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Community Reflections

My life experience during the covid-19 pandemic.

Melissa Blanco Follow

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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).

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

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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

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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."

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

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

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short narrative essay about covid 19

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.

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I am not invincible: My COVID-19 story

David J. Vega Mar 26, 2020

david vega wearing his stethoscope

Yes, I tested positive for COVID-19. I fell victim to this virus: a nasty, lingering virus that gave me the worst symptoms I’ve experienced to this day that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. My story is to warn you that this is not the common cold or a regular flu. This virus is serious.

My name is David, and I am an otherwise healthy 27-year-old male with no past medical history. I am a fourth-year medical student, who will soon be a doctor starting residency in June. I am a health freak, I work out five to six times a week, I have a six-pack on a good day, and I completely took my health for granted.

I thought I was INVINCIBLE—I thought I was immune to this coronavirus because I am healthy and young. But I was wrong.

In early March, reports of novel transmission of the coronavirus were just starting to appear in the United States. I had heard about the nursing home in Seattle, the synagogue in New Rochelle, New York. It was a precarious situation, but community transmission of the virus was not quite so widespread.

‘Sure, I’ll wash my hands,’ ‘I’ll social distance after that party,’ I thought. Looking back, there were too many opportunities for me to have caught this virus. I did not take my health seriously. I figured I could avoid the virus, but in the off-chance I were to get it, it would be like a mild flu or a bad cold. I flew home from a two-month global medicine elective in Africa, ventured on long flights home and around lots of people at Nairobi and JFK airport. I went to a beach party during my week stay in Florida and saw lots of friends before heading back to Indiana to finish up my last semester of medical school. I was not careful. I did not take the necessary precautions. I did not think it could happen to me.

The fact of the matter is – you NEVER know.

A day after arriving in Indiana, symptoms started to kick in. On Thursday, March 12, I woke up with fever, chills, fatigue, generalized muscle aches, and joint pain. Probably just a bad case of the flu, right? No cough, no shortness of breath, no difficulty breathing, no respiratory problems whatsoever. No nausea, no diarrhea. JUST Fever and chills.

Thinking ‘I’ll get over it soon,’ I took some Ibuprofen and Tylenol and stayed in bed most of the day. The next day, I had a routine doctor’s appointment. I was almost turned away because of my symptoms, but I fought to be seen. My oral temperature was 101 degrees Fahrenheit, and I was put in an isolation room for my appointment. My provider, thankfully wearing complete PPE, performed a quick flu test (Influenza A, B, and RSV), which resulted negative that same day. It would later reflex to COVID-19 because of the negative result and I then began the seven-day wait for results.

My symptoms, however, only continued to worsen. The fever was unrelenting. I had no appetite. I had lost about 10 pounds. I loaded up on my daily multivitamins and Emergen-C; I continued to use Ibuprofen and Tylenol every six hours because my body was asking for ANYTHING to take away the misery.

It was not until Day 6 that I decided to drop the Ibuprofen after reading some expert opinions that NSAIDs may actually alter the immune response against the virus. Admittedly, I did feel WAY better the next day after dropping Ibuprofen. My fever and chills—although still present—felt improved. I continued to use only Tylenol spaced out now in the morning and before bedtime. By Day 7, still feeling chills in the morning, I opted out of using any Tylenol and tried to help my body fight this virus on its own. I attempted a little home bodyweight workout and instantly got lightheaded and felt very nauseous. My body was still desperately fighting this thing.

Day 8: I woke up in the usual sweats from the night before, but felt no fever or chills during the day—I felt much improved. I told myself I would take it easy that day. I was begging and pleading to God for an end to all of this.

After waiting SEVEN ENTIRE DAYS in self-quarantine, I finally received my results: positive for COVID-19, continue self-quarantine for another seven days. Ironically, this arrived an hour before receiving my Match Day residency assignment for emergency medicine at the University of Miami. March 20th was certainly a big day of “results” for me.

By Day 13, I had not used any fever-reducing medicine in six days. For the last few days, my symptoms were mostly confined to nighttime-fatigue, sweats, chills, but by Day 13, all of my symptoms had completely gone away. I reintroduced exercise little by little and can now get through a whole hour workout without getting totally winded.

Why am I telling this story?

Because I encourage you to learn from my mistakes. Because I didn’t listen when numbers started climbing. And now they continue to climb. 55,000-plus patients diagnosed in our country, more than 1,000 people deceased.

Because this virus is REAL. And it SUCKS. To say it was almost two weeks before I was feeling like my normal self. Because I am a “healthy young adult,” but “mild” COVID-19 made my life a living hell.

Because people around the world are DYING from this virus—and doctors must make resource allocation decisions (e.g. in Italy) as to who should get that last ICU bed or that last ventilator because hospitals are at FULL CAPACITY. After returning from a two-month global medicine trip in Africa, I witnessed patients dying on a daily basis due to resource-allocation purposes. And now we are starting to see the same issues in New York City and other densely populated communities in the United States.

We NEED you to STAY HOME, because our health professionals are RUNNING out of masks for themselves and ventilators for patients. The CDC is so desperate that they recently issued new guidelines for health professionals to use bandanas and scarves as substitutes for N95 masks. We NEED you to STAY HOME because these health professionals are sacrificing their lives at the frontline to make sure those affected can stay alive.

I had the two biggest celebrations of my life canceled (Match Day and graduation) for the good of those around me and the rest of the country. Now is NOT the time to go to that party. Now is NOT the time to meet up friends at the bar, to go out to eat, to celebrate your spring break, to go to the beach or the park. I promise you, the celebration can wait.

So please, as a medical professional, as a young adult, I implore for all of you to STAY HOME. I firsthand can now see how this VIRUS takes LIVES. 1 out of 5 people hospitalized from COVID-19 are young adults aged 20-44; I was LUCKY to not be one of them.

As many as 10-20 percent of people show no symptoms, so you may be spreading this virus and injuring those you love without realizing it. We DON’T know who has it and who does not, and we do not have the resources to test everyone, so please STAY HOME. Social-distancing and self-quarantine is just as important for the ELDERLY as for the YOUTH.

We NEED you to do your part to FLATTEN the curve and prevent the growing spread to more and more people every day. If we all do our part, then this self-quarantine can eventually come to an end and we can soon resume what our lives used to be.

My name is David and I am NOT Invincible. And neither are you.

Editor’s note: David Vega is a fourth-year medical student at IU School of Medicine. After traveling overseas and in Florida earlier this month, Vega returned to the IU School of Medicine—Indianapolis campus on March 11, and soon developed symptoms of COVID-19 the following day, March 12. He was tested for the virus on March 13, and received his positive test result on March 20. He informed all individuals with whom he had contact since his return to Indianapolis of his positive test.

"Staying home truly saves lives."

David Vega shares his advice after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

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A timeline of the coronavirus pandemic, from the first cases in China in December 2019 to 300 million vaccine doses delivered (and counting)

10 March 2021

A year ago this week, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared covid-19 a pandemic. Since the first case of infection with this new coronavirus was reported in China in December 2019, SARS-CoV-2, as we now know it to be called, has killed over 2.5 million people and infected at least 116 million. Beginning as an unexplained, pneumonia-like illness, first detected in China’s Wuhan province , it has since spread to almost every country, bringing life across most of the world to a near-standstill for the last year. World leaders became ill, entire countries were locked down to prevent the spread of infection and international travel ceased.

As most governments struggled to contain the virus, scientists were rushing to identify and find treatments that worked against covid-19 . As infections surged worldwide, new, highly transmissible variants of the virus were identified and are circulating ever further.

With many vaccines now approved, over 300 million doses have been administered, and over 65 million people are now fully vaccinated. But this represents less than 1 per cent of the world’s population, and while the vaccine offers a glimmer of hope for a return to normal, there is still a long way to go. As countries, including the UK, are preparing to lift restrictions, we look back at a year that changed the world forever.

January 2020

New scientist reports on mysterious illness.

New Scientist reports for the first time about 59 cases of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in China, linked to a wet market in Wuhan. The affected individuals became ill between 12 and 29 December 2019.

A novel coronavirus is identified

WHO reports Chinese authorities have identified a completely novel coronavirus as the cause of the illness and sequenced its genome, less than a month since the first person became ill.

The world records its first coronavirus death

China reports that a 61-year-old man has become the first known victim of the novel coronavirus. He was a regular customer at Wuhan’s wet market.

Wuhan_China_lockdown

An empty roadway is seen on February 3, 2020 in Wuhan, Hubei province, China.

Getty Images

Lockdowns begin

Wuhan is put under a strict lockdown by the Chinese government. All travel in and out of the city is prohibited.

25 January 

The coronavirus makes it to Europe

The first case of coronavirus in Europe is confirmed in France. The UK reports its first case on 31 January.

February 2020

The disease is named.

WHO names the disease caused by the coronavirus “covid-19” or” coronavirus disease 2019”, after the year the first cases were reported. 

15 February

First death recorded outside Asia

In France, a Chinese tourist dies from covid-19 in Paris.

20 February

The Middle East begins to bear the brunt

Iran records its first covid-19 deaths and imposes emergency measures in the affected province. These are the first deaths reported in the Middle East.

21 February

Europe’s lockdowns begin

Italy records its first coronavirus death and 50,000 people from 10 towns in the north of the country enter lockdown.

29 February

The US records its first death

The first death in the US is reported. There have been 22 cases detected in the country so far.

UK’s first coronavirus death

The UK records its first death, a woman in her 70s. 115 cases have now been confirmed in the UK.

The start of nationwide lockdowns

Italy becomes the first European country to impose a nationwide lockdown . Sports events are postponed, schools and universities closed and over 60 million people ordered to stay at home.

WHO declares covid-19 a pandemic

Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO , says “WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity. We have therefore made the assessment that covid-19 can be characterised as a pandemic.” 

US declares a state of emergency

President Trump declares a national emergency in the US.

A potential vaccine offers hope

Europe closes its borders. The world’s first human trial of a covid-19 vaccine, an mRNA vaccine developed by US biotechnology company Moderna, begins. 

The UK enters its first lockdown

Following other European nations , the UK enters a nationwide lockdown. Shortly afterwards, UK prime minister Boris Johnson tests positive for the coronavirus.

Covid_19_death

Relatives wearing protective gear prepare to bury the body of a man who died from the coronavirus disease, at a graveyard in New Delhi, India.

REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

One million cases

Global cases reach one million as the US records the most daily deaths from covid-19 of any country so far. New York City is particularly hard-hit , with hospitals in the city at capacity

China begins to return to normal

Lockdown is lifted in Wuhan, China, where the first coronavirus cases were detected.

Europe begins to ease up

After nearly two months, Italy starts to ease its coronavirus restrictions. As infection rates slow, measures begin to relax in other parts of Europe, too.

The situation in the Americas gets worse 

In Latin America , and especially in Brazil, cases continue to grow. By the end of the month, daily infections in the region overtake those in both Europe and the US as more than 2 million cases are reported. 

US deaths reach 100,000

Covid-19 deaths in the US pass 100,000, making America the country with the highest number of coronavirus deaths recorded so far.

Cases begin to rise again

WHO warns cases are starting to rise again in Europe, as a result of the easing of restrictions in many countries. 

Masks become mandatory in England

With WHO acknowledging evidence that the coronavirus can spread indoors via air particles, it becomes mandatory to wear masks in shops in England, bringing it in line with Scotland and other European nations including Italy and Germany.

August 2020

Russia approves sputnik v vaccine.

Russia announces approval of its Sputnik V covid-19 vaccine before it has undergone large-scale human trials, causing concern among international researchers. 

September 2020

29 September

Deaths reach one million

The world reaches a tragic milestone: 1 million deaths caused by covid-19. 

October 2020

Lockdowns return.

Ireland becomes the first European country to impose a second nationwide lockdown. England follows two weeks later. 

November 2020

Vaccine trials prove successful.

Pfizer and BioNTech announce that results from phase III trials show their mRNA vaccine is more than 90 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic covid-19. 

16 November

Moderna’s mRNA vaccine is shown to be effective.

23 November

The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca’s viral vector-based vaccine is also said to have done well in trials.

December 2020

2 December 

Vaccines get their first approvals

The UK government becomes the first in the world to authorise the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine . 

Margaret_keenan_First_Uk_covid_vaccination

Margaret Keenan, 90, is applauded by staff as she returns to her ward after becoming the first person in Britain to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at University Hospital, Coventry, at the start of the largest ever immunisation programme in British history.

Jacob King/Pool via REUTERS/Alamy

Mass vaccination begins

The UK’s mass-vaccination programme begins as over 50 hospitals in the UK start administering the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to people aged over 80.

14 December

New variants

A new variant of the coronavirus, possibly associated with a faster spread, is identified in the county of Kent in the UK.

31 December

Parts of Africa may have to wait years

A WHO report suggests large parts of Africa may not receive covid-19 vaccines for several years.

January 2021

Uk cases surge.

UK hospitals risk being overwhelmed by surging cases , with evidence suggesting this is partly due to the variant first detected in Kent, which spreads faster.

2 million deaths

2 million people are reported to have died from covid-19 since the pandemic began. 

UK deaths reach 100,000

The UK joins America, India, Brazil and Mexico in reaching more than 100,000 deaths from covid-19. It is the first European country to do so. 

Vaccinations ramp up (unequally)

Over 7 million vaccine doses have been administered in the UK, compared to just 25 doses in the west African state of Guinea .

February 2021

16 February

Worldwide vaccination

More than 216 million people have now received their first dose worldwide. 

Staying ahead of the virus

6 people in the UK test positive for the P.1 coronavirus variant first detected in Brazil. Five of those six had either returned or had close contact with people returning from Brazil. One of several variants, along with the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351   that may be more transmissible, vaccine developers are already modifying existing vaccines to stay ahead of the virus.

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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

short narrative essay about covid 19

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 

short narrative essay about covid 19

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 

short narrative essay about covid 19

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

short narrative essay about covid 19

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

short narrative essay about covid 19

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

short narrative essay about covid 19

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

short narrative essay about covid 19

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

short narrative essay about covid 19

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

short narrative essay about covid 19

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

short narrative essay about covid 19

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.

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12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

A dozen writing projects — including journals, poems, comics and more — for students to try at home.

short narrative essay about covid 19

By Natalie Proulx

The coronavirus has transformed life as we know it. Schools are closed, we’re confined to our homes and the future feels very uncertain. Why write at a time like this?

