] used total scores > 60, single entry scores > 3, or ≥ 60% of the total scores as an intermediate or higher level of PTG, while others did not report delineation criteria. Overall, a medium level of PTG was observed. The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed enormous stress on HCWs, leading to mental health problems. Nevertheless, they adapt and adjust, ultimately yielding positive behaviors and experiences. The pandemic prompted the most profound changes in “human relationships,” “philosophy of life,” and “personal strength,” consistent with the qualitative studies review.

After experiencing an initial period of negative emotions in response to acute stress, individuals mobilize internal and external resources to manage the effects of trauma. Internal resources, such as mental toughness, intentional reflection, and resilience, with external resources like organizational, familial, and societal support, contribute to the positive outcome known as growth [ 61 ]. During this process, support from others facilitates adaptation and adjustment while manifesting in growth expressions, enhancing relationships, and creating reciprocal influence. After the trauma, individuals develop a positive and transcendent view of themselves and a new philosophy of life, appreciating various aspects, including health, existence, subtle experiences, and relationships.

What affects posttraumatic growth?

The COVID-19 pandemic, as a traumatic event, has disrupted the assumptive world of HCWs, leading to their dysregulated cognitions and emotions. However, according to the model of “Posttraumatic Growth at Work” [ 52 ], they may achieve PTG via a recursive cycle of emotion regulation and sensemaking.

First, individuals with high trauma levels of exposure may exhibit severe PTSD symptoms, but higher trauma levels of exposure do not necessarily imply higher growth levels. There is no PTG without trauma for individuals. However, mild trauma may be insufficient to stimulate growth, and severe trauma may be more detrimental than beneficial to growth [ 62 ]. Thus, only moderate trauma exposure may trigger individual PTG and provide room for growth, demonstrating a positive correlation. For instance, a study discovered a linear and curvilinear relationship between trauma and posttraumatic development, and moderate indirect trauma was associated with the highest PTG levels [ 63 ]. A network analysis of war-related PTG revealed a U-shaped relationship between posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and PTG levels [ 9 ]. Additional studies supported these findings. The work experience of inpatient psychiatric nurses was associated with higher PTSD levels and secondary trauma. However, their growth was significantly slower compared to community nurses, which were thought to be associated with higher and continuous exposure to trauma and fewer opportunities to take breaks to reflect on it [ 64 ].

Second, although traumatic events are transient, their effects are continuous and dynamic, and post-traumatic stress and growth levels can change over time. For instance, a longitudinal study of tsunami survivors discovered that PTG could moderate the relationship between posttraumatic stress, depression, and quality of life after natural disasters [ 65 ]. Another tracking survey of earthquake survivors revealed that growth could reduce long-term PTSS [ 66 ]. Survivors may undergo self-adjustment and receive external support or intervention during the post-trauma period, which can accumulate over time and lead to different levels of trauma and growth. Their relationship remains uncertain due to the complex symbiotic relationship between trauma and growth and the many factors involved [ 67 , 68 ].

Although there are differences in the relationship between age, years of work, job title, education level, marital status, parental status, whether they were born in the local area, and PTG, they all share common factors that influence their growth. HCWs with more internal and external coping resources and a greater ability to cope with trauma exhibit higher PTG levels. Higher age, higher job title, higher years of work experience, and higher education level mean more internal resources, such as work experience and life experience, allowing them to use their clinical skills, integrate external resources through reflection, and then adopt a positive coping approach when faced with an unexpected pandemic. However, some studies also proved a negative correlation between age and growth [ 25 , 34 ]. It might result from young people’s greater willingness to change their cognitive patterns and derive positive meaning from trauma, consistent with previous research on age differences in PTG [ 69 ]. Being married and having children may provide more emotional and material support resources from the family system, leading to higher PTG levels. According to other studies, the relationship between gender and PTG differs between studies [ 29 , 34 , 37 ], possibly due to the influence of other factors, such as the gender interaction with pandemic duration and individual quarantine [ 70 ].

HCWs who have received disaster training, rescue experience, critical patient resuscitation experience, and infectious disease treatment experience exhibit greater composure when faced with COVID-19. They can utilize their professional skills effectively to provide better care for critically ill patients and even lead other HCWs to do the same. This strengthens their sense of professional identity and honor and is associated with higher PTG levels [ 51 ].

Additionally, religiously engaged healthcare professionals have been shown to effectively use their faith and spirituality to cope with adversity during disasters. Religious beliefs can provide a framework to positively view threatening situations, facilitating a sense of challenge and growth through suffering [ 71 ]. Previous research has also highlighted the social support function of religious involvement [ 72 ]. Part-time nurses have higher PTG levels than full-time nurses [ 32 ]. This could be due to the extra time part-time employees must devote to their nursing duties and stressful experiences, potentially contributing to PTG.

Demographic characteristics may be associated with an individual’s emotional regulation and psychological resources in response to traumatic events. When designing interventions, the influence of these sociodemographic characteristics on PTG should be considered. Understanding these features carries significant practical implications for promoting PTG.

Regarding the temporal course of post-traumatic experiences, it has been suggested that intrusive rumination in the early stages of trauma can exacerbate psychological distress, elicit negative emotions and outcomes, and hinder PTG. However, as time progresses, an individual’s positive psychological resources, such as positive worldviews (hope, tolerance, psychological resilience, optimism, self-esteem, wisdom, and spirituality), positive emotions (happiness, gratitude, and satisfaction), and positive attitudes towards society (social cohesion, altruistic behavior, social responsibility, and benevolence), can aid in overcoming negative emotions and enhancing coping abilities [ 73 ]. Intrusive rumination may give way to active reprocessing and constructive thinking about the traumatic event under the influence of positive self-adjustment and social support. Moreover, negative reviews in the early stages of trauma can provide material for subsequent positive processing, enabling individuals to discover the positive meaning of the traumatic experience, ultimately promoting growth.

Psychological resilience, also known as resilience, refers to the ability to adapt or recover from highly adverse circumstances. It is a source of strength that enables individuals to remain well-adjusted, develop, and grow, and a key factor influencing whether they can overcome difficulties and adversity. However, the relationship between resilience and PTG remains controversial. Previous studies have suggested that their relationship may be positive [ 74 ], curvilinear [ 75 ], or insignificant [ 76 ], and further investigation is needed to explore the mediating and moderating factors involved. Considering the dynamic nature of resilience and PTG over time, Lyu [ 42 ] explored their trends and relationships throughout the traumatic event and discovered that individuals continue to grow in a virtuous cycle after trauma. PTG promotes psychological resilience, and PTG promotes psychological resilience. Over time, these two factors positively influence each other, contributing to the individual’s continued positive functioning during and after the adverse experience.

Psychological resilience and positive psychological qualities can assist HCWs in better emotion regulation and sensemaking, thereby promoting PTG. This finding is consistent with the model of “Posttraumatic Growth at Work” [ 77 ], confirming the importance of these individual characteristics for PTG. Therefore, enhancing psychological resilience and positive psychological qualities in medical staff can improve their growth potential in the face of traumatic events.

Effective coping styles and strong social support are vital in facilitating PTG. Positive and effective coping strategies help individuals face challenges and mobilize resources from others and society to solve problems. Psychological interventions or training during or before frontline work can help HCWs maintain positive emotions, reduce attentional bias towards negative emotions, and facilitate their regulation and release, enabling them to perform their high-intensity work in a good psychological state. These interventions or training may also stimulate HCWs’ sense of mission and professional responsibility, generate positive psychological experiences, and promote growth in their front-line work [ 38 ]. Excessive attention to negative external information can trigger negative emotions, but shifting attention appropriately can help traumatized individuals detach from distress and gain new insights to reexamine and confront traumatic events. Self-motivation can enhance an individual’s self-confidence and facilitate positive psychological adjustment, prompting the traumatized person to adopt positive behaviors, solve problems, and grow. Choosing a suitable relaxation method, such as online counseling or a self-relaxation mobile app, can also help to cope effectively with pandemic stress [ 29 ].

Social support refers to the material and emotional assistance individuals receive from their social networks, including family, friends, and other socially connected individuals. Individuals can process traumatic events in a supportive environment by disclosing their internal processes to others, particularly when focusing on cognitive and emotional factors. The degree to which individuals perceive their social environment as encouraging or inhibiting plays a crucial role in the PTG process. Adequate protective materials can help HCWs better protect themselves and increase their confidence in their work, while care and support from family, friends, colleagues, and social organizations can alleviate stress and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 26 , 30 , 39 , 45 , 47 , 52 , 53 ]. Good social support provides HCWs with external resources and emotional support, creating a safe atmosphere for self-expression, understanding, and acceptance [ 30 ].

Effective coping strategies and robust social support significantly impact PTG, aligning with the emphasis on social support, occupational backing, and attentive companionship in the “Posttraumatic Growth at Work” model [ 77 ]. This support can assist HCWs in modulating their emotions and provide a safe environment for sensemaking, thereby facilitating PTG. It is crucial to strengthen the training of coping abilities for medical staff and elevate social support during intervention measures.

Limitations and directions for future research

This study has several limitations that should be acknowledged. First, it only provided a descriptive analysis of the included literature and did not rigorously evaluate the studies’ quality. Second, the review focused exclusively on “posttraumatic growth” or “alternative posttraumatic growth,” omitting relevant topics such as positive posttraumatic experiences and perceived benefits. Third, only 28 of the 36 papers provided specific PTGI scores, and the data could not be integrated due to variations in PTGI versions, classification criteria, and result presentation. Additionally, most studies were cross-sectional, precluding the establishment of causal relationships. Some studies on risk factors did not control for confounding variables (work hours, COVID-19 exposure intensity, cultural background, and government policies), potentially affecting the results.

Our study’s findings point to several critical directions for future research to enhance the understanding of PTG among HCWs. Firstly, there is an urgent need for additional longitudinal studies to delve deeper into the dynamics and formation mechanisms of PTG. Such studies are essential for providing a more comprehensive understanding of how PTG evolves. Secondly, considering the global scope of the pandemic, it is crucial to understand PTG within various cultural contexts. Cultural differences in emotional experiences and expressions can significantly influence the process and potential of PTG. Therefore, future research should incorporate a cultural perspective, exploring how cultural factors impact the development and experience of PTG among healthcare professionals. This approach will not only enrich our understanding of PTG in diverse settings but also guide culturally sensitive support and intervention strategies. Lastly, future studies should focus on assessing various interventions’ efficacy to determine best practices for supporting HCWs’ psychological well-being and growth. This includes exploring how different types of support systems, both professional and societal, can facilitate PTG. The development and validation of these interventions will provide critical guidance for healthcare settings and policymakers in creating robust mechanisms to support HCWs during and after traumatic events.

Implications for practice and policy

The psychological health and PTG of medical staff are long-term concerns. To enhance the psychological resilience and PTG levels in medical staff, practice and policy should focus on the following aspects:

In terms of practical implications, we underscore the necessity of enhancing support systems tailored to the specific needs of HCWs. This involves developing interventions that address the key factors influencing PTG, such as trauma exposure and coping strategies. Such support systems could encompass resilience training programs, mental health workshops, and peer support initiatives, all designed to fortify the psychological resilience of healthcare staff. Additionally, there is a need for personalized interventions that take into account the individual psychological traits and sociodemographic factors of HCWs, thereby fostering PTG in a manner that resonates with their unique experiences and backgrounds. Furthermore, it is important to update the existing crisis response protocols to integrate measures for psychological well-being. This would ensure that HCWs’ mental health is a primary consideration during pandemics, aligning crisis responses with the psychological needs and challenges faced by these essential personnel.