For one, we are living through history. Future historians may look back on the journals, essays and art that ordinary people are creating now to tell the story of life during the coronavirus.

But writing can also be deeply therapeutic. It can be a way to express our fears, hopes and joys. It can help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

Plus, even though school buildings are shuttered, that doesn’t mean learning has stopped. Writing can help us reflect on what’s happening in our lives and form new ideas.

We want to help inspire your writing about the coronavirus while you learn from home. Below, we offer 12 projects for students, all based on pieces from The New York Times, including personal narrative essays, editorials, comic strips and podcasts. Each project features a Times text and prompts to inspire your writing, as well as related resources from The Learning Network to help you develop your craft. Some also offer opportunities to get your work published in The Times, on The Learning Network or elsewhere.

We know this list isn’t nearly complete. If you have ideas for other pandemic-related writing projects, please suggest them in the comments.

In the meantime, happy writing!

Journaling is well-known as a therapeutic practice , a tool for helping you organize your thoughts and vent your emotions, especially in anxiety-ridden times. But keeping a diary has an added benefit during a pandemic: It may help educate future generations.

In “ The Quarantine Diaries ,” Amelia Nierenberg spoke to Ady, an 8-year-old in the Bay Area who is keeping a diary. Ms. Nierenberg writes:

As the coronavirus continues to spread and confine people largely to their homes, many are filling pages with their experiences of living through a pandemic. Their diaries are told in words and pictures: pantry inventories, window views, questions about the future, concerns about the present. Taken together, the pages tell the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause. “You can say anything you want, no matter what, and nobody can judge you,” Ady said in a phone interview earlier this month, speaking about her diary. “No one says, ‘scaredy-cat.’” When future historians look to write the story of life during coronavirus, these first-person accounts may prove useful. “Diaries and correspondences are a gold standard,” said Jane Kamensky, a professor of American History at Harvard University and the faculty director of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. “They’re among the best evidence we have of people’s inner worlds.”

You can keep your own journal, recording your thoughts, questions, concerns and experiences of living through the coronavirus pandemic.

Not sure what to write about? Read the rest of Ms. Nierenberg’s article to find out what others around the world are recording. If you need more inspiration, here are a few writing prompts to get you started:

How has the virus disrupted your daily life? What are you missing? School, sports, competitions, extracurricular activities, social plans, vacations or anything else?

What effect has this crisis had on your own mental and emotional health?

What changes, big or small, are you noticing in the world around you?

For more ideas, see our writing prompts . We post a new one every school day, many of them now related to life during the coronavirus.

You can write in your journal every day or as often as you like. And if writing isn’t working for you right now, try a visual, audio or video diary instead.

2. Personal Narrative

As you write in your journal, you’ll probably find that your life during the pandemic is full of stories, whether serious or funny, angry or sad. If you’re so inspired, try writing about one of your experiences in a personal narrative essay.

Here’s how Mary Laura Philpott begins her essay, “ This Togetherness Is Temporary, ” about being quarantined with her teenage children:

Get this: A couple of months ago, I quit my job in order to be home more. Go ahead and laugh at the timing. I know. At the time, it was hitting me that my daughter starts high school in the fall, and my son will be a senior. Increasingly they were spending their time away from me at school, with friends, and in the many time-intensive activities that make up teenage lives. I could feel the clock ticking, and I wanted to spend the minutes I could — the minutes they were willing to give me, anyway — with them, instead of sitting in front of a computer at night and on weekends in order to juggle a job as a bookseller, a part-time gig as a television host, and a book deadline. I wanted more of them while they were still living in my house. Now here we are, all together, every day. You’re supposed to be careful what you wish for, but come on. None of us saw this coming.

Personal narratives are short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences, big or small. Read the rest of Ms. Philpott’s essay to see how she balances telling the story of a specific moment in time and reflecting on what it all means in the larger context of her life.

To help you identify the moments that have been particularly meaningful, difficult, comical or strange during this pandemic, try responding to one of our writing prompts related to the coronavirus:

Holidays and Birthdays Are Moments to Come Together. How Are You Adapting During the Pandemic?

Has Your School Switched to Remote Learning? How Is It Going So Far?

Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Bringing Your Extended Family Closer Together?

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

Another option? Use any of the images in our Picture Prompt series to inspire you to write about a memory from your life.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 1: Teach Narrative Writing With The New York Times

short narrative essay about covid 19

People have long turned to creative expression in times of crisis. During the coronavirus pandemic, artists are continuing to illustrate , play music , dance , perform — and write poetry .

That’s what Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, an emergency room doctor in Boston, did after a long shift treating coronavirus patients. Called “ The Apocalypse ,” her poem begins like this:

This is the apocalypse A daffodil has poked its head up from the dirt and opened sunny arms to bluer skies yet I am filled with dark and anxious dread as theaters close as travel ends and grocery stores display their empty rows where toilet paper liquid bleach and bags of flour stood in upright ranks.

Read the rest of Dr. Mitchell’s poem and note the lines, images and metaphors that speak to you. Then, tap into your creative side by writing a poem inspired by your own experience of the pandemic.

Need inspiration? Try writing a poem in response to one of our Picture Prompts . Or, you can create a found poem using an article from The Times’s coronavirus outbreak coverage . If you have access to the print paper, try making a blackout poem instead.

Related Resources: 24 Ways to Teach and Learn About Poetry With The New York Times Reader Idea | How the Found Poem Can Inspire Teachers and Students Alike

4. Letter to the Editor

Have you been keeping up with the news about the coronavirus? What is your reaction to it?

Make your voice heard by writing a letter to the editor about a recent Times article, editorial, column or Opinion essay related to the pandemic. You can find articles in The Times’s free coronavirus coverage or The Learning Network’s coronavirus resources for students . And, if you’re a high school student, your school can get you free digital access to The New York Times from now until July 6.

To see examples, read the letters written by young people in response to recent headlines in “ How the Young Deal With the Coronavirus .” Here’s what Addie Muller from San Jose, Calif., had to say about the Opinion essay “ I’m 26. Coronavirus Sent Me to the Hospital ”:

As a high school student and a part of Generation Z, I’ve been less concerned about getting Covid-19 and more concerned about spreading it to more vulnerable populations. While I’ve been staying at home and sheltering in place (as was ordered for the state of California), many of my friends haven’t been doing the same. I know people who continue going to restaurants and have been treating the change in education as an extended spring break and excuse to spend more time with friends. I fear for my grandparents and parents, but this article showed me that we should also fear for ourselves. I appreciated seeing this article because many younger people seem to feel invincible. The fact that a healthy 26-year-old can be hospitalized means that we are all capable of getting the virus ourselves and spreading it to others. I hope that Ms. Lowenstein continues spreading her story and that she makes a full recovery soon.

As you read, note some of the defining features of a letter to the editor and what made these good enough to publish. For more advice, see these tips from Thomas Feyer, the letters editor at The Times, about how to write a compelling letter. They include:

Write briefly and to the point.

Be prepared to back up your facts with evidence.

Write about something off the beaten path.

Publishing Opportunity: When you’re ready, submit your letter to The New York Times.

5. Editorial

Maybe you have more to say than you can fit in a 150-word letter to the editor. If that’s the case, try writing an editorial about something you have a strong opinion about related to the coronavirus. What have you seen that has made you upset? Proud? Appreciative? Scared?

In “ Surviving Coronavirus as a Broke College Student ,” Sydney Goins, a senior English major at the University of Georgia, writes about the limited options for students whose colleges are now closed. Her essay begins:

College was supposed to be my ticket to financial security. My parents were the first ones to go to college in their family. My grandpa said to my mom, “You need to go to college, so you don’t have to depend on a man for money.” This same mentality was passed on to me as well. I had enough money to last until May— $1,625 to be exact — until the coronavirus ruined my finances. My mom works in human resources. My dad is a project manager for a mattress company. I worked part time at the university’s most popular dining hall and lived in a cramped house with three other students. I don’t have a car. I either walked or biked a mile to attend class. I have student debt and started paying the accrued interest last month. I was making it work until the coronavirus shut down my college town. At first, spring break was extended by two weeks with the assumption that campus would open again in late March, but a few hours after that email, all 26 colleges in the University System of Georgia canceled in-person classes and closed integral parts of campus.

Read the rest of Ms. Goins’s essay. What is her argument? How does she support it? How is it relevant to her life and the world?

Then, choose a topic related to the pandemic that you care about and write an editorial that asserts an opinion and backs it up with solid reasoning and evidence.

Not sure where to start? Try responding to some of our recent argumentative writing prompts and see what comes up for you. Here are a few we’ve asked students so far:

Should Schools Change How They Grade Students During the Pandemic?

What Role Should Celebrities Have During the Coronavirus Crisis?

Is It Immoral to Increase the Price of Goods During a Crisis?

Or, consider essential questions about the pandemic and what they tell us about our world today: What weaknesses is the coronavirus exposing in our society? How can we best help our communities right now? What lessons can we learn from this crisis? See more here.

As an alternative to a written essay, you might try creating a video Op-Ed instead, like Katherine Oung’s “ Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School. ”

Publishing Opportunity: Submit your final essay to our Student Editorial Contest , open to middle school and high school students ages 10-19, until April 21. Please be sure to read all the rules and guidelines before submitting.

Related Resource: An Argumentative-Writing Unit for Students Doing Remote Learning

Are games, television, music, books, art or movies providing you with a much-needed distraction during the pandemic? What has been working for you that you would recommend to others? Or, what would you caution others to stay away from right now?

Share your opinions by writing a review of a piece of art or culture for other teenagers who are stuck at home. You might suggest TV shows, novels, podcasts, video games, recipes or anything else. Or, try something made especially for the coronavirus era, like a virtual architecture tour , concert or safari .

As a mentor text, read Laura Cappelle’s review of French theater companies that have rushed to put content online during the coronavirus outbreak, noting how she tailors her commentary to our current reality:

The 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote: “The sole cause of people’s unhappiness is that they do not know how to stay quietly in their rooms.” Yet at a time when much of the world has been forced to hunker down, French theater-makers are fighting to fill the void by making noise online.

She continues:

Under the circumstances, it would be churlish to complain about artists’ desire to connect with audiences in some fashion. Theater, which depends on crowds gathering to watch performers at close quarters, is experiencing significant loss and upheaval, with many stagings either delayed indefinitely or canceled outright. But a sampling of stopgap offerings often left me underwhelmed.

To get inspired you might start by responding to our related Student Opinion prompt with your recommendations. Then turn one of them into a formal review.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 2: Analyzing Arts, Criticizing Culture: Writing Reviews With The New York Times

7. How-to Guide

Being stuck at home with nowhere to go is the perfect time to learn a new skill. What are you an expert at that you can you teach someone?

The Times has created several guides that walk readers through how to do something step-by-step, for example, this eight-step tutorial on how to make a face mask . Read through the guide, noting how the author breaks down each step into an easily digestible action, as well as how the illustrations support comprehension.

Then, create your own how-to guide for something you could teach someone to do during the pandemic. Maybe it’s a recipe you’ve perfected, a solo sport you’ve been practicing, or a FaceTime tutorial for someone who’s never video chatted before.

Whatever you choose, make sure to write clearly so anyone anywhere could try out this new skill. As an added challenge, include an illustration, photo, or audio or video clip with each step to support the reader’s understanding.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 4: Informational Writing

8. 36 Hours Column

For nearly two decades, The Times has published a weekly 36 Hours column , giving readers suggestions for how to spend a weekend in cities all over the globe.

While traveling for fun is not an option now, the Travel section decided to create a special reader-generated column of how to spend a weekend in the midst of a global pandemic. The result? “ 36 Hours in … Wherever You Are .” Here’s how readers suggest spending a Sunday morning:

8 a.m. Changing routines Make small discoveries. To stretch my legs during the lockdown, I’ve been walking around the block every day, and I’ve started to notice details that I’d never seen before. Like the fake, painted window on the building across the road, or the old candle holders that were once used as part of the street lighting. When the quarantine ends, I hope we don’t forget to appreciate what’s been on a doorstep all along. — Camilla Capasso, Modena, Italy 10:30 a.m. Use your hands Undertake the easiest and most fulfilling origami project of your life by folding 12 pieces of paper and building this lovely star . Modular origami has been my absolute favorite occupational therapy since I was a restless child: the process is enthralling and soothing. — Laila Dib, Berlin, Germany 12 p.m. Be isolated, together Check on neighbors on your block or floor with an email, text or phone call, or leave a card with your name and contact information. Are they OK? Do they need something from the store? Help with an errand? Food? Can you bring them a hot dish or home-baked bread? This simple act — done carefully and from a safe distance — palpably reduces our sense of fear and isolation. I’ve seen the faces of some neighbors for the first time. Now they wave. — Jim Carrier, Burlington, Vt.

Read the entire article. As you read, consider: How would this be different if it were written by teenagers for teenagers?

Then, create your own 36 Hours itinerary for teenagers stuck at home during the pandemic with ideas for how to spend the weekend wherever they are.

The 36 Hours editors suggest thinking “within the spirit of travel, even if many of us are housebound.” For example: an album or a song playlist; a book or movie that transports you; a particular recipe you love; or a clever way to virtually connect with family and friends. See more suggestions here .

Related Resources: Reader Idea | 36 Hours in Your Hometown 36 Hours in Learning: Creating Travel Itineraries Across the Curriculum

9. Photo Essay

short narrative essay about covid 19

Daily life looks very different now. Unusual scenes are playing out in homes, parks, grocery stores and streets across the country.

In “ New York Was Not Designed for Emptiness ,” New York Times photographers document what life in New York City looks like amid the pandemic. It begins:

The lights are still on in Times Square. Billboards blink and storefronts shine in neon. If only there were an audience for this spectacle. But the thoroughfares have been abandoned. The energy that once crackled along the concrete has eased. The throngs of tourists, the briskly striding commuters, the honking drivers have mostly skittered away. In their place is a wistful awareness that plays across all five boroughs: Look how eerie our brilliant landscape has become. Look how it no longer bustles. This is not the New York City anyone signed up for.

Read the rest of the essay and view the photos. As you read, note the photos or lines in the text that grab your attention most. Why do they stand out to you?