Regarding policy implications, our study highlights the critical need for strategic resource allocation to enhance mental health services and support systems in healthcare settings. This is particularly crucial during public health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where the mental health demands of HCWs are significantly heightened. Adequate resource allocation should include not only immediate support but also long-term mental health services to address the ongoing needs of healthcare professionals. Recognizing the lasting impact of pandemic experiences on HCWs, it is imperative to develop comprehensive long-term mental health strategies. These strategies should encompass continuous support, regular mental health assessments, and adaptive interventions, ensuring that the evolving mental health needs of HCWs are met effectively. Such policies would not only provide immediate relief during crises but also contribute to the sustainable well-being and resilience of healthcare professionals in the long run.

This scoping review revealed that medical staff experienced moderate PTG during the COVID-19 pandemic, with notable improvements in interpersonal relationships, life philosophy, and personal competence. Key influencing factors included trauma exposure, sociodemographics, psychological traits, coping, and social support. The findings highlight the importance of addressing HCWs’ psychological well-being and resilience during and after pandemics. Further research is required to explore PTG in diverse cultural contexts, investigate the dynamic nature of PTG, and evaluate the effectiveness of targeted interventions for HCWs.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

Abbreviations

  • Posttraumatic growth

Vicarious posttraumatic growth

Posttraumatic Growth Inventory

Short version of the posttraumatic growth inventory

Expanded posttraumatic growth inventory

Coronavirus disease 2019

World Health Organization

Healthcare workers

Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta‑analyses extension for scoping reviews

Posttraumatic stress disorder

Posttraumatic stress symptoms

Tedeschi RG, Calhoun LG. Posttraumatic growth: conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychol Inq. 2004;15(1):1–18.

Article   Google Scholar  

Tedeschi RG, Calhoun LG. The posttraumatic growth inventory: measuring the positive legacy of trauma. J Trauma Stress. 1996;9(3):455–71.

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Chen X, Liu X, Shi X, Chen H, Fan F. Psychological resilience and posttraumatic growth in adolescent survivors of Earthquake: a 10-year cohort study. J Psychiatr Res. 2022;155:331–7.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Şimşek Arslan B, Özer Z, Buldukoğlu K. Posttraumatic growth in parentally bereaved children and adolescents: a systematic review. Death Stud. 2022;46(1):111–23.

Liu Z, Doege D, Thong MSY, Arndt V. The relationship between posttraumatic growth and health-related quality of life in adult cancer survivors: a systematic review. J Affect Disord. 2020;276:159–68.

Pięta M, Rzeszutek M. Posttraumatic growth and well-being among people living with HIV: a systematic review and meta-analysis in recognition of 40 years of HIV/AIDS. Qual Life Res. 2022;31(5):1269–88.

Levi-Belz Y, Krysinska K, Andriessen K. Turning personal tragedy into triumph: a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on posttraumatic growth among suicide-loss survivors. Psychol Trauma. 2021;13(3):322–32.

Wadji DL, Oe M, Bartoli E, Martin-Soelch C, Pfaltz MC, Langevin R. How are experiences and acceptability of child maltreatment related to resilience and posttraumatic growth: a cross cultural study. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2023;14(2):2264119.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Kangaslampi S, Peltonen K, Hall J. Posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress - a network analysis among Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2022;13(2):2117902.

Greenberg J, Tsai J, Southwick SM, Pietrzak RH. Can military trauma promote psychological growth in combat veterans? Results from the national health and resilience in veterans study. J Affect Disord. 2021;282:732–9.

Tsirimokou A, Kloess JA, Dhinse SK. Vicarious post-traumatic growth in professionals exposed to traumatogenic material: a systematic literature review. Trauma Violence Abuse. 2022:779766239.

Tabor PD. Vicarious traumatization: concept analysis. J Forensic Nurs. 2011;7(4):203–8.

Kalaitzaki AE, Tamiolaki A, Rovithis M. The healthcare professionals amidst Covid-19 pandemic: a perspective of resilience and posttraumatic growth. Asian J Psychiatr. 2020;52:102172.

Bhagwagar H. Secondary trauma, burnout and resilience among mental health professionals from India: a review of research. Asian J Psychiatr. 2022;76:103227.

World health statistics 2023. : Monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240074323 . Accessed 19 May 2023.

Statement on the fifteenth meeting of the ihr. (2005) emergency committee on the covid-19 pandemic. https://www.who.int/news/item/05-05-2023-statement-on-the-fifteenth-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)-pandemic . Accessed 11 May 2023.

Saragih ID, Tonapa SI, Saragih IS, Advani S, Batubara SO, Suarilah I, et al. Global prevalence of mental health problems among healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Nurs Stud. 2021;121:104002.

Pollock A, Campbell P, Cheyne J, Cowie J, Davis B, McCallum J, et al. Interventions to support the resilience and mental health of frontline health and social care professionals during and after a Disease outbreak, epidemic or pandemic: a mixed methods systematic review. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020;11(11):D13779.

Google Scholar  

Bhardwaj A. Medical professionalism in the provision of clinical care in healthcare organizations. J Healthc Leadersh. 2022;14:183–9.

Arksey H, O’Malley L. Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework. Int J Soc Res Methodol. 2005;8(1):19–32.

Tricco AC, Lillie E, Zarin W, O’Brien KK, Colquhoun H, Levac D, et al. Prisma extension for scoping reviews (prisma-ScR): checklist and explanation. Ann Intern Med. 2018;169(7):467–73.

Zhang Y, Jiang WB, Lv BH, Wu Q, Li QQ, Gu RT, et al. Post-traumatic growth trajectories among frontline healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic: a three-wave follow-up study in mainland China. Front Psychiatry. 2022;13:945993.

Kapur A, Rudin B, Potters L. Posttraumatic growth in radiation medicine during the Covid-19 outbreak. Adv Radiat Oncol. 2022;7(4):100975.