What does the pandemic look like where you live? Create your own photo essay, accompanied by a written piece, that illustrates your life now. In your essay, consider how you can communicate a particular theme or message about life during the pandemic through both your photos and words, like in the article you read.

Publishing Opportunity: The International Center of Photography is collecting a virtual archive of images related to the coronavirus pandemic. Learn how to submit yours here.

10. Comic Strip

Sometimes, words alone just won’t do. Visual mediums, like comics, have the advantage of being able to express emotion, reveal inner monologues, and explain complex subjects in ways that words on their own seldom can.

If anything proves this point, it is the Opinion section’s ongoing visual diary, “ Art in Isolation .” Scroll through this collection to see clever and poignant illustrations about life in these uncertain times. Read the comic “ Finding Connection When Home Alone ” by Gracey Zhang from this collection. As you read, note what stands out to you about the writing and illustrations. What lessons could they have for your own piece?

Then, create your own comic strip, modeled after the one you read, that explores some aspect of life during the pandemic. You can sketch and color your comic with paper and pen, or use an online tool like MakeBeliefsComix.com .

Need inspiration? If you’re keeping a quarantine journal, as we suggested above, you might create a graphic story based on a week of your life, or just a small part of it — like the meals you ate, the video games you played, or the conversations you had with friends over text. For more ideas, check out our writing prompts related to the coronavirus.

Related Resource: From Superheroes to Syrian Refugees: Teaching Comics and Graphic Novels With Resources From The New York Times

11. Podcast

Modern Love Poster

Modern Love Podcast: In the Midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic, People Share Their Love Stories

Are you listening to any podcasts to help you get through the pandemic? Are they keeping you up-to-date on the news? Offering advice? Or just helping you escape from it all?

Create your own five-minute podcast segment that responds to the coronavirus in some way.

To get an idea of the different genres and formats your podcast could take, listen to one or more of these five-minute clips from three New York Times podcast episodes related to the coronavirus:

“ The Daily | Voices of the Pandemic ” (1:15-6:50)

“ Still Processing | A Pod From Both Our Houses ” (0:00-4:50)

“ Modern Love | In the Midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic, People Share Their Love Stories ” (1:30-6:30)

Use these as models for your own podcast. Consider the different narrative techniques they use to relate an experience of the pandemic — interviews, nonfiction storytelling and conversation — as well as how they create an engaging listening experience.

Need ideas for what to talk about? You might try translating any of the writing projects above into podcast form. Or turn to our coronavirus-related writing prompts for inspiration.

Publishing Opportunity: Submit your finished five-minute podcast to our Student Podcast Contest , which is open through May 19. Please read all the rules and guidelines before submitting.

Related Resource: Project Audio: Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts

12. Revise and Edit

“It doesn’t matter how good you think you are as a writer — the first words you put on the page are a first draft,” Harry Guinness writes in “ How to Edit Your Own Writing .”

Editing your work may seem like something you do quickly — checking for spelling mistakes just before you turn in your essay — but Mr. Guinness argues it’s a project in its own right:

The time you put into editing, reworking and refining turns your first draft into a second — and then into a third and, if you keep at it, eventually something great. The biggest mistake you can make as a writer is to assume that what you wrote the first time through was good enough.

Read the rest of the article for a step-by-step guide to editing your own work. Then, revise one of the pieces you have written, following Mr. Guinness’s advice.

Publishing Opportunity: When you feel like your piece is “something great,” consider submitting it to one of the publishing opportunities we’ve suggested above. Or, see our list of 70-plus places that publish teenage writing and art to find more.

Natalie Proulx joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2017 after working as an English language arts teacher and curriculum writer. More about Natalie Proulx

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The meaning of living in the time of covid-19. a large sample narrative inquiry.

\r\nClaudia Venuleo*

  • 1 Department of History, Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
  • 2 Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
  • 3 Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology (FI.S.P.P.A.), University of Padua, Padua, Italy

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a sudden, disruptive event that has strained international and local response capacity and distressed local populations. Different studies have focused on potential psychological distress resulting from the rupture of consolidated habits and routines related to the lockdown measures. Nevertheless, the subjective experience of individuals and the variations in the way of interpreting the lockdown measures remain substantially unexplored. Within the frame of Semiotic Cultural Psychosocial Theory, the study pursued two main goals: first, to explore the symbolic universes (SUs) through which Italian people represented the pandemic crisis and its meaning in their life; and second, to examine how the interpretation of the crisis varies over societal segments with different sociodemographic characteristics and specific life challenges. An online survey was available during the Italian lockdown. Respondents were asked to write a passage about the meaning of living in the time of COVID-19. A total of 1,393 questionnaires (mean = 35.47; standard deviation = 14.92; women: 64.8%; North Italy: 33%; Center Italy: 27%; South Italy: 40%) were collected. The Automated Method for Content Analysis procedure was applied to the collected texts to detect the factorial dimensions underpinning (dis)similarities in the respondents’ discourses. Such factors were interpreted as the markers of latent dimensions of meanings defining the SUs active in the sample. A set of χ 2 analysis allowed exploring the association between SUs and respondents’ characteristics. Four SUs were identified, labeled “Reconsider social priorities,” “Reconsider personal priorities,” “Live with emergency,” and “Surviving a war,” characterized by the pertinentization of two extremely basic issues: what the pandemic consists of (health emergency versus turning point) and its extent and impact (daily life vs. world scenario). Significant associations were found between SUs and all the respondents’ characteristics considered (sex, age, job status, job situation during lockdown, and place of living). The findings will be discussed in light of the role of the media and institutional scenario and psychosocial conditions in mediating the representation of the pandemic and in favoring or constraining the availability of symbolic resources underpinning people’s capability to address the crisis.

Introduction

The spread of the COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a sudden, disruptive event that has strained the health system and had huge repercussions both on the social and economic plane and at the individual level. The containment of the massive outbreak of the virus strained international and local response capacity and distressing local populations. With no established treatment or vaccine to contain the infection rate among the population and not overload the often-limited health systems, most of the affected countries implemented emergency lockdown procedures through mass quarantine.

In Italy—the second country worldwide after China to be massively hit by the crisis (to date, as many as 238,159 reported cases and 34,514 deaths have resulted from COVID-19 in this country— Bulletin of the integrated supervision of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, and Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, 2020 , updated 19 June 2020)—lockdown measures were established by the Government to contain the infection rate and applied first to the so-called “red zone” (Lombardia and 14 provinces of Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Piemonte and Marche) and then to the whole country (Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, 9 March 2020). As a result, social contacts, entrenched habits, and daily routines were interrupted as never before: people stopped visiting relatives and friends; praying in churches; doing sports in the gym and in parks; visiting museums; attending cinemas, theaters, bars, and restaurants; participating in social and cultural events; taking a walk; or shopping.

Different scholars emphasized the potential psychological distress produced in citizens by this sharp breakdown of their habits and routine ( Liu et al., 2020 ; Sood, 2020 ; Suresh, 2020 ; Vijayaraghavan and Singhal, 2020 ). For instance, the study by Liu et al. (2020) among the Chinese population found that 44.6% of the people were anxious about the unknown situation and their health, 33.2% suffered from stress due to the biodisaster, and more than half exhibited mild depression, acute stress, and anxiety. A recent review on studies that analyzed the psychological impact of quarantine at the time of previous pandemics—severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Ebola virus disease, Middle East respiratory syndrome, swine flu (H1N1), and equine flu ( Brooks et al., 2020 )—reports symptoms such as confusion, anger, sleeping problems, and even symptoms of posttraumatic disorder (anxiety, bad memories, irritability and depression) related to the isolation and the break in routine. High degrees of social insecurity, in addition to the health hazards ( Pellecchia et al., 2015 ), tensions within households ( Di Giovanni et al., 2004 ), stigma, and psychosomatic distress ( Lee et al., 2005 ), were also reported with regard to previous epidemics.

On the other hand, the overriding focus on the negative effects of the health emergency, although crucial, presents two main limitations. First, it may not allow the researchers to understand what kind of symbolic resources (i.e., worldviews, beliefs, modes of feeling, thinking, and acting) citizens mobilized in response to the acute stage of the pandemic and whether these resources were suited to support the management of the crisis in its whole breadth and depth. Second, it provides limited insight into variations in the experience of quarantine due to individual factors and social situations; negative psychological outcomes could be strongly influenced by contextual aspects related to the microsphere, such as with whom one lives and the quality of the relationship, as well as the macro social sphere (e.g., degree of trust in politics and/or science or kind of media information). For instance, the findings of a study based on qualitative semistructured interviews with community informants and households during Ebola ( Caleo et al., 2018 ) emphasizes the importance of the community having a role in tailoring outbreak responses to make norms more acceptable and effective, as well as in the clear communication of complex health messages. In short, researchers have taken for granted that the pandemic was a psychological tsunami for individuals and that the tsunami was intrinsically determined by the pandemic as disruptive events that can only produce a disruptive impact on daily life, people’s psychosocial conditions, and circumstances. On the other hand, negative or difficult life events may provide special opportunities for meaning making (e.g., King et al., 2000 ; McLean and Pratt, 2006 ; Bakker, 2018 ) and for turning crisis into opportunity.

Surprisingly, little research has been conducted to understand the everyday experience (feelings, experiences, practices, actions) and perspectives of those affected by the lockdown measures for the COVID-19 crisis, as well previous epidemic ( Cava et al., 2005 ; Braunack-Mayer et al., 2013 ). To our knowledge, currently no studies have been performed in Italy, or worldwide.

According to the outline considerations, the present work, within the frame of Semiotic Cultural Psychosocial Theory (SCPT), aims to explore the way Italian people represented the pandemic crisis and its meaning in their life, within the general view that pandemics do not have an invariant psychological meaning, but the opposite: they are the meaning by which people interpret their being-in-the-world to explain their reaction to the crisis. A brief outline of the SCPT will be provided, in order to frame the following analysis of psychosocial processes underpinning people’s current response to the pandemic crisis.

Theoretical Framework

The SCPT ( Valsiner, 2007 ; Salvatore et al., 2009 , 2019c ,d; Salvatore and Venuleo, 2013 , 2017 ; Salvatore, 2018 ; Russo et al., 2020 ; Venuleo et al., 2020a ) postulates the mediational role of sense-making in the way people represent and face their material and social world and in so doing shape their experience. Accordingly, people do not represent and respond to the reality of the pandemic as if it were the same states of affairs for everyone. Rather, each person interprets the pandemic in terms of specific meanings that are consistent with the symbolic universe (SU) grounding their own self and their being-in-the-world ( Salvatore et al., 2018 ; Venuleo et al., 2020b ). SUs are conceptualized as systems of implicit, only partially conscious, embodied generalized assumptions or patterns of meanings (significance, texts, practices, behavioral scripts) that foster and constrain the way the sense-maker interprets any specific event, object, and condition of their life ( Salvatore et al., 2018 ). An example is provided by the generalization of the friend–foe schema, which implies that the whole variability of the circumstances is reduced drastically to just the one degree-of-freedom distinction between being or not being other-than-us.

People vary in their tendency to make use of generalized meanings ( Feldman, 1995 ; Barrett et al., 2001 ; Barrett, 2006 ). According to SCPT, the capacity of the SU to promote adaptive responses is a function of the variable degree of salience of the generalized meanings composing them ( Venuleo et al., 2020b ). Whereas a high salience of the generalized meanings corresponds to a rigid, polarized, way of thinking, producing homogenizing affect-laden interpretations of the reality (typically organized by the bad/good, pleasure/displeasure opposition), a low salience corresponds to more flexible thinking, able to capture the distinct events of the experience and to produce differentiated meanings that favor the process of learning from experience. A similar concept was expressed by Barrett et al. (2001) when they suggest that people vary in their capacity of emotional differentiation and argue that individuals with highly differentiated emotional experience are better able to reflectively regulate emotional experience to inform adaptive responses. With reference to the current pandemic crisis, different scholars have observed how fear and, more broadly, a general state of anxiety (e.g., of getting infected and/or of infecting someone else, of losing friends or relatives, of being alone, of not “making it” economically—the fear that nothing will ever be like before) was the dominant emotional reaction of the society to the pandemic crisis ( Casale and Flett, 2020 ; Presti et al., 2020 ; Schimmenti et al., 2020 ). It is the common response to conditions and events that are a major violation of the expected state (e.g., Proulx and Inzlicht, 2012 ; for a review, see Townsend et al., 2013 ; for an analysis of the emotional response to a pandemic, see Kim and Niederdeppe, 2013 ) and can be interpreted as the marker of high affective activation: it produces global, homogenizing, and generalizing embodied affect-laden interpretations of reality, at the cost of more fine-grained and differentiated analytical thought ( Venuleo et al., 2020a ). Among other manifestations, these high affect-laden interpretations are expressed though the spreading of conspiracy theories (and the related devaluation of experts’ knowledge) and the initial blaming of specific outgroups (“the Chinese,” or the “immigrants,” in some populist propaganda), based on the friend–foe schema, which influenced alarmist comments and discourses on the social media ( Venuleo et al., 2020a ). Less polarized and more flexible interpretations may be indicated by discourses focused on the need to learn from the pandemic what can usefully be changed in past choices and habits to better manage personal and/or societal resources and construct a better future (for one’s own life and/or, more broadly, for the life of society), as well as in the initiatives activated to mobilize relational resources and create a dense solidarity network.

According to SCPT, the SUs through which people’s sense-making is expressed are not transcendental intrapsychic structures, but in their working depend on sociohistorical conditions and are placed within the sphere of social discourses, which suggest what a particular event consists of, why it became a disaster, who was responsible, what should be learned from it ( Fairclough, 1992 ; Ratner, 2008 ; Venuleo and Marinaci, 2017 ; see also Cannon and Müller-Mahn, 2010 ). Broader contextual dimensions (e.g., ideologies; shifting frameworks of knowledge; power structures; health and economic policies; the discourse of the media, scientists, and politicians) such as psychosocial conditions impose constraints on the multiple ways people could make sense of the events, problems, and circumstances of their life ( Salvatore and Zittoun, 2011 ; Venuleo and Marinaci, 2017 ; Marinaci et al., 2019 ).