Yılmaz-Karaman 0G, Yastıbaş-Kaçar C. Ece 0F. Posttraumatic growth levels of healthcare workers in two periods with different intensities of COVID-19 pandemic. Psych J. 2023;12(2):297–306.

Zhang N, Bai B, Zhu J. Stress mindset, proactive coping behavior, and posttraumatic growth among health care professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychol Trauma. 2023;15(3):515–23.

Atay N, Sahin-Bayindir G, Buzlu S, Koç K, Kuyuldar Y. The relationship between posttraumatic growth and psychological resilience of nurses working at the pandemic clinics. Int J Nurs Knowl. 2023;34(3):226–35.

Jiang J, Han P, Huang X, Liu Y, Shao H, Zeng L, et al. Post-traumatic growth experience of first-line emergency nurses infected with COVID-19 during the epidemic period-A qualitative study in Shanghai, China. Front Public Health. 2022;10:1015316.

Veronese G, Mahamid FA, Bdier D. Subjective well-being, sense of coherence, and posttraumatic growth mediate the association between covid-19 stress, trauma, and burnout among Palestinian health-care providers. Am J Orthopsychiatry. 2022;92(3):291–301.

Li L, Mao M, Wang S, Yin R, Yan H, Jin Y, et al. Posttraumatic growth in Chinese nurses and general public during the COVID-19 outbreak. Psychol Health Med. 2022;27(2):301–11.

Yim JY, Kim JA. Factors influencing posttraumatic growth among nurses caring for COVID-19 patients: a path analysis. J Nurs Manag. 2022;30(6):1940–8.

Sarıalioğlu A, Çiftçi B, Yıldırım N. The transformative power of pain and posttraumatic growth in nurses with COVID-19 PCR positive. Perspect Psychiatr Care. 2022;58(4):2622–30.

Yeung NC, Wong EL, Cheung AW, Leung CS, Yeoh EK, Wong SY. Finding the positives from the COVID-19 pandemic: factors associated with posttraumatic growth among nurses in Hong Kong. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2022;13(1):2005346.

Dahan S, Levi G, Segev R. Shared trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic: psychological effects on Israeli mental health nurses. Int J Ment Health Nurs. 2022;31(3):722–30.

Kalaitzaki A, Tamiolaki A, Tsouvelas G. From secondary traumatic stress to vicarious posttraumatic growth amid covid-19 lockdown in Greece: the role of health care workers’ coping strategies. Psychol Trauma. 2022;14(2):273–80.

Mohammed N, Lelièvre H. Lived experience of medicine nurses caring for COVID-19 patients: a quality improvement perspective. J Nurs Care Qual. 2022;37(1):35–41.

Feingold JH, Hurtado A, Feder A, Peccoralo L, Southwick SM, Ripp J, et al. Posttraumatic growth among health care workers on the frontlines of the covid-19 pandemic. J Affect Disord. 2022;296:35–40.

Chen R, Sun C, Chen JJ, Jen HJ, Kang XL, Kao CC, et al. A large-scale survey on trauma, burnout, and posttraumatic growth among nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Int J Ment Health Nurs. 2021;30(1):102–16.

Cui PP, Wang PP, Wang K, Ping Z, Wang P, Chen C. Post-traumatic growth and influencing factors among frontline nurses fighting against COVID-19. Occup Environ Med. 2021;78(2):129–35.

Peng X, Zhao HZ, Yang Y, Rao ZL, Hu DY, He Q. Post-traumatic growth level and its influencing factors among frontline nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Front Psychiatry. 2021;12:632360.

Aydin R, Bulut E. Experiences of nurses diagnosed with COVID-19 in Turkey: a qualitative study. Int Nurs Rev. 2022;69(3):294–304.

Nie T, Tian M, Liang H. Relational capital and post-traumatic growth: the role of work meaning. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(14):7362.

Lyu Y, Yu Y, Chen S, Lu S, Ni S. Positive functioning at work during COVID-19: posttraumatic growth, resilience, and emotional exhaustion in Chinese frontline healthcare workers. Appl Psychol Health Well Being. 2021;13(4):871–86.

Moreno-Jiménez JE, Blanco-Donoso LM, Demerouti E, Belda HS, Chico-Fernández M, Moreno-Jiménez B, et al. The role of healthcare professionals’ passion in predicting secondary traumatic stress and posttraumatic growth in the face of COVID-19: a longitudinal approach. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(9):4453.

Uziel N, Gilon E, Meyerson J, Levin L, Khehra A, Emodi-Perlman A, et al. Dental personnel in Israel, Canada, and France during the COVID-19 pandemic: attitudes, worries, emotional responses, and posttraumatic growth. Quintessence Int. 2021;52(5):444–53.

PubMed   Google Scholar  

Mo Y, Tao P, Liu G, Chen L, Li G, Lu S, et al. Post-traumatic growth of nurses who faced the COVID-19 epidemic and its correlation with professional self-identity and social support. Front Psychiatry. 2021;12:562938.

DiGiovanni M, Weller I, Martin A. Pivoting in the pandemic: a qualitative study of child and adolescent psychiatrists in the times of COVID-19. Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health. 2021;15(1):32.

Zhang XT, Shi SS, Qin RY, Wang L. The traumatic experience of clinical nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic: which factors are related to post-traumatic growth? Risk Manag Healthc Policy. 2021;14:2145–51.

Lee N, Lee HJ. South Korean nurses’ experiences with patient care at a COVID-19-designated hospital: growth after the frontline battle against an Infectious Disease pandemic. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(23):9015.

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Carola V, Vincenzo C, Morale C, Cecchi V, Rocco M, Nicolais G. Psychological health in intensive care unit health care workers after the covid-19 pandemic. Healthc (Basel). 2022;10(11):2201.

Li YL, Qu Q, Hu JJ, Wang YC, Huang WY. The mediating role of organizational support in the occupational resilience and post-traumatic growth of nursing staff in the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus Pneumonia epidemic. Contemp Nurses. 2022;29(02):39–42.

Cui JR, Hu LH, Huang LH, Wang H, Guan XL, Yin SY, et al. Posttraumatic growth and its related factors among nursing staff working against COVID-19 in the frontline clinical departments. Chin Nurs Manag. 2021;21(01):54–9.

Li XM, Zheng Y, Chen YP, Wu YY. Posttraumatic growth level and influencing factors of outpatient and emergency nurses under COVID-19. Chin J Med Guide. 2020;22(08):521–6.

Lv YZ, Li T, Wang QF, Liu L, Ni SG. Effect of resilience and expression suppression on the relationship between social support and posttraumatic growth among front-line medical workers in the epidemic situation of COVID-19. Chin J Clin Psychology. 2020;28(04):743–6.

Cai C, Wang X, Huang LH, Hu LH, Yi SY, Wang H, et al. A qualitative research on the experience of post-traumatic growth among nurses with covid-19. Chin Nurs Manag. 2021;21(05):712–6.

Han SJ, Chun JY, Bae HJ. Post-traumatic growth of nurses in COVID-19 designated hospitals in Korea. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022;20(1):56.

Prekazi L, Hajrullahu V, Bahtiri S, Kryeziu B, Hyseni B, Taganoviq B, et al. The impact of coping skills in post-traumatic growth of healthcare providers: when mental health is deteriorating due to COVID-19 pandemic. Front Psychol. 2021;12:791568.

Lv M, Tan X, Xing C, Zheng J, Han S. How family-work conflict influences post-traumatic growth among medical workers: a moderated mediation model. Front Psychol. 2021;12:743970.

Wang J, Chen Y, Wang YB, Liu XH. Revision of the posttraumatic growth inventory and testing its reliability and validity. J Nurs Sci. 2011;26(14):26–8.

Cann A, Calhoun LG, Tedeschi RG, Taku K, Vishnevsky T, Triplett KN, et al. A short form of the posttraumatic growth inventory. Anxiety Stress Coping. 2010;23(2):127–37.

Tedeschi RG, Cann A, Taku K, Senol-Durak E, Calhoun LG. The posttraumatic growth inventory: a revision integrating existential and spiritual change. J Trauma Stress. 2017;30(1):11–8.

Zoellner T, Maercker A. Posttraumatic growth in clinical psychology - a critical review and introduction of a two component model. Clin Psychol Rev. 2006;26(5):626–53.

Shakespeare-Finch J, Lurie-Beck J. A meta-analytic clarification of the relationship between posttraumatic growth and symptoms of posttraumatic distress disorder. J Anxiety Disord. 2014;28(2):223–9.

Dar IA, Iqbal N. Beyond linear evidence: the curvilinear relationship between secondary traumatic stress and vicarious posttraumatic growth among healthcare professionals. Stress Health. 2020;36(2):203–12.

Zerach G, Shalev TB. The relations between Violence exposure, posttraumatic stress symptoms, secondary traumatization, vicarious post traumatic growth and Illness attribution among psychiatric nurses. Arch Psychiatr Nurs. 2015;29(3):135–42.

Siqveland J, Nygaard E, Hussain A, Tedeschi RG, Heir T. Posttraumatic growth, depression and posttraumatic stress in relation to quality of life in tsunami survivors: a longitudinal study. Health Qual Life Outcomes. 2015;13:18.

Chen J, Zhou X, Zeng M, Wu X. Post-traumatic stress symptoms and post-traumatic growth: evidence from a longitudinal study following an Earthquake Disaster. PLoS ONE. 2015;10(6):e127241.

Ganai UJ, Sachdev S, Bhat NA, Bhushan B. Associations between posttraumatic stress symptoms and posttraumatic growth elements: a network analysis. Psychol Trauma. 2022 Dec 8.

Cao C, Wang L, Wu J, Li G, Fang R, Cao X, et al. Patterns of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and posttraumatic growth in an epidemiological sample of Chinese Earthquake survivors: a latent profile analysis. Front Psychol. 2018;9:1549.

Wu X, Kaminga AC, Dai W, Deng J, Wang Z, Pan X, et al. The prevalence of moderate-to-high posttraumatic growth: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Affect Disord. 2019;243:408–15.

Cohen-Louck K. Differences in post-traumatic growth: individual quarantine, Covid-19 duration and gender. Front Psychol. 2022;13:920386.

Kucharska J. Religiosity and the psychological outcomes of trauma: a systematic review of quantitative studies. J Clin Psychol. 2020;76(1):40–58.

Lehmann C, Steele E. Going beyond positive and negative: clarifying relationships of specific religious coping styles with posttraumatic outcomes. Psycholog Relig Spiritual. 2020;12(3):345–55.

Seligman ME, Csikszentmihalyi M. Positive psychology. An introduction. Am Psychol. 2000;55(1):5–14.

Jeon G, Park S, Bernstein KS. Socio-demographic and psychological correlates of posttraumatic growth among Korean americans with a history of traumatic life experiences. Arch Psychiatr Nurs. 2017;31(3):256–62.

Kaye-Tzadok A, Davidson-Arad B. Posttraumatic growth among women survivors of childhood Sexual Abuse: its relation to cognitive strategies, posttraumatic symptoms, and resilience. Psychol Trauma. 2016;8(5):550–8.

Ogińska-Bulik N, Zadworna-Cieślak M. The role of resiliency and coping strategies in occurrence of positive changes in medical rescue workers. Int Emerg Nurs. 2018;39:40–5.

Maitlis S. Posttraumatic growth at work. Annual Rev Organizational Psychol Organizational Behav. 2020;7:395–419.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the Home for Researchers editorial team ( www.home-for-researchers.com ) for the language editing service.