Framing with SCPT, thus, the “pandemic” can be considered not only a sign referring to an actual event, but a hyperdense polysemic sign ( Venuleo et al., 2020a ). By hyperdense , we mean a sign that stands for the whole of social life, due to the first tenet deriving from SCPT cited above: each person interprets the actual event of the pandemic in terms of specific meanings that are consistent with the SU grounding his/her own self and his/her being-in-the-world. By polysemic, we mean a sign that can be interpreted in very different manners and used within a great many discourses and social practices, with different cultural and psychosocial contexts (cf. Venuleo et al., 2020a ): this aspect reflects the second tenet of SCPT: SUs depend on sociohistorical conditions. One therefore finds “pandemic” associated with signs such as war, enemy, and conspiracy, consistent with a paranoid affective interpretation of the social landscape, which characterizes a vast segment of the population in the contemporary scenario ( Salvatore et al., 2018 ), or also one finds “pandemic” associated with signs such as solidarity, hope, reborn, and consistent with an interpretation of the crisis as a chance to learn from the experience and to make new choices for a better future; and so forth.

Previous studies have shown the essential role of SUs in grounding, motivating, and channeling social and individual behavior ( Venuleo, 2013 ; Venuleo et al., 2015 , 2017 ; Marinaci et al., 2019 ; Salvatore et al., 2019d ; Venezia et al., 2019 ). Different interpretations are not merely abstract judgments—they are a way of being channeled to act and react in a certain way.

Accordingly, research into the interpretative categories that underpinned people’s responses during the pandemic is crucial for public health officials and policy makers in comprehending what favored or hindered an adaptive response to the crisis, in order to outline exit strategies and to design more effective future health emergency plan.

Aims of the Study and Hypotheses

On the basis of the theoretical premises discussed above, the study aims to explore the SUs through which people represented the pandemic crisis and its meaning in their life. The following hypotheses guided the study.

First, based on the theoretical frame of SCPT, stating the dependence of the SUs on the cultural and psychosocial contexts people belong to, we expect that a plurality of representations of the crisis scenario is active in the cultural milieu. Particularly, we expect that highly rigid/polarized and homogenizing affect-laden interpretations of the pandemic crisis framing it in terms of a battle against an uncertain and unknown enemy and the loss of a prior idealized state (e.g., loss of life, freedom, habits) emerge along with more flexible representations (e.g., pandemic as opportunity to change), reflecting people’s variability in the categorization of the experience ( Barrett et al., 2001 ; Salvatore et al., 2018 ) and the variability of the media and social media discourses characterizing the cultural milieu.

Second, we expect SUs to vary over social segments, because of the variability of psychosocial conditions, discourses, and social practices, which people are exposed to during the pandemic. Specifically, we explore the role of respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics—such as sex, age, and job status—which we expect to be related to specific life challenges and health, social, and economic concerns—and social characteristics related to the health emergency, such as work situation during the pandemic and place of living (having different characteristics regarding the spread of the virus and health and media alarm).

Materials and Methods

Narrative inquiry was chosen to gain access to the Italian people’s subjective experience of the health emergency. According to the definition of McAdams (2011) , the story is a selective reconstruction of the autobiographical past and a narrative anticipation of the imagined future that serves to explain, for the self and others, how the person came to be and where his/her life may be going. Social researchers argue that personal narratives can capture particular attitudes, beliefs, and values about themselves as individuals ( Baxen, 2008 ) and their ways of making sense of social experience and of their own role in it, as well as mirroring the changing social conditions ( Bertaux, 1981 ) and elucidating processes of social change and the place of individuals within them ( Andrews, 2007 ). In the terms of Gergen (1985) , narratives are important because they are the means by which people understand and live their lives and because they are ways to participate actively in the practice of a particular culture.

The narratives used in this article were collected as part of the first phase of a mixed-methods research project aimed to analyzing the impact of the COVID-19 health emergency on everyday life. In the first phase, the subjective experience of people living in the time of COVID-19 was investigated, along with their social conditions and sociodemographic characteristics. In the second phase of the research (currently in progress), people were asked to keep a diary periodically to talk about the meaning of the pandemic scenario in their life.

Instruments

An anonymous online survey was designed to assess feelings, emotions, and evaluation of the lockdown measures. The survey was available online from April 1 to May 19, 2020, coinciding with the government decree “Chiudi Italia” and disseminated through social networks.

People were asked to respond to the following question: Imagine telling someone in the future who has not lived through this period what it meant for you to live in the time of COVID-19. What would you tell them? They were encouraged to writing down everything that comes to mind with respect to the situation and responding in the manner that is deemed most appropriate, taking into account that the objective of the investigation was to collect people’s subjective experience.

Then, sociodemographic and social characteristics of respondents (i.e., sex, age, job status, job situation in the current pandemic scenario, and place of living) were collected.

All procedures performed in the study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. According to the ethical code of the Italian Psychology Association 1 and the Italian Code concerning the protection of personal data (legislative decree no. 101/2018), participants were informed about the general aim of research, the anonymity of responses, and the voluntary nature of participation and signed an informed consent. No incentive was given. The project was approved by the Ethics Commission for Research in Psychology of the Department of History, Society and Human Studies of the University of Salento (protocol no. 53162 of April 30, 2020).

Participants

A total number of 1,393 questionnaires and related texts (mean = 35.47, standard deviation = 14.92, women: 64.8%; North Italy: 33%, Central Italy: 27%, South Italy: 40%) were collected ( Table 1 ).

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Table 1. Sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents.

Data Analysis

The analysis aimed to map the main dimensions of meanings underpinning the set of contents of the narratives collected and defining the SUs through which respondents make sense of their COVID-19 experiences. Each dimension of meaning can be conceived of as a generalized meaning component that was highlighted by the interviewees to talk about the time of COVID-19 and that provides space for a plurality of statements and positions. For instance, if the interviewees highlighted the challenges the pandemic brought to their life, then this dimension provides space to express different views/connotations on this aspect (e.g., some interviewees might talk about the change occurring in the relationship with their children; others might describe the changes occurring in their conjugal relationship). Thus, the meanings map goes beyond the descriptive level of content analysis and identifies the latent meanings generating the variability of the contents (for a similar approach, see Visetti and Cadiot, 2002 ; Venuleo et al., 2018a , b , 2019 ). To this end, an automatic procedure for content analysis [Automated Method for Content Analysis (ACASM); Salvatore et al., 2012 ; Salvatore et al., 2017 ], performed by T-LAB software (version T-Lab Plus 2020; Lancia, 2020 ), was applied to the whole corpus of texts obtained through the narratives. The method is grounded on the general assumption that the meanings are shaped in terms of lexical variability. Accordingly, a word such as “father” might, for instance, contribute to the construction of the symbolic meaning of “authority” if it is associated with other words such as “order,” “punishment,” “power.” Otherwise, the same word “father” might help to depict a different meaning, such as “protection” or “warmth,” if it is used together with other words such as “home” and “care.” A similar criterion of co-occurrence is entailed in the semantic differential technique ( Osgood et al., 1957 ) and can be also equated to the free-association principle ( Salvatore, 2014 ). Accordingly, the method of analysis applied to the textual corpus aims at detecting the ways the words combine with each other (that is, co-occur) within utterances, somewhat independently of the referentiality of the sentence ( Lebart et al., 1998 ). ACASM procedure followed three steps.

First, the textual corpus of narratives was split into units of analysis, called elementary context units (ECUs). Second, the lexical forms present in the ECUs were identified and categorized according to the “lemma” they belong to. A lemma is the citation form (namely, the headword) used in a language dictionary, e.g., word forms such as “child” and “children” have “child” as their lemma. A digital matrix of the corpus was defined, having as rows the ECU, as columns the lemmas and in the cell x ij the value “1” if the j th lemma was contained in the i th ECU; otherwise, the x ij cell received the value “0,” Table 2 describes the characteristics of the dataset.

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Table 2. Dataset.

Second, a lexical correspondence analysis (LCA)—a factor analysis procedure for nominal data ( Benzécri, 1973 )—has been carried out on the obtained matrix, to retrieve the factors describing lemmas having higher degrees of association, that is, occurring together many times. Each factorial dimension describes the juxtaposition of two patterns of strongly associated (co-occurring) lemmas and, according to the model grounding the analysis ( Salvatore et al., 2017 ; Gennaro et al., 2019 , 2020 ), can be interpreted as a marker of a latent dimension of meanings underpinning dis(similarities) in the respondents’ discourses and defining their SUs. The interpretation of the factorial dimensions is carried out in terms of inferential reconstruction of the global meaning envisaged by the set of co-occurring lemmas associated with each polarity, based on the abductive logic of interpretation of the relationships among single contents/lemmas ( Salvatore, 2014 ). The first two factors extracted from LCA were selected, as the ones explaining the broader part of the data matrix’s inertia, and labeled by three experienced researchers, in double-blind procedure, on the basis of the specific vocabulary and sentences composing the factors. Disagreement among researchers was overcome using a consensus procedure ( Stiles, 1986 ).

The LCA provides a measure of the degree of association of any respondent with every factorial dimension, expressed in terms of respondent’s position (coordinate) on the factorial dimension. Accordingly, the SU the respondent belongs to is detected in terms of their factorial coordinates. In the final analysis, these coordinates reflect the respondent’s positioning with respect to the oppositional generalized meanings sustaining the SUs identified by the study. Once the coordinates of each subject were identified—as the third step—a set of χ 2 analysis allowed us to explore the association between SUs and the respondents’ characteristics. For a more accurate reading, adjusted standard residuals were considered a post hoc procedure for statistically significant omnibus χ 2 test ( Agresti, 2007 ). Residuals represent the difference between the observed and expected values for a cell. The larger the residual, the greater the contribution of the cell to the magnitude of the resulting χ 2 value obtained. Adjusted standard residuals are normally distributed; thus cells having absolute value greater than the critical value N (0,1), 1 - α/2 = 1.96 will have raw p -value less than 0.05 (for two-sided test). In so doing, post hoc hypotheses tests on standardized residuals were tested.

Dimensions of Meanings and Descriptions of SUs

In Tables 3 , 4 , the two factorial dimensions obtained from the ACASM procedure, and for each of their polarities, the lemmas with the highest level of association ( V test), are reported, as well as their interpretation in terms of dimensions of meaning. Henceforth, we adopt capitals letters for labeling the dimensions of meaning and italics for the interpretation of polarities.

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Table 3. LCA output.

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Table 4. LCA output.

FIRST DIMENSION. REPRESENTATION OF THE PANDEMIC CRISIS : Health emergency versus turning point. This dimension opposes two patterns of words that we interpret as the markers of two ways of representing the COVID-19 crisis ( Table 3 ).

(−) Health emergency . On this polarity, lemmas focusing on a contagiousness ( virus ) that cross the nations ( China , Italy , to arrive ) and having a dramatic impact on health ( to die , death , dead ) co-occur with lemmas related to the changes imposed to contain the health emergency: changes in daily habits ( to wear , mask , glove , supermarket , queues ) and throughout contexts and domains of life ( to close , closed , home , school , shopping , shop , subway ).

(+) Turning point . On this polarity, the reference to uncertainty—which suggests a crisis of meaning, the feeling of not having categories to interpret what happens or what to do to cope with the moment —co-occurs with lemmas that suggest the idea of a process of discovering new meanings to life ( to live , meaning , to mean , to discover , to rediscover , discovery , to appreciate , to reflect ), which invest the individual domain ( lived , for me ) and social life ( social ), and allows one to review one’s priorities and values ( importance , important , time , life , future , freedom , values ).

SECOND DIMENSION. PANDEMIC IMPACT : Daily life versus world scenario. The second factor extracted opposes two patterns of lemma that we interpret as the marker of two different interpretative “lens” to evaluate the impact of the pandemic crisis ( Table 4 ).

(−) Daily life . In this polarity, the lemmas seem to refer to the change occurring in daily life habits (e.g., the adoption of protection: mask , glove ) and domains of experience such as education, working, and interpersonal relationships ( school , university , lesson , exam , to study , to work , friend , shop , online , video call ) due the lockdown measures ( to close , closed ). Temporal trackers ( morning , day , week , time ) evoke the idea of a change unfolding in a limited temporal horizon.

(+) World scenario . In this polarity, a world war scenario is evoked ( enemy , front , war , to fight , to hit , to die , death , dead , victim ), without spatial and temporal borders ( virus , pandemic , worldwide , future ), disrupting social life at different levels ( crisis , policy , healthcare , economy ). A feeling of fear and a sense of helplessness ( impotence ) is associated with this scenario which appears to escape from the very possibility of being represented ( unknown ).

Symbolic Area

The intersection between the two factorial dimensions identifies four quadrants, which we interpret in terms of SUs (henceforth SUs) (cf. Figure 1 ) and that were labeled: Reconsider social priorities , Reconsider personal priorities, Living with emergency , and Surviving a war . A description of each SU is reported below.

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Figure 1. The symbolic space defined by the factorial dimensions.

SU 1: Reconsider social priorities . This symbolic area is organized by a symbolization of the pandemic crisis as a “turning point” (right polarity of the first dimension) having an impact on the world scenario (upper polarity of the second factorial dimension). The pandemic here is recounted as something that transcends the health emergency and stands for something else—the by-product of a predatory and short-sighted way of conceiving human and social development, soliciting a reorganization of social values and priorities to build a better tomorrow. As such, the pandemic is shaped as a potential generative social turning point that can undermine the idea of invincibility of human beings, cast shadows on an idea of growth and progress measured in terms of technological and economic development, show the short-sightedness of our own policies, bring to light the connectivity among individuals and the being part of a collective, and help rediscover the importance of cooperation and solidarity. Examples of discourses are as follows:

Just a couple of months ago, we lived in an era where, as privileged spectators, we believed we were strong and invincible. Sitting in comfortable armchairs; many looked at the continuous natural disasters that occurred on the planet, with the strong and solid conviction that they would never touch our lives (…). One cold winter day, we woke up and without proper preparation, they told us that a virus was going to erase our hopes for tomorrow. Scientists, experts told us that we were wrong, that we were no longer the strongest (…). The virus had isolated us from the world, from our loved ones, had pushed us all together on a dangerous barge in a stormy sea, the same that for years had carried many migrants, alone, desperate, helpless, and needy (…). Everything has become fragile, in a few hours, the priorities have changed (…). If our boat is spared this stormy sea and we can survive this difficult test, we hope never to forget all this.