This work was supported by the General Research Project of Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education(Y202043349).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Nursing, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 88 Jiefang Road, Shangcheng District, Hangzhou, 310009, Zhejiang Province, China

Qian Li, Yirong Zhu, Xuefeng Qi, Haifei Lu, Nafei Han, Yan Xiang, Jingjing Guo & Lizhu Wang

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

Q.L. and L.W. are involved in the study conceptualization and design. Q.L. and X.Q. were involved in the search, acquisition, and management of peer-reviewed and grey literature records. Y.X., N.H., and J.G. were involved in the literature screening process. Q.L., H.L., and Y.Z. were involved in data extraction and interpretation. Q.L. prepared the initial draft of the manuscript. All authors were involved in the review and substantial revisions of the manuscript draft. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lizhu Wang .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary Material 1: PRISMA-ScR Checklist

Supplementary material 2: database search strategy and description, rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Li, Q., Zhu, Y., Qi, X. et al. Posttraumatic growth of medical staff during COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review. BMC Public Health 24 , 460 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-17591-7

Download citation

Received : 28 May 2023

Accepted : 26 December 2023

Published : 14 February 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-17591-7

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

  • Psychological
  • Medical staff

BMC Public Health

ISSN: 1471-2458

essay about life in pandemic

UPitt Logo

  • open search

From the latest big breakthrough to the most influential and inspiring figures on campus to Pitt in the community, Pittwire is your official source for what’s happening now.

  • Health and Wellness
  • Technology and Science
  • Arts and Humanities
  • Community Impact
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • Innovation and Research
  • Our City/Our Campus
  • Pitt Magazine
  • Features & Articles
  • Accolades & Honors
  • Ones to Watch
  • Announcements and Updates
  • Life at Pitt
  • Arts & Sciences
  • Computing & Information
  • Dental Medicine
  • Engineering
  • General Studies
  • Health & Rehabilitation
  • Honors College
  • Public & Intl Affairs
  • Public Health
  • Social Work
  • COVID-19 Response
  • Sustainability
  • Pitt-Bradford

FPO Tower

Subscribe to Pittwire Today

A new satire novel by a pitt-bradford writing professor reflects on covid-19.

McCabe

Nancy McCabe’s newest novel revisits a strange time for higher education — the COVID-19 pandemic.

The professor of writing at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford said she started writing “ The Pamela Papers: A Mostly E-pistolary Story of Pandemic Academic Pandemonium ” while faculty were trying to teach, meet and conduct their normal work through digital tools. The satiric novel was published by Outpost 19 on Feb. 6.

“The technology that enabled us to do our jobs also had the power to speed up the dehumanization of the workplace,” she said. That dilemma moved a friend to ask her, “What if the person on the other side of the computer was just a bot?”

Inspired by this idea, she began her satire of academic life in the pandemic. As her co-workers caught on, they sent her ideas to incorporate.

“Academia particularly lends itself to satire,” said McCabe, who also directs Pitt-Bradford’s writing program. “People are drawn to it by idealism, optimism and a belief in the power of education, but for many, a culture created by flawed human beings can seem irrational, egotistical and jarringly out of keeping with the values we hold.”

McCabe said she found writing “The Pamela Papers” during the pandemic cathartic. “I found solace in poking fun of things that were making me stressed and anxious. I found myself looking forward to the process, and when I was most stressed, I could turn to my manuscript and immediately start laughing.”

The book is written in the form of a variety of documents — emails, Zoom chats, a resume, a word cloud, accreditation guidelines, Pamela’s to-do lists and more.

“I began by composing fake emails exaggerating real life to highlight things that felt ridiculous,” she said. “And then I tried to figure out how the entire story might be told through a variety of documents. It was a fun distraction, something that could be written in bits and pieces between Zoom classes and meetings.”

This is McCabe’s eighth book. A ninth, the middle grade novel “Fires Burning Underground,” is to be published in 2025. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a PA Council on the Arts fellowship, her work has been recognized ten times on Best American notable lists. Along with her role at Pitt-Bradford, McCade teaches in the low-residency creative writing graduate program at Spalding University.

— Kimberly Weinberg

Share your Pitt story and make a gift during PDoG on Feb. 27

Apply for a summer undergraduate research award by march 4, registration is open for the community engaged scholarship forum.

I was 16 when I found out I might have a terminal disease. I waited a decade to get tested, but I don't regret the years of not knowing.

  • I was born with the possibility of inheriting a fatal illness called Huntington's Disease.
  • Although I found out when I was a junior in high school, I decided not to get tested until I was 26.
  • The fear was crippling, but I don't regret those years of not knowing.

Insider Today

While many high school juniors were worrying about college applications and who they were taking to prom, I was coming to terms with the possibility of having an incurable neurological illness called Huntington's Disease.

I was 16 when I discovered — somewhat accidentally — that I might have the disease.

HD is a rare hereditary condition that causes nerve cells in parts of the brain to decay and eventually die. It also causes your body to break down, resulting in symptoms like random body movements, changes in behavior and personality, and problems walking and talking.

Symptoms typically start around age 45, and onset can be quick, with many patients confined to a wheelchair and needing full-time care within a few years.

Patients at risk — only about 200,000 in the US — have a 50% chance of inheriting the mutated gene that causes HD. Those aren't great odds, considering how the disease progresses, and death is certain.

Although HD is a lesser-known condition, some may remember it from Olivia Wilde's character, Remy "Thirteen" Hadley, on the TV show "House."

The show focused on the emotional toll of HD, dedicating episodes to chronicling Thirteen's journey of anger and reckless behavior before coming to terms with her fate and eventually getting tested.

I would say I have a similar story.

I was a teenager when I learned about the risk of Huntington's

I was adopted at 14 months old, and I've been aware of most of the details of my adoption for as long as I can remember.

Although my father is unknown (but I understand he's Puerto Rican), I knew my birth mother was named Mary, and I was born with the name Desiree before it was changed to Taylor after adoption.

However, I only learned about Huntington's after rummaging through some old adoption papers one random November afternoon when I was 16. (I also discovered a few half-siblings, but that's a different story).

I ended up finding the medical history of my birth mother. A quick Google search later, I was crippled with fear, and my head filled with a million questions.

Of course, my adopted mother (who, to be clear, I consider my real mother) was horrified at the way I found out. But her reason for not telling me was understandable, and I don't blame her.

Her decision mostly came down to the fact that HD patients typically have to be 18 years of age or older to get tested, and she worried about the potential emotional toll a positive test could have on me as a teenager.

Her fears were pretty on the nose.

I spent a lot of time being angry

Soon after discovering the possibility of having the disease, I stopped being the straight-A, goody two-shoe student I once was.

HD-fueled emotions soon ruined the big junior field trip I had been looking forward to all year, and I stopped caring to show up to class on time. Guilt weighed on me, too, especially after my then-boyfriend complained about me being "too sad" around him.

I think the strongest emotion I felt was anger, though. A trauma like the prospect of HD puts a lot into question, and it made me start looking at things like mortality and religion very differently.

I was also plagued with the burden of deciding whether I even wanted to know if I had the disease.

On the one hand, getting tested would help me better plan my future, but I'd have to live with the reality if the diagnosis was positive. You can imagine that fear.

On the other hand, not getting tested would always leave an ounce of uncertainty in the back of my head. And, this choice would extinguish any thoughts of having kids — it just wouldn't be worth the risk of continuing the vicious hereditary cycle if I were positive.

Surprisingly, it didn't take long for me to decide. I had an epiphany after my history teacher — one of the few teachers who showed me any sort of grace at this time — told me that I needed to give myself permission to live.

It was such simple advice, but something about it clicked for me.

Not knowing pushed my life into hyperdrive

The common life expectancy of someone living with HD is 10 to 25 years after diagnosis, which typically happens between 35 and 50 years of age. But those years of decline aren't easy.

When thinking about getting tested, I worried a positive result would send me spiraling — even if any potential symptoms were some 20-odd years away.

So, I decided to wait — but pledged going forward to live my life as if I had Huntington's. I thought starting to accept it early would ease the disappointment if I one day started showing symptoms, and the strategy worked for me.

According to her paperwork, my birth mom started showing symptoms by the time she was 34 years old. Granted, her addiction problems could have made the onset occur faster .

My 16-year-old logic at the time estimated I had until at least 50 with a positive diagnosis, assuming it wasn't as severe as Wilde's character in House.

In my head, that meant I had to fit some 60 years of life into just 30 — and that's the road I took.

By the end of junior year, my slipping grades soon turned back into A's, I got accepted to my first choice college, and I went to my junior and senior prom.

I got a degree in aviation in less than four years from Florida Institute of Technology and landed this nifty reporting job at Business Insider — along with a few side adventures studying abroad in China, working in Alaska , and volunteering in Bulgaria.

I even managed to visit more than 50 countries across all seven continents.

I'll admit the excessive travel and spontaneous adventures (which had me working three jobs at one point to afford) were a coping mechanism for HD, but at least I channeled it into something good for me.

I finally got tested after 10 years of not knowing

Until I was about 24, I was busy traveling on weekends and going to pub trivia every Thursday with friends. By then, I was thinking about HD less and less.

It wasn't until 2018, when I met my now-husband, Ryan, that I gave getting tested another thought.

The reason? He wanted kids but knew it was off the table without me getting a negative HD result. And he was OK with that.

I decided that if he was willing to sacrifice becoming a father just to marry me, then I would find the courage to get tested.

Luckily, Connecticut (where I live) has a large HD clinic, and I finally got tested in April 2022 at 26 years old. The process was brutal, involving multiple appointments and psych exams, before I handed over a blood sample for genetic testing.

After three agonizing weeks of waiting, the coin flipped in my favor — I was HD negative.

After 10 years of uncertainty, a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. I probably could have let myself off the hook earlier from that weight had I tested at 18, but I don't regret my decision.

I became stronger and braver living under the threat of HD, and I can proudly say I've met nearly every life milestone I wanted to hit by the age of 30.

And now, I have the option of starting a family. It's a freeing feeling.

essay about life in pandemic

Watch: 'This is it for me and my children': 3 coronavirus patients share their stories from quarantine

essay about life in pandemic

  • Main content

IMAGES

  1. UN/DESA Policy Brief #67: Protecting and mobilizing youth in COVID-19

    essay about life in pandemic

  2. ≫ Nationalism and Covid-19 Pandemic Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com

    essay about life in pandemic

  3. "My Experience During COVID-19" by Robert Goldsberry

    essay about life in pandemic

  4. Fourth Grader Pens Essay About Coronavirus Anger and Fears

    essay about life in pandemic

  5. Pandemic Pastimes: A Photo-Essay of Student Life, Fall Semester 2020

    essay about life in pandemic

  6. Research Brief: Impacts of Pandemics and Epidemics on Child Protection

    essay about life in pandemic

COMMENTS

  1. 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

    Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history. By Alissa Wilkinson @alissamarie [email protected] Apr 5,...

  2. How the Pandemic Has Changed Our Lives

    Depression (24% overall; 31% of 18-to-34-year-olds) Loneliness or isolation (24% overall; 31% of 18-to-34-year-olds) Many are also feeling overwhelmed by the constant, sometimes shifting and conflicting flow of information around the virus and the pandemic.

  3. My Life Experience During the Covid-19 Pandemic

    9-23-2020 Affiliation with Sacred Heart University Undergraduate, Class of 2024 Abstract My content explains what my life was like during the last seven months of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it affected my life both positively and negatively.

  4. What We Learned About Ourselves During the COVID-19 Pandemic

    Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. "The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry ...

  5. One Student's Perspective on Life During a Pandemic

    Tiana Nguyen. Tiana Nguyen '21 is a Hackworth Fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. She is majoring in Computer Science, and is the vice president of Santa Clara University's Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) chapter. The world has slowed down, but stress has begun to ramp up. In the beginning of quarantine, as the world ...