It led us to understand and reflect on the fact that we are not masters of the world! We always thought we were invincible, with our world made mostly of money, cutting-edge technology and comfort. But it is not true. Have we always had everything under control? No, never! When COVID-19 appeared, we may have begun to understand some of the non-material values that are the most important in addressing a pandemic of this kind properly and especially to consider our race, worthy of being called human! (…). In my opinion, the watchwords are solidarity, respect, understanding, listening, altruism, knowledge, and above all love.

I would talk about how the planet slowly began to breathe again (thanks to the closure of a lot of factories or various companies, or with the decrease in traffic). I would like to talk about how many people have rediscovered the Earth, the sacrifices, the fatigue, the fruits, and the satisfactions linked to it, thanks to working in the fields.

SU 2: Reconsider personal priorities . This symbolic area shares with the previous area a symbolization of the pandemic crisis as “turning point” (right polarity of the first dimension) but differs in the focus on the “daily life” impact (bottom polarity of the second factorial dimension). The pandemic is here recounted as sudden interruption of the ordinary, which leads to not taking for granted different aspects of life and being able to change significantly one’s perspective toward oneself and others, one’s way of being-in-the-world. The lockdown measures are experienced here and represented in their aspect of being a space–time suspension of routine, able to generate new meaning for experience and to reconsider values and priorities in life. Examples of discourses are as follows:

The being able to reclaim your time and your spaces.

Everything that used to be part of the normal routine becomes something out of the ordinary and no longer possible, and you are confronted, in an extremely profound way, with yourself.

My life was almost a boring routine, almost following a written script. COVID-19 forced me to reorganize my mental and physical spaces.

I would tell you about an experience of elasticity and resilience where the difference emerged starkly between those who had begun to work on themselves and those who, panicked, railed against the restrictions shifting the focus of their own problems (…). I would recount the rediscovery of some family tensions and wounds and the strengthening of the bond and love with my husband. (…) I would tell him that life always (sooner or later) presents us with challenges and that we must learn from them in order to grow and be better.

SU 3: Live with emergency . It is a symbolic area organized by a symbolization of the pandemic crisis as “health emergency” (left polarity of the first dimension) having an impact on “daily life” (bottom polarity of the second factorial dimension). Here the pandemic crisis, identified with a health emergency, is narrated by referring to the impact of the lockdown measures on personal everyday life, at different levels: change in daily habits to contain the risk of infection (e.g., wearing mask and gloves), management of overlapping roles at home due to the reorganization of school and work from home restriction on freedom of movement, and related feeling of fear and anxiety. The narration of what the pandemic has interrupted or has no longer made possible (e.g., “you can’t see”; “you can’t do”) is in the foreground. The pandemic is mainly seen in terms of loss of the previous condition/sphere of experience, which means that the interpretation of the new reality emerging from the pandemic rupture tends to be made within the affective grounds provided by the prerupture semiotic scenario. Examples of discourses are as follows:

A time where our certainty and habits changed, and the freedom of moving, traveling, and interacting with other persons was greatly limited. A time where the fear of getting sick made you suspect your neighbor and this inevitably changed everyday life, isolating and separating families and friends.

A bad time when you never feel safe when you leave the house and you always need to wear a mask and gloves: You can’t see your friends, you can’t do those normal things like having coffee in a bar, having dinner in a restaurant or having an aperitif. It’s spring, but we’re not enjoying it; we wanted to travel, see new cities or just be around the streets of our town, but you can’t do any of this.

At the beginning, the quarantine has me a bit destabilized; it meant giving up my everyday habits and my freedom of movement, but then I got strong, knowing that it was the only way to stop infection.

Period of anxiety, fear, and confinement. Privation of our freedom to safeguard people.

I have had to be the teacher and mother for my children aged 4 and 6 who have continued to follow the activities with online teaching (…) I don’t understand when I’m a mother or a teacher. My children have suffered so much being away from school and also the motivation to complete a task has fallen day after day. The work of encouragement and support was hard.

SU 4: Survive a war . It is a symbolic area organized by a symbolization of the pandemic crisis as “health emergency” (left polarity of the first dimension) having an impact on the world scenario (upper polarity of the second factorial dimension): a militaristic language is used to talk about COVID-19 and its impact on individual feeling and responses. Tragic , terrifying , and frightening are among the most connotations associated with a pandemic, lived as if it were an unexpected and unannounced war. The unpredictable character attributed to the crisis and its identification with an invisible virus whose space–time location, as well as physical drivers, is very hard to identify are associated with the feeling of being unprepared and helpless. Not being infected and surviving appear to be the only possible goals. Examples of discourses are as follows:

COVID-19 was a terrifying and unimaginable experience, maybe worse than a war because we fought with an invisible enemy, a virus, which has separated us from our loved ones for so long (…) a tragic and traumatic event for every country in the world, with many victims and as many healed.

Living in a pandemic is like living in a war, always with the uncertainty of being able to be saved, always with the fear for oneself and for others.

This is a tragic time that I had not budgeted for other than as one of the worst nightmares. The danger has come from far away, from China, in a subtle way, on the sly, and found us unprepared. First problem: how not to be infected? But many did not have time to ask themselves. I still have in my eyes the images of those in the ICU who died in complete solitude, the columns of army vehicles carrying the coffins, the churches full of coffins.

A nightmare.

Relationships Between SUs and Respondents’ Characteristics

Table 5 reports the results of the χ 2 tests applied to investigate the associations between SUs and respondents’ characteristics. Significant differences were found in all the characteristics.

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Table 5. Association between symbolic universes and respondents’ characteristics.

Concerning gender (χ 2 = 12.168, df = 2, p < 0.05), the adjusted standardized residuals show that men were more associated with “Reconsider social priorities” SUs, whereas women were more represented in “Surviving a war.” Concerning age (χ 2 = 41.466, df = 15, p < 0.000), respondents aged 18–25 years mostly represented the COVID-19 experience as surviving a war, respondents aged 26–35 years experienced COVID-19 as an opportunity to reconsider social priorities, and respondents 46–55 and 56–65 years assumed the lockdown in terms of reconsidering personal priorities.

With respect to job status (χ 2 = 28.628, df = 15, p < 0.05), retired persons tend to represent the crisis scenario as a turning point, leading to reconsider personal priorities, employees in terms of living with the emergency, and students in terms of surviving a war. With respect to working during the health emergency (χ 2 = 27.928, df = 15, p < 0.05), individuals maintaining their ordinary work situation during the pandemic tend to experience the crisis scenario as an opportunity to reconsider personal priorities.

The three macro areas of Italy in which respondents live—northern Italy, central Italy, and southern Italy—showed significant difference (χ 2 = 19.104, df = 6, p < 0.05) in the opposition among northern part versus southern part: the former is more associated with surviving a war experience and the latter to reconsidering personal priorities.

In short, the highlighted differences allow us to obtain a clear picture of the respondents belonging to the different SUs retrieved: the representation of the COVID-19 crisis in terms of reconsideration of social priorities (SU 1) is represented by male respondents, aged 26–35 years, and the retired; “Reconsider personal priorities” (SU 2) characterizes people aged 46–55 and 56–65 years, retired, and maintaining ordinary work conditions and people of Southern Italy. The representation of the COVID-19 crisis in terms of Living with emergency (SU 3) characterizes employees, whereas Surviving a war (SU 4) characterizes women, people aged 18–25 years, students, and people living in the north of Italy.

The first goal of the study was to explore the SUs through which Italian people represented the pandemic crisis and its meaning in their life. The analysis of the narratives based on the ACASM procedure led to the identification of four distinct SUs organized by two main dimensions of meaning, which foreground two very basic issues: what the pandemic crisis consists of (health emergency vs. turning point) and its extent and impact (daily life vs. world scenario).

Consistently with the hypothesis, more rigid/polarized and highly homogenizing affect-laden interpretations, triggering feelings of fear and anxiety and framing the pandemic crisis as a battle against an uncertain and unknown enemy and/or the loss of a prior idealized scenario (SUs labeled “Surviving a war” and “Living with an emergency”), emerged along more flexible representations (SUs labeled “Reconsider social priorities” and “Reconsider personal priorities”), reflecting the variability of the media and social media discourses, which seem to characterize the cultural milieu.

Specifically, the SUs labeled “Surviving a war” and “Living with an emergency” differ with regard to the identification of the pandemic crisis as a social or individual rupture but share a short-term representation of the changes imposed by the pandemic related to a focus on the health emergency (more than a crisis encompassing health, economic, political, and social levels of analysis), which brings to the foreground the dichotomy between life and death and between the “normal things” that the pandemic emergency has interrupted to safeguard people (“You can’t see your friends, you can’t have coffee in a bar, you cannot travel …”) and the extraordinary habits imposed by the crisis. The pandemic is thus identified as a sectorial and confined event, although frightening, which can almost trigger at the individual level a reorganization of one’s habits and routines to defend oneself and one’s loved ones, and at the societal level strong measures of restriction of people’s freedom to move to avoid overloading the health system. However, the pandemic does not seem to work as something new that calls for an accommodation of one’s way of interpreting one’s own life and the world scenario; rather, it is approached through categories that foreground the loss or the lack of what existed before the rupture. This kind of position lends itself to be interpreted as the marker of an intense affective activation that triggers a homogenizing form of thinking which represents the new according to the past ( Bria, 1999 ; Salvatore and Freda, 2011 ; Salvatore and Venuleo, 2017 ). Indeed, to express concerns about what was missed or interrupted by the pandemic entails the instantiation/reiteration of the presence of what was before (the past scenario) as the canonical order according to which the present is interpreted. In the final analysis, the concern is an (unintentional) way of keeping a certain version of the self/world psychologically alive regardless of the changes occurring in the real world.

On the other hand, the view of the pandemic as a turning point—which characterizes the SUs labeled “Reconsider social priorities” and “Reconsider personal priorities”—identifies a different area of meaning, where the rupture opens to a new way of being-in-the-world, and is felt as an opportunity to reflect on previous choices and their critical impact and to make the future better. To use an image, people’s meaning-making seems to move from the focus on loss (e.g., the dead people that will never come back, or the daily habits interrupted)—which characterizes the previously discussed SUs—toward a gaze to the future, the new adjustment challenge that one has to address. What one can learn from the crisis and what has to be changed are represented differently. Whereas the turning point concerns the individual life (“Reconsidering personal priorities”), the pandemic as a rupture highlighted the fragility of life and led to the search for a new way of managing one’s time and a clearer consideration of what matters. Whereas the turning point concerns the social and public sphere (“Reconsidering social priorities”), the pandemic rupture highlighted the critical impact of short-term and local politics and the need for more awareness of the interdependence among people and countries, which could facilitate reorganization of previously considered out-groups and in-groups into a single community with a common destiny.

As to Hypothesis 2—the interpretation of the crisis varies over societal segments with different psychosocial characteristics—the findings showed that significant associations exist between SUs and all the respondents’ characteristics considered (sex, age range, job status, job situation during lockdown, and place of living).

It is worth noticing the differentiated position of women, young adults (aged 18–25 years) and students compared respectively to men, adults aged 26–35 and 46–55 years, people maintaining their ordinary work situation during lockdown, or to the retired. The former tend to interpret the pandemic crisis as a health emergency, confronting people with the shared goal to survive, whereas the latter in terms of a personal or social turning point. Findings suggest that having a more stable life situation and less economic and job concerns could favor a more reflexive stance on the pandemic crisis. By contrast, unique challenges imposed by the lockdown measures, such as those related to the disrupted social roles and returning to living with parents, which may impact mainly students and emerging adults ( Gruber et al., 2020 ), could have favored a interpretation of the crisis in terms of loss and urgency to return to the prerupture scenario.

As concerns the association between the SUs “Live with the emergency,” focusing on employees and the disruptive changes occurring in their personal daily life due to the lockdown measures, it can be interpreted considering how they were asked to close their offices and work from home (about 81% of the worldwide workforce has been affected by full or partial workplace closures, see Saviæ, 2020 ). Findings from recent studies show that working from home relates to the feeling of work intruding into personal life and work-life conflict ( Molino et al., 2020 ), which could have triggered the daily stress and the feeling of living with and within an emergency.

The contrasting position of women and men deserves a comment, too. The negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic outbreak on equality ( Bernardi, 2020 ), and particularly on gender equality, is recognized, although few detailed data are currently available ( Kristal and Yaish, 2020 ). Data from the World Economic Forum ( Hutt, 2020 ) show that women are responsible for the so-called unpaid care work three times more than men; it is likely that the care of children, the elderly, and other vulnerable groups was mostly provided by women also during the lockdown. With respect to Italy, the context of the current study, women tend to be the ones mainly responsible for the care of children in the family context. During the lockdown and the related closure of schools, and given also the insufficiency of the resources allocated to family support for children’s care, they have had to do a lot of multitasking and—often in the same space (the home)—to perform work assignments and activities related to the family management and teach their children ( Rinaldi, 2020 ). This complex of circumstances may have triggered greater stress and more in general an affective activation of anxiety, foregrounding the risk of “losing the battle” (health, economics, social resources) more than the hope for a different future. Different exposure to health and media alarms may explain the differences related to the area of residence: people from North Italy tend to interpret the COVID-19 crisis as a war to which one has to survive, whereas people from South Italy as a personal turning point. It is not surprising. The expansion of the COVID-19 outbreak began in northern Italy, where the higher incidence of the coronavirus contagion is currently active and where the percentage of people infected and dead was far higher than in the rest of Italy ( Santacroce et al., 2020 ). The daily bulletin of the data provided by the civil protection about the infected people and deaths and the media discourses depicting the overload of hospitals and of frontline health workers have contributed to depict a war scenario and to fuel feelings of fear and impotence. Fresh in everyone’s minds are the dreadful images—shown worldwide by the media—of the long rows of military trucks transporting the dead from the hospital outside the Lombard city of Bergamo (North Italy), because of lack of space to bury them in the town cemeteries.

Beyond the specificities of the associations detected between respondents’ characteristics and SUs, this kind of results shows how the meaning of the pandemic, the possibility that the crisis seems to be the loss of a previous desirable state of “normality” or a chance to rethink what went before and to generate new opportunities, is not ubiquitous and invariant but mediated by people’s sense-making.