  6. Seven short essays about life during the pandemic

    Seven short essays about life during the pandemic - The Boston Globe Seven short essays about life during the pandemic The Boston Book Festival's At Home community writing project invites area...

  7. How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

    Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement. By Josh Moody | Oct. 21, 2020, at 9:53 a.m. Getty Images Experts...

  8. Effects of COVID-19 pandemic in daily life

    A) Healthcare • Challenges in the diagnosis, quarantine and treatment of suspected or confirmed cases • High burden of the functioning of the existing medical system • Patients with other disease and health problems are getting neglected •

  9. Essays reveal experiences during pandemic, unrest

    15 2020 Field study students share their thoughts Members of Advanced Field Study, a select group of Social Ecology students who are chosen from a pool of applicants to participate in a year-long field study experience and course, had their internships and traditional college experience cut short this year.

  10. 3 lessons about what really matters in life, learned in the pandemic

    This pandemic led to the best date of her life — a staircase apart . As the director of microbiology at a hospital in Rochester, New York, Roberto Vargas's job is to diagnose infectious disease. With his lab running constant COVID-19 tests, he needed to isolate himself from his wife, Susan Vargas, and their four children. ...

  11. How the Pandemic Has Changed Our Lives Forever

    Risk factors include sudden changes in routine, social isolation, fear of getting sick or making others sick, and financial insecurity. Symptoms range from nausea to hives. To get a better picture ...

  12. What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

    What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year Students share their experiences March 31, 2021 7 min read A Navajo student describes how he experienced the stress and anxiety when his...

  13. How COVID-19 pandemic changed my life

    The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the biggest challenges that our world has ever faced. People around the globe were affected in some way by this terrible disease, whether personally or not. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many people felt isolated and in a state of panic. They often found themselves lacking a sense of community, confidence, and trust.

  14. COVID-19: Life before & after the pandemic

    COVID-19: Where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. It's been two years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. Here's a look back—and a lens on what's next. A lot can happen in two years. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. As the world stares down year three of ...

  15. Impact of COVID-19 on people's livelihoods, their health and our food

    The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work.

  16. COVID-19 Was a Turning Point for Health

    It was with these questions in mind that, in 2021, I partnered with my colleague Michael Stein to write a series of essays reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic.

  17. How the Pandemic Changed My Life

    3 min read. ·. Dec 20, 2020. The pandemic has changed lots of peoples' lives. They've taken up new hobbies, learned new skills, and bonded more closely with family and friends. They've learned what things mean the most to them and what they miss the most. Some have lived in fear and others have found new strength.

  18. My Life During the Pandemic

    This pandemic has caused many to lose their jobs, their homes, and their lives. We all hope for a vaccine soon, in the hopes that this virus can be brought under control. In the meantime, many of us have been practicing personal hygiene and social distancing to avoid getting infected. The virus has impacted my life mentally.

  19. Life During Pandemic Essay

    Student Life During Pandemic Essay: An Era of Transformation and Resilience The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic marked the beginning of an unprecedented era, affecting every facet of human life. Among the segments of the population that felt the most significant ripple effects were students.

  20. Elizabeth Lesser Essay on Life After the Pandemic

    Lifestyle From The Magazine Elizabeth Lesser Shares How She Lifted Herself Out of Pandemic Despair The cofounder of the Omega Institute admits that even as a teacher of mindfulness, sometimes, she is her own worst student. By Elizabeth Lesser Published: Jul 07, 2021 11:31 AM EST Sarah Eisenlohr

  21. What Do You Miss Most About Your Life Before the Pandemic?

    After the Celine Dion concert in Brooklyn the trains were delayed. Instead of a mob of angry, frustrated people, we experienced a classic New York subway moment. Stuck in a confined space with a ...

  22. Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

    Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic Published: 2021/11/08 Number of words: 1220 As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease.

  23. When Life Felt Normal: Your Pre-Pandemic Moments

    Millions in the United States alone have lost their jobs. Though the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic just over a month ago, many of us are already feeling nostalgic for our lives ...

  24. Essay about My Life During Pandemic

    Essay about My Life During Pandemic Cite This Essay Download The world has slowed down, but tensions are starting to rise. In my early forties, when the world slowed down, I was finally able to take some time to relax, watch a few shows, learn to be a better chef and baker, and be more active in my activities. in foreign languages.

  25. American Cities Aren't Doomed After All

    For a year or two, as first-wave pandemic panic gave way to a more generalized perception of ragged social disorder, it was hard to read or talk about the plight of American cities without ...

  26. Literacy crisis in college students: Essay from a professor on students

    Not only did the marked decline in reading resilience start before the pandemic, but the students I am seeing would have already been in high school during the school closures. Hence they would be ...

  27. Posttraumatic growth of medical staff during COVID-19 pandemic: A

    The data were synthesized qualitatively and descriptively. Thirty-six papers from 12 countries met the inclusion criteria. Moderate PTG levels were observed among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, with emphasis on "interpersonal relationships," "changes in life philosophy," and "growth in personal competence."

  28. A new satire novel by a Pitt-Bradford writing professor reflects on

    Nancy McCabe's newest novel revisits a strange time for higher education — the COVID-19 pandemic. The professor of writing at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford said she started writing "The Pamela Papers: A Mostly E-pistolary Story of Pandemic Academic Pandemonium" while faculty were trying to teach, meet and conduct their normal work through digital tools.

  29. Many women lost sexual desire during the pandemic. Here's what to do

    With global stress, many people, particularly women, saw their love life tank at the pandemic's height. But this rut doesn't have to be the new normal, experts say.

  30. I Waited 10 Years to Test for a Terminal Disease, and I Have No Regrets

    The common life expectancy of someone living with HD is 10 to 25 years after diagnosis, which typically happens between 35 and 50 years of age. But those years of decline aren't easy. But those ...