On the other hand, as previously observed, according to SCPT, people’s affective interpretation of the pandemic scenario is not formed in a social vacuum. With regard to the interpretation of the pandemic scenario in terms of a mere health emergency and war against an unknown enemy, which forces government and individuals to fight for people’s survival (see SUs labeled “Surviving a war” and “Living with an emergency”), one can see its full continuity with the media and institutional discourses. Here the pandemic crisis was identified substantially with a health emergency and framed by affect-laden metaphors, with a clear prevalence of militaristic language: COVID-19 was widely depicted as an “enemy to defeat,” hospitals as “the trenches,” doctors and nurses as “heroes on the frontline,” and the counter-action against the virus as a “war” ( Cassandro, 2020 ), as often found in the political and media discourses about previous epidemics (e.g., AIDS: Connelly and Macleod, 2003 ; SARS: Meng and Berger, 2008 ; Ebola: Trèková, 2015 ). Seminal studies argued that the use of militaristic language and metaphors makes it easier to sacrifice people and their rights ( Fornari, 1970 ; Ross, 1986 ) and exculpate governments from responsibility ( Larson et al., 2005 ), such as the kind of economic investment made in the health system and research. The Semiotic Cultural Psychology Theory suggests that affect−laden, simplified interpretations of the reality—such as those that underlie processes of enemization—restore the capacity of making sense of an uncertain social landscape ( Venuleo et al., 2020a ). From this standpoint, the fact that a high affect-laden interpretation of the pandemic scenario emerges in our analysis of how people make sense of this time of crisis is not surprising. The more the uncertainty of the scenario, the more sense-makers are likely to restore the stability of their sense-making through their adherence to generalized worldviews ( Russo et al., 2020 ). Findings of studies based on the Terror Management Theory ( Greenberg et al., 1997 ; Greenberg and Arndt, 2012 ) provide empirical support to this thesis. Recent studies among European societies reveal that about 40% of the respondents view the external world as if it were full of threats that may disrupt their living space ( Salvatore et al., 2018 ). From this standpoint, the identification of the pandemic crisis as war appears to be only a further form reflecting the semiotic mechanism through which a lot of problems, critical changes, and ruptures (e.g., unemployment, worsening of living conditions, …) are currently mentalized by a large segment of the population in the current cultural milieu.

Unfortunately, we have not collected measures (e.g., people’s attitudes and compliance with the health measures) that allow us to empirically evaluate the impact of the different symbolic positions detected on the pandemic crisis; however, few speculative hypotheses can be made on the bases of previous studies. Scholars have suggested that when people are gripped by strong fear and feel that their survival is at stake, they are more likely to break their entrenched habits ( Barrett et al., 2001 ; Coombs et al., 2007 ), a vital factor in coping with the emergency, as already found among other populations during previous pandemic such as the SARS ( Hsu et al., 2006 ) and H1N1 pandemics ( McVernon et al., 2011 ). With respect to the COVID-19 emergency, it is reasonable to think that the widespread fear of being “hit” (getting infected and/or of infecting someone else), of losing friends or relatives in the battle, favors higher levels of compliance among the Italian population than one might have expected if one considers the quite low level of trust in the institutions and commitment to the common good characterizing Italian communities (e.g., Salvatore et al., 2019a ; Venuleo et al., 2020a ). However, in the medium and long term, the fear response could increasingly prove to be inadequate in managing the pandemic: this is because the fear response persists insofar as the alarm trigger is active while prone to fade away as a result of desensitization. Thus, a global reduction of compliance with measures to contain infection can be expected to be associated with the flattening of the infection curve and of the decrease in the alarms launched by TV, newspapers, social media, and political speeches. Further studies are needed to examine this hypothesis in greater depth.

A further critical aspect of a symbolization of pandemic as a war against a virus is that it looks at the pandemic crisis as a sectorial and confined event, which can trigger short-term changes at the individual level (e.g., avoidance of social aggregations) and societal level (e.g., a greater investment in the health field), but not favor the holistic view required to empower individuals and institutional effort to learn from the crisis how to build a better tomorrow.

On the other hand, the view of the pandemic as a turning point—which characterizes the SUs labeled “Reconsider social priorities” and “Reconsider personal priorities”—identifies a different area of meaning, turning crisis into opportunity, involving a promise of some kind of progress toward better living conditions, opening one’s gaze to the future and leading people to search for a new way of managing their personal and societal resources. Specifically, conceived as a social turning point, the pandemic reveals the presence in the cultural milieu of a set of symbolic resources (e.g., meanings, cognitive schemas, values, social representations, attitudes, behavioral scripts, etc.) that foster the individual’s capacity to interiorize the collective dimension of life, what has been called semiotic capital ( Salvatore et al., 2018 ; Venuleo et al., 2020a ). Recent studies on the SUs active among European societies ( Salvatore et al., 2018 , 2019b ) reveal that, along with a view of the external world as full of threats that can disrupt their living space, there are also SUs, although a minority in the cultural milieus, which recognize the systemic level of social life and the collective interest as something that matters, therefore the common good as a super-ordered framework of sense orienting individual decisions and actions. It is argued that semiotic capital is particularly important in the management of the pandemic scenario, because people will not only have to accomplish the task of complying with negative regulations (e.g., avoid social gatherings, keep a distance from other people), but—more profoundly, to integrate a reference to an abstract common good —the management of the risk of resurgence of the pandemic—in their mindsets, as a salient regulator of their way of feeling, thinking, and acting ( Venuleo et al., 2020a ). And this task requires people to be enabled to recognize and give relevance to the relation between the individual sphere of experience and the sphere of collective life and, as such, to go beyond the mere focus on the individual experience and interest (see also: Schimmenti et al., 2020 ).

Implications for Policy

Typically, the focus on the psychological impact of the pandemic and related lockdown measures was accompanied by the emphasis on individuals’ need for psychologist and psychological support; suggested actions include support lines for anxious people, telecounseling, virtual connecting, and help groups ( Sood, 2020 ). However, this approach, although crucial, does not appear to be enough to sustain the development within the population of the symbolic resources underpinning people’s capability to address the crisis. The pandemic demands that both the individual and society as a whole consider the consequences of particular choices and actions, a strategic issue that has implications far beyond the sphere of individual well-being and beyond the challenge of surviving the health emergency (which is in the foreground in SUs1).

We have above suggested that the impact of the pandemic crisis on individuals and their ability to respond adaptively to it are shaped by the social and cultural resources that they have to hand. This also means recognizing that disruptive events, like a pandemic, constitute not only natural hazards, but also socially constructed events: the product of the impact of a disruptive event on people whose vulnerability is also constructed by social, economic, and political conditions (see Cannon and Müller-Mahn, 2010 ). Counterfactual thinking in support to this thesis is that problems exponentially more disruptive than SARS-CoV-2, such as climate change at the societal level, or smoking at the individual level, have been unable to produce a reaction of fear even remotely like that of the pandemic. By extension, this means that the feeling of fear and impotence that have characterized a large part of the population are not a direct reaction to the pandemic as such, but to the way the crisis scenario has been perceived, discussed, and negotiated in the society. Obviously, this does not mean to question the seriousness of the pandemic emergency; rather, this perspective emphasizes how political decision making and discourses in the public sphere affect the way people make sense of what is happening and their feeling of being passive spectators or victims of an event beyond their control or also active agents and drivers of change.

Cultural manifestations can be addressed and, eventually, counteracted only if the cultural dynamics underpinning them are explained in their specific and contingent way of functioning ( Russo et al., 2020 ). The characteristics of sense-making outlined by SCPT offer a contribution in that direction. More specifically, the fact that sense-making is embedded in affect−laden, generalized, holistic meanings (SUs) and in the cultural milieu and the performative quality of the processes can be translated into methodological criteria for designing strategies to support the cultural possibility of turning the pandemic crisis into a cultural opportunity. Although a deeper, systematic discussion of the methodological criteria that can be drawn from the theoretical framework is beyond the scope of this work, three speculative hypotheses can be considered, showing the heuristic and pragmatic potentiality of SCPT.

First, the acknowledgment of the holistic nature of the generalized meaning underpinning SUs implies that any intervention that restricts its action to the specific domain of health (in terms of fighting the virus) is likely to have limited efficacy, given that people shape their way of addressing the pandemic crisis and relate to sanitary measures not only according to health domain−specific beliefs, but also according to their global worldview that concerns the world of experience as a whole ( Salvatore et al., 2019d ).

Second, if the SUs develop within specific sociohistorical conditions and come alive in the context of discourse and interaction ( Linell, 2009 ), we must also recognize the role of the way the crisis is managed at an institutional level and signified by communicative practices and discourses, which therefore have to be critically examined.

Third, the acknowledgment of the performative nature of sense-making leads us to recognize that SUs are not produced by statements but enacted by social practices and rooted in the social group’s mindscape. This entails that, to act on the cultural dynamics, policy does not have to espouse contents (beliefs, values, principles), but to design social practices that encapsulate those contents ( Venuleo et al., 2020a ). For instance, to promote the value of cooperation and solidarity, rather than advocating it, social practices grounded on the representation of otherness as a resource have to be implemented within the social group. First comes action; then meaning follows. More specifically, the promotion of semiotic capital is carried out through the design and activation of settings of social practices that encapsulate the worldviews, the beliefs, and the views of otherness making up the semiotic capital.

Limitations and Future Direction of Research

The results of the present study should be considered in light of several methodological limitations. First, our case study is based on an Italian convenience sample; thus, the results cannot be generalized and have to be related to the specific cultural context under analysis. Because SUs depend on their working on sociohistorical conditions and are placed within the sphere of social discourses, we might suppose that, in other countries, other SUs emerge to represent the pandemic crisis and its impact.

Second, the analysis of how SUs vary over social segments due to the variability of psychosocial conditions could be improved by considering other potential variables than sociodemographic characteristics, work situation during the pandemic, and place of living. Although these characteristics are supposed to reflect specific life challenges and health, social, and economic concerns, other factors should be considered such as psychological well-being, longer or shorter life expectancy, perceived social support, trust in institutions, sense of belonging to the community, current intergenerational differences with respect to the sensitivity and interests expressed toward other social problems causing a catastrophic impact for the whole of humanity (e.g., climate change), and different exposure to social network communication to better understand how micro and macro social spheres influence the ways of interpreting the pandemic crisis.

Third, on the basis of SCPT and previous studies that have shown the essential role of SUs in grounding, motivating, and channeling social and individual behavior, we have suggested that SUs might favor or hinder an adaptive response to the crisis. However, the current study does not allow this relationship to be examined further. Further studies should longitudinally examine the variability of the SUs over time and their impact on psychological well-being and people responses to the crisis in the medium and long term (e.g., degree of compliance toward the health emergency measures established by the government and levels of engagement in solidarity actions).

This article has explored the meaning of living in the time of COVID-19 through the collection of narratives from Italian adults and within the frame of the semiotic psychological theory of culture to enrich our understanding of the SUs active in the cultural milieu to interpret the current crisis.

The core of our proposal lies in the call to move beyond the idea that the pandemic can be taken for granted as being disruptive with a negative psychological impact on individuals and assume that those are the meanings through which people interpret their being-in-the-world to explain their reaction to the crisis, and that this reaction has to be understood in the light of their social–cultural milieu. What we need to do is to look more closely at the way individuals, their system of activity, and the sociocultural and political scenario interact with each other in constructing the impact of the pandemic on individuals and social life.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the project was approved by the Ethics Commission for Research in Psychology of the Department of History, Society and Human Studies of the University of Salento (protocol n. 53162 of 30 April 2020). The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

CV and TM conceived the study and overall edited the manuscript. All the authors collected the data, organized the relevant literature, and interpreted the results. CV wrote the manuscript, with the contribution of TM. TM and AG conducted the data analysis. TM, AG, and AP reviewed the manuscript sections.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the doctors: Maria Luisa Lezzi, Ludovica Latini, Roberta Licci, Valentina Purini, and Francesca Romagnano for their precious collaboration on data dissemination.

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Keywords : COVID-19 pandemic, Semiotic Cultural Psychosocial Theory (SCPT), sense-making, narratives, symbolic universes, cultural milieu, Italy

Citation: Venuleo C, Marinaci T, Gennaro A and Palmieri A (2020) The Meaning of Living in the Time of COVID-19. A Large Sample Narrative Inquiry. Front. Psychol. 11:577077. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.577077

Received: 28 June 2020; Accepted: 13 August 2020; Published: 17 September 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Venuleo, Marinaci, Gennaro and Palmieri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Claudia Venuleo, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Sandro Galea M.D.

  • Coronavirus Disease 2019

Defining the COVID-19 Narrative

The story we tell about this pandemic will shape our preparedness for the next..

Posted July 6, 2021 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

  • The core narrative of the pandemic, and arguably the central one, is the presence of inequities.
  • COVID-19 exposed inequities in morbidity and mortality, who bears the burden of steps we have taken to mitigate the virus, and vaccine uptake.
  • The effects of these inequities will likely be with us for some time, shaping the story of the pandemic and the lives of those who lived it. 

Image by Hank Williams from Pixabay

What story will we tell about COVID-19 ? The events of the past year and a half were more than just a story of the emergence and behavior of a virus. It was also a story of the social, economic, scientific, and political context into which the virus emerged and the intersection of these forces within complex, dynamic systems. Given this complexity, it can be challenging to predict which stories will rise to the surface of the overarching story of the pandemic. Yet, we need to try. The stories we tell about health shape how we engage with the present moment to support a better future—or how we fail to do so.

With this in mind, I suggest four critical narratives that emerged from the broader story of the pandemic and which can help define the overall COVID-19 narrative in the years to come. Next week, I will address the perhaps deeper issue of why we remember what we remember.

The first narrative which has come to define the COVID-19 moment is that of scientific excellence. The speed with which a COVID-19 vaccine was developed, supported by mRNA technology, reflects a new era in cutting -edge science. This narrative of scientific excellence is powerful for two key reasons.

First, because this latest vaccine technology is unique and impressive and has begun the long-awaited process of helping return us to our families, friends, colleagues, lives. Second, it is powerful because of how closely it aligns with how we already think about health. We often think about health in terms of treatment—doctors and medicines—which can cure us when we are sick, rather than in terms of the structural forces in society which shape whether or not we get sick, to begin with. We tend to confuse health (the state of not being sick) with healthcare (what we turn to once sickness strikes), which has led us to invest vast sums in healthcare at the expense of the core forces that shape health. The success of vaccines reflects that this investment is indeed core to supporting scientific excellence. Still, our story of health and COVID-19 is incomplete if it is confined to science and treatment alone.

This leads to the following core narrative of the pandemic and arguably the central one—the presence of inequities. These include, centrally, inequities in morbidity and mortality, who bears the burden of the steps we have taken to mitigate the virus and vaccine uptake. When COVID-19 struck, it quickly became apparent that certain groups—such as Black Americans, people over 65, and people with underlying health conditions—were more vulnerable to the virus than others. This vulnerability was shaped by longstanding health inequities informed by marginalization, social and economic injustice, and other foundational forces in our society. The story of COVID-19 is, in large part, the level of these forces.

These inequities have also come to define who has most felt the consequences of our efforts to mitigate the pandemic. COVID-19 caused us to embrace extraordinary measures, shut down society, and incur severe economic costs in the process. The pandemic led to significant job losses , which most affected low-income, minority workers. When the economy began to recover, with higher-wage workers bouncing back relatively quickly, lower-wage minority workers recovered at a far slower rate. The effects of this inequity will likely be with us for some time, shaping the story of the pandemic and the lives of those who lived it.

Third, the story of COVID-19 would be incomplete without an honest reckoning with widespread loss of trust in institutions and the consequences of this for public health. The most prominent example of this was how the inconsistent, often dishonest, words of former President Trump informed a lack of trust in guidance from the White House throughout the crisis. It is also true that seeming inconsistencies occasionally characterized public health efforts, perhaps most clearly in our field’s widespread embrace of civic protests last summer, in apparent contrast with our guidance on social distancing and masks. Given that COVID-19 emerged at a time when trust in institutions was already declining , the story of the pandemic may well be, in large part, a story of how this trend accelerated, making it harder for anyone to speak with a widely-heeded, authoritative voice on matters core to health.

Finally, a core narrative of the pandemic, one which could well characterize our future memory of this time, is that, as bad as COVID-19 was, it could have been far worse. I realize that this may seem strange, even unfeeling, in the context of mass death and suffering. But it is nevertheless true. COVID-19 has been a disaster. Yet, the virus itself, compared to past pandemics, is nowhere near as lethal as it might have been. A future pandemic could combine the high transmissibility of COVID-19 with the lethality of, say, SARS or even of the Black Death. While the latter may seem historically remote, there is no reason why we could not see something as deadly strike in our own time. The better we understand this, the more the story we tell about COVID-19 can help inform our efforts to build a world that is no longer vulnerable to contagion.

Each of these stories represents a vital part of the broader narrative of COVID-19. It is also the case that one or two of these narratives may rise even further to the top of our minds to conclusively define this era. Only time will tell for sure what will happen. However, I would argue several factors contribute to making stories stick when we think back on critical events, which increases the chance that the stories I have presented here will long outlast this moment. I will explore these factors and how we come to believe what we believe in our narratives next week.

This piece was also posted 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

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Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

Covid 19 Essay in English

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

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Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Geotechnical engineer

The role of geotechnical engineer starts with reviewing the projects needed to define the required material properties. The work responsibilities are followed by a site investigation of rock, soil, fault distribution and bedrock properties on and below an area of interest. The investigation is aimed to improve the ground engineering design and determine their engineering properties that include how they will interact with, on or in a proposed construction. 

The role of geotechnical engineer in mining includes designing and determining the type of foundations, earthworks, and or pavement subgrades required for the intended man-made structures to be made. Geotechnical engineering jobs are involved in earthen and concrete dam construction projects, working under a range of normal and extreme loading conditions. 

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Cartographer

How fascinating it is to represent the whole world on just a piece of paper or a sphere. With the help of maps, we are able to represent the real world on a much smaller scale. Individuals who opt for a career as a cartographer are those who make maps. But, cartography is not just limited to maps, it is about a mixture of art , science , and technology. As a cartographer, not only you will create maps but use various geodetic surveys and remote sensing systems to measure, analyse, and create different maps for political, cultural or educational purposes.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Finance Executive

A career as a Finance Executive requires one to be responsible for monitoring an organisation's income, investments and expenses to create and evaluate financial reports. His or her role involves performing audits, invoices, and budget preparations. He or she manages accounting activities, bank reconciliations, and payable and receivable accounts.  

Investment Banker

An Investment Banking career involves the invention and generation of capital for other organizations, governments, and other entities. Individuals who opt for a career as Investment Bankers are the head of a team dedicated to raising capital by issuing bonds. Investment bankers are termed as the experts who have their fingers on the pulse of the current financial and investing climate. Students can pursue various Investment Banker courses, such as Banking and Insurance , and  Economics to opt for an Investment Banking career path.

Product Manager

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Treasury analyst career path is often regarded as certified treasury specialist in some business situations, is a finance expert who specifically manages a company or organisation's long-term and short-term financial targets. Treasurer synonym could be a financial officer, which is one of the reputed positions in the corporate world. In a large company, the corporate treasury jobs hold power over the financial decision-making of the total investment and development strategy of the organisation.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

A Team Leader is a professional responsible for guiding, monitoring and leading the entire group. He or she is responsible for motivating team members by providing a pleasant work environment to them and inspiring positive communication. A Team Leader contributes to the achievement of the organisation’s goals. He or she improves the confidence, product knowledge and communication skills of the team members and empowers them.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Individuals in the architecture career are the building designers who plan the whole construction keeping the safety and requirements of the people. Individuals in architect career in India provides professional services for new constructions, alterations, renovations and several other activities. Individuals in architectural careers in India visit site locations to visualize their projects and prepare scaled drawings to submit to a client or employer as a design. Individuals in architecture careers also estimate build costs, materials needed, and the projected time frame to complete a build.

Landscape Architect

Having a landscape architecture career, you are involved in site analysis, site inventory, land planning, planting design, grading, stormwater management, suitable design, and construction specification. Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park in New York introduced the title “landscape architect”. The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) proclaims that "Landscape Architects research, plan, design and advise on the stewardship, conservation and sustainability of development of the environment and spaces, both within and beyond the built environment". Therefore, individuals who opt for a career as a landscape architect are those who are educated and experienced in landscape architecture. Students need to pursue various landscape architecture degrees, such as  M.Des , M.Plan to become landscape architects. If you have more questions regarding a career as a landscape architect or how to become a landscape architect then you can read the article to get your doubts cleared. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Veterinary Doctor

A veterinary doctor is a medical professional with a degree in veterinary science. The veterinary science qualification is the minimum requirement to become a veterinary doctor. There are numerous veterinary science courses offered by various institutes. He or she is employed at zoos to ensure they are provided with good health facilities and medical care to improve their life expectancy.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Speech Therapist

Gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

Healthcare Social Worker

Healthcare social workers help patients to access services and information about health-related issues. He or she assists people with everything from locating medical treatment to assisting with the cost of care to recover from an illness or injury. A career as Healthcare Social Worker requires working with groups of people, individuals, and families in various healthcare settings such as hospitals, mental health clinics, child welfare, schools, human service agencies, nursing homes, private practices, and other healthcare settings.  

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Talent Agent

The career as a Talent Agent is filled with responsibilities. A Talent Agent is someone who is involved in the pre-production process of the film. It is a very busy job for a Talent Agent but as and when an individual gains experience and progresses in the career he or she can have people assisting him or her in work. Depending on one’s responsibilities, number of clients and experience he or she may also have to lead a team and work with juniors under him or her in a talent agency. In order to know more about the job of a talent agent continue reading the article.

If you want to know more about talent agent meaning, how to become a Talent Agent, or Talent Agent job description then continue reading this article.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Videographer

Careers in videography are art that can be defined as a creative and interpretive process that culminates in the authorship of an original work of art rather than a simple recording of a simple event. It would be wrong to portrait it as a subcategory of photography, rather photography is one of the crafts used in videographer jobs in addition to technical skills like organization, management, interpretation, and image-manipulation techniques. Students pursue Visual Media , Film, Television, Digital Video Production to opt for a videographer career path. The visual impacts of a film are driven by the creative decisions taken in videography jobs. Individuals who opt for a career as a videographer are involved in the entire lifecycle of a film and production. 

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Advertising Manager

Advertising managers consult with the financial department to plan a marketing strategy schedule and cost estimates. We often see advertisements that attract us a lot, not every advertisement is just to promote a business but some of them provide a social message as well. There was an advertisement for a washing machine brand that implies a story that even a man can do household activities. And of course, how could we even forget those jingles which we often sing while working?

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Production Manager

Quality controller.

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Engineer

A career as a Production Engineer is crucial in the manufacturing industry. He or she ensures the functionality of production equipment and machinery to improve productivity and minimise production costs to drive revenues and increase profitability. 

Product Designer

Individuals who opt for a career as product designers are responsible for designing the components and overall product concerning its shape, size, and material used in manufacturing. They are responsible for the aesthetic appearance of the product. A product designer uses his or her creative skills to give a product its final outlook and ensures the functionality of the design. 

Students can opt for various product design degrees such as B.Des and M.Des to become product designers. Industrial product designer prepares 3D models of designs for approval and discusses them with clients and other colleagues. Individuals who opt for a career as a product designer estimate the total cost involved in designing.

Commercial Manager

A Commercial Manager negotiates, advises and secures information about pricing for commercial contracts. He or she is responsible for developing financial plans in order to maximise the business's profitability.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

ITSM Manager

It consultant.

An IT Consultant is a professional who is also known as a technology consultant. He or she is required to provide consultation to industrial and commercial clients to resolve business and IT problems and acquire optimum growth. An IT consultant can find work by signing up with an IT consultancy firm, or he or she can work on their own as independent contractors and select the projects he or she wants to work on.

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How COVID-19 pandemic changed my life

short narrative essay about covid 19

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.

short narrative essay about covid 19

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.

short narrative essay about covid 19

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.

short narrative essay about covid 19

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
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short narrative essay about covid 19

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..

short narrative essay about covid 19

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.

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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.

eRepository @ Seton Hall

Home > LIBRARIES > Archives and Special Collections > Personal Narratives of COVID-19

Together Again: Personal Narratives of COVID-19 Uniting the Seton Hall Community

Together Again: Personal Narratives of COVID-19 Uniting the Seton Hall Community

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life at Seton Hall as it has for millions of others around the country and the world. In the name of saving lives, the social distancing needed to slow the spread of the virus has scattered us into our homes around the region and the country. Although we are now physically distant from one another, we remain united as Setonians through our connection to Seton Hall.

To reconnect as a community, we seek your stories of what this time has been like for you. How has it changed your experience at Seton Hall, as a student, faculty, staff member, or alum? We hope that sharing these stories with one another will bring us back together in a new way, through sharing our personal experiences of this moment. When we move forward, because there will be a time when we move forward, we plan to listen to these stories together as a community, reflect on what we have learned, and let them guide us into the future.

Questions to guide your response:

● What is your day to day life like? What would you want people the future to know about what life is like for us now?

● What has been most challenging about this time? What do you miss about your life before COVID-19? Are there specific places or things on campus that you miss?

● Essential is a word we are hearing a lot right now. What does essential mean to you? Who is essential? What are we learning about what is essential?

● What is COVID-19 making possible that never existed before? What good do you see coming out of this moment? How can we re-frame this moment as an opportunity?

● What is it you want to remember about this time? What have you learned?

● After this pandemic ends, will things go back to the way they were? What kinds of changes would you like to see? How will you contribute to rebuilding the world? What will you do differently?

Please submit your 1-3 minute audio or video recording to our portal. Please view submission instructions.

Need an Accessible transcript of this submission? Please email [email protected] to request.

With thanks to the scholars and librarians who came together to create this project: Professors Angela Kariotis Kotsonis, Sharon Ince, Marta Deyrup, Lisa DeLuca, and Alan Delozier, Technical Services Archivist Sheridan Sayles and Assistant Deans Elizabeth Leonard and Sarah Ponichtera.

COVID19: How it Has Changed Our Lives by Anirudh Ramesh

COVID19: How it Has Changed Our Lives

Anirudh Ramesh

sentiments during the pandemic by Amanda DeJesus

sentiments during the pandemic

Amanda DeJesus

Covid-19 experience by Cole Corregano

Covid-19 experience

Cole Corregano

George's Quarantine Experience by George K. Waweru

George's Quarantine Experience

George K. Waweru

Personal COVID-19 submission by Tyler Abline

Personal COVID-19 submission

Tyler Abline

COVID-19 Personal Narrative-Andrew by Andrew Tiess

COVID-19 Personal Narrative-Andrew

Andrew Tiess

Time Capsule by Eric Sweeney

Time Capsule

Eric Sweeney

COVID-19 by Samuel Perez

Samuel Perez

View from the front door by Nicholas Shraga

View from the front door

Nicholas Shraga

Nick's COVID experience by Nicholas DeMizio

Nick's COVID experience

Nicholas DeMizio

Redefining the Essential by Blake Harrsch

Redefining the Essential

Blake Harrsch

COVID-19 Experience by Samantha Vail

COVID-19 Experience

Samantha Vail

My COVID-19 Experience by Stephanie Wickman

My COVID-19 Experience

Stephanie Wickman

covid-19 reconnection video by Robert Caola

covid-19 reconnection video

Robert Caola

Liem Pham's COVID-19 Audio Message by Liem Pham

Liem Pham's COVID-19 Audio Message

Solidarity by Michael Turiansky

Michael Turiansky

Pandemic Update: Extra Credit, Peer Upload for Gennarino Conzemius by Arianna Braccio

Pandemic Update: Extra Credit, Peer Upload for Gennarino Conzemius

Arianna Braccio

COVID-19 by Shawnessy Earle

Shawnessy Earle

Covid-19 by Abigail Graham

Abigail Graham

COVID-19 by Aurelio Licata

Aurelio Licata

Missing Life Before the Pandemic by Victoria Saniko

Missing Life Before the Pandemic

Victoria Saniko

The collective cannot be ignored by Kaitlynn Chaljub

The collective cannot be ignored

Kaitlynn Chaljub

Life with Covid 19 by Viktoria Olowski

Life with Covid 19

Viktoria Olowski

Alex's Corona Lifestyle by Alexandra H. Dittmar

Alex's Corona Lifestyle

Alexandra H. Dittmar

Choosing Selflessness in Times of Crisis by Jacob M. Barnoski

Choosing Selflessness in Times of Crisis

Jacob M. Barnoski

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  • Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

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Editor in Chief's Introduction to Essays on the Impact of COVID-19 on Work and Workers

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a global pandemic, indicating significant global spread of an infectious disease ( World Health Organization, 2020 ). At that point, there were 118,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in 110 countries. China had been the first country with a widespread outbreak in January, and South Korea, Iran and Italy following in February with their own outbreaks. Soon, the virus was in all continents and over 177 countries, and as of this writing, the United States has the highest number of confirmed cases and, sadly, the most deaths. The virus was extremely contagious and led to death in the most vulnerable, particularly those older than 60 and those with underlying conditions. The most critical cases led to an overwhelming number being admitted into the intensive care units of hospitals, leading to a concern that the virus would overwhelm local health care systems. Today, in early May 2020, there have been nearly 250,000 deaths worldwide, with over 3,500,000 confirmed cases ( Hopkins, 2020 ). The human toll is staggering, and experts are predicting a second wave in summer or fall.

As the deaths rose from the virus that had no known treatment or vaccine countries shut their borders, banned travel to other countries and began to issue orders for their citizens to stay at home, with no gatherings of more than 10 individuals. Schools and universities closed their physical locations and moved education online. Sporting events were canceled, airlines cut flights, tourism evaporated, restaurants, movie theaters and bars closed, theater productions canceled, manufacturing facilities, services, and retail stores closed. In some businesses and industries, employees have been able to work remotely from home, but in others, workers have been laid off, furloughed, or had their hours cut. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there was a 4.5% reduction in hours in the first quarter of 2020, and 10.5% reduction is expected in the second quarter ( ILO, 2020a ). The latter is equivalent to 305 million jobs ( ILO, 2020a ).

Globally, over 430 million enterprises are at risk of disruption, with about half of those in the wholesale and retail trades ( ILO, 2020a ). Much focus in the press has been on the impact in Europe and North America, but the effect on developing countries is even more critical. An example of the latter is the Bangladeshi ready-made-garment sector ( Leitheiser et al., 2020 ), a global industry that depends on a supply chain of raw material from a few countries and produces those garments for retail stores throughout North America and Europe. But, in January 2020, raw material from China was delayed by the shutdown in China, creating delays and work stoppages in Bangladesh. By the time Bangladeshi factories had the material to make garments, in March, retailers in Europe and North American began to cancel orders or put them on hold, canceling or delaying payment. Factories shut down and workers were laid off without pay. Nearly a million people lost their jobs. Overall, since February 2020, the factories in Bangladesh have lost nearly 3 billion dollars in revenue. And, the retail stores that would have sold the garments have also closed. This demonstrates the ripple effect of the disruption of one industry that affects multiple countries and sets of workers, because consider that, in turn, there will be less raw material needed from China, and fewer workers needed there. One need only multiply this example by hundreds to consider the global impact of COVID-19 across the world of work.

The ILO (2020b) notes that it is difficult to collect employment statistics from different countries, so a total global unemployment rate is unavailable at this time. However, they predict significant increase in unemployment, and the number of individuals filing for unemployment benefits in the United States may be an indicator of the magnitude of those unemployed. In the United States, over 30 million filed for unemployment between March 11 and April 30 ( Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 ), effectively this is an unemployment rate of 18%. By contrast, in February 2020, the US unemployment rate was 3.5% ( Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 ).

Clearly, COVID-19 has had an enormous disruption on work and workers, most critically for those who have lost their employment. But, even for those continuing to work, there have been disruptions in where people work, with whom they work, what they do, and how much they earn. And, as of this writing, it is also a time of great uncertainty, as countries are slowly trying to ease restrictions to allow people to go back to work--- in a “new normal”, without the ability to predict if they can prevent further infectious “spikes”. The anxieties about not knowing what is coming, when it will end, or what work will entail led us to develop this set of essays about future research on COVID-19 and its impact on work and workers.

These essays began with an idea by Associate Editor Jos Akkermans, who noted to me that the global pandemic was creating a set of career shocks for workers. He suggested writing an essay for the Journal . The Journal of Vocational Behavior has not traditionally published essays, but these are such unusual times, and COVID-19 is so relevant to our collective research on work that I thought it was a good idea. I issued an invitation to the Associate Editors to submit a brief (3000 word) essay on the implications of COVID-19 on work and/or workers with an emphasis on research in the area. At the same time, a group of international scholars was coming together to consider the effects of COVID-19 on unemployment in several countries, and I invited that group to contribute an essay, as well ( Blustein et al., 2020 ).

The following are a set of nine thoughtful set of papers on how the COVID-19 could (and perhaps will) affect vocational behavior; they all provide suggestions for future research. Akkermans, Richardson, and Kraimer (2020) explore how the pandemic may be a career shock for many, but also how that may not necessarily be a negative experience. Blustein et al. (2020) focus on global unemployment, also acknowledging the privileged status they have as professors studying these phenomena. Cho examines the effect of the pandemic on micro-boundaries (across domains) as well as across national (macro) boundaries ( Cho, 2020 ). Guan, Deng, and Zhou (2020) drawing from cultural psychology, discuss how cultural orientations shape an individual's response to COVID-19, but also how a national cultural perspective influences collective actions. Kantamneni (2020) emphasized the effects on marginalized populations in the United States, as well as the very real effects of racism for Asians and Asian-Americans in the US. Kramer and Kramer (2020) discuss the impact of the pandemic in the perceptions of various occupations, whether perceptions of “good” and “bad” jobs will change and whether working remotely will permanently change where people will want to work. Restubog, Ocampo, and Wang (2020) also focused on individual's responses to the global crisis, concentrating on emotional regulation as a challenge, with suggestions for better managing the stress surrounding the anxiety of uncertainty. Rudolph and Zacher (2020) cautioned against using a generational lens in research, advocating for a lifespan developmental approach. Spurk and Straub (2020) also review issues related to unemployment, but focus on the impact of COVID-19 specifically on “gig” or flexible work arrangements.

I am grateful for the contributions of these groups of scholars, and proud of their ability to write these. They were able to write constructive essays in a short time frame when they were, themselves, dealing with disruptions at work. Some were home-schooling children, some were worried about an absent partner or a vulnerable loved one, some were struggling with the challenges that Restubog et al. (2020) outlined. I hope the thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations in these essays will help to stimulate productive thought on the effect of COVID-19 on work and workers. And, while, I hope this research spurs to better understand the effects of such shocks on work, I really hope we do not have to cope with such a shock again.

  • Akkermans J., Richardson J., Kraimer M. The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock: Implications for careers and vocational behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Blustein D.L., Duffy R., Ferreira J.A., Cohen-Scali V., Cinamon R.G., Allan B.A. Unemployment in the time of COVID-19: A research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020). Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. Retrieved May 6, 2020 from https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost .
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  • Volume 48, Issue 2
  • COVID-19 narratives and layered temporality
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  • Jessica Howell
  • English , Texas A&M University , College Station , Texas , USA
  • Correspondence to Dr Jessica Howell, English, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA; jmhowell{at}tamu.edu

The essay outlines the ways in which narrative approaches to COVID-19 can draw on imaginative literature and critical oral history to resist the ‘closure’ often offered by cultural representations of epidemics. To support this goal, it analyses science and speculative fiction by Alejandro Morales and Tananarive Due in terms of how these works create alternative temporalities, which undermine colonial and racist medical discourse. The essay then examines a new archive of emerging autobiographical illness narratives, namely online Facebook posts and oral history samples by 'long COVID' survivors, for their alternate temporalities of illness.

  • literature and medicine
  • patient narratives
  • medical humanities

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This article is made freely available for personal use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.

https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2021-012258

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At the time of writing (July 2020), the current COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than thirteen million people and claimed more than 580 000 lives worldwide.

At the time of revision (May 2021), the COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than one hundred sixty-five million people and claimed more than 3.42 million lives worldwide.

At the time of second revision (October 2021), the COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than 242 million people and has claimed more than 4.93 million lives worldwide.

Due to the timescale of academic publication, over a year separates my writing and second revision of this article. I have chosen to include the three versions of my first sentence, because it shows that, while I have been working on this piece, 4.35 million human beings have died. I want to begin this article by acknowledging that there is no narrative, whether epidemiological, sociological, or literary, that can adequately emplot the three versions of my first sentence. There is no story that can make sense of this progression. Instead, current Health Humanities scholarship is created in the breach between three versions of one sentence—in the suffering, and in the becoming.

While the three versions of this first sentence are desperately inadequate, they are also, inescapably, a form of representation. The sentence harkens back to the early beginnings of the essay as genre: a written meditation on a subject, which shows its own process of thought. In terms of content, the sentence presents my own time of writing, embedding me in a historical moment; it names the disease and it documents that disease’s spread by stating in stark terms the growing fatalities from COVID-19. During the first review, this manuscript was sent back with the comment to remove the strike-throughs, which the editorial team understandably assumed were a typographical error. With the use of typography, the strike-throughs try to make legible our necessary re-evaluations and revisions throughout the pandemic. These revisions also reflect the temporal ‘layering’ of COVID-19 narratives. Each declarative statement has within it its own future overwriting. Nothing feels stable. By the time you are reading this article, holding either the print copy of the journal or scrolling online, the numbers will have shifted, inevitably higher. Your moment overwrites my most recent revision. Finally, the last version makes us circle back to the first, continually trying and failing to make sense of the progression. The reader is trapped in a recursive time.

The most obvious gap, which the sentences do not address, is the human impact of the pandemic. The repetition of the sentence shows the impossibility of capturing loss with these facts. Visual and written art forms can creatively reframe medical and historical data to show how human experience is ‘layered’ with facts and figures. For example, the image below is a reproduction of artist Anatol Bologan’s painting ‘Viral 01’. It is the first in a series of multimedia works dealing with the human cost of COVID-19. The painting is a visual meditation on loss, as a patient with COVID-19 reaches to embrace a loved one who has died ( figure 1 , Bologan 2020 ). Furthermore, by digitally layering pandemic data visualisations behind and on top of the central couple, the artist illustrates the human pain that is not fully captured by discussions of disease ‘rates’ and ‘curves.' The medical image of the patient’s lungs, taken from a computer rendering of a CT scan, shows an active COVID-19 infection with an uncertain outcome. The viewer assumes that the central figure may become part of one of the bars on the graph, and that his body may continue to fragment and dissolve, as it does on the left edge of the artwork. The red line across the bottom third of the image provides the base for the graph, and could represent a flatlining heart monitor ( figure 1 , Bologan 2020 ).

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Anatol Bologan, ‘Viral 01’ ( Bologan 2020 ).

The painting is a vivid portrayal of what I call the layered temporalities of the COVID-19 pandemic. While epidemiology offers one model for how to trace the spread of COVID-19 (geographically, spreading outwards from one or multiple epicentres) and public health offers another (as with the graphs of infection and mortality), these models do not capture the multiply unfolding temporalities of people’s lived experience of the pandemic. Each of us is a distinct nodal point in terms of the timing of this disease outbreak. Our stories of growing awareness about the disease, travel, work, social distancing and perhaps illness, healing and loss, all unfold on different patterns. These temporalities may be anchored by some shared news cycles and social media conversations, or may echo one another in terms of the how infection and symptoms manifest on the body. However, they are also distinct. By placing the human figures in the centre of these graphs and charts, overlaid but not determined by them, the painting demonstrates that artistic and creative works can engage the distinctiveness of the lived experience of this time.

The painting also invokes the people permanently missing from our lives and communities, and makes one wonder about their stories. Jay Baruch and his coauthors, in their article about art and patients’ stories, recount an exercise with medical students where the students are asked to contemplate Cy Twombly’s Untitled (1968). The leaders ask the students to look for negative space in the abstract artwork, relating this negative space to understanding patient experience: “When you’re listening to stories, are you sensitive to the gaps, mindful of what was unsaid—perhaps even unsayable?” ( Baruch et al 2020, 430 ). Though representational and not abstract, the painting ‘Viral 01’ uses negative space—the around and between—to show loss that defies full comprehension.

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has rescinded the mask order. In spite of surges in Delta-variant hospitalisations and deaths, schools and universities have opened to in-person instruction. More Americans flew home to see their families for Memorial Day, 2021, than have flown since the beginning of the pandemic. Understandably, the public is focusing on new ‘firsts’, new beginnings and reunions. However, when public discourse focuses on the ending to disease outbreaks it can also conveniently overlook ongoing health inequities.

In this article, I focus on stories that represent the lived experience of epidemic disease, specifically those that defy the temporal closure offered by popular disease rhetoric. Specifically, I suggest that the affective engagement or embodied reading practices encouraged by Health Humanities allows us to remain sensitised to the COVID-19 stories that might be otherwise unnoticed. I propose a narrative investigation that takes up the layered temporalities of COVID-19 stories, specifically focusing on chronicity, erasure, fragmentation, revision, and repetition. This article first demonstrates how postcolonial speculative and science fiction, such as works by Tananarive Due and Alberto Morales, nuance our understanding of the lived experience of epidemics. These works highlight injustices perpetrated on those blamed for the outbreak and offer different imaginative possibilities for how we could relate to one another during a time of crisis.

The article then turns to excerpts from oral histories and life-writing by COVID-19 survivors. Studying the ‘unknowingness’ in postcolonial science fiction can inform the way in which one engages COVID-19 narratives and how they resist temporal closure. Especially for those struggling with long COVID, or for those mourning the loss of loved ones to COVID-19, triumphalist, chronological narratives of ‘flattening the curve’ or putting the pandemic behind us ring false. These first-hand stories follow different narrative arcs than crisis to cure, or pandemic’s start to pandemic’s end. In fact, more possibilities may be offered from narratives of endemicity and chronic illness than the structure of climax and resolution of traditional plague narratives. Understanding COVID-19 as both epidemic and endemic allows different critical approaches to emerge, such as allowing us to address systemic health inequities as ongoing 1 . In addition, as I have shown elsewhere, those living in an environment with endemic disease can also use this status to gain authority and make demands on medical systems ( Howell 2014 ). Furthermore, Health Humanities scholarship that engages with chronic pain acknowledges that ‘reading less in search of narrative coherence or self-authorship’ allows a heightened appreciation for the ‘value of textual fragments, episodes and moments’ ( Wasson 2018 , 106). By examining COVID-19 narratives using the methods of postcolonial studies and critical oral history, Health Humanities scholars can resist the stories’ instrumentalisation within national and medical discourses.

Defying closure and cure: postcolonial and speculative fiction

We have never lived through this pandemic. However, we have talked about epidemics before. Written and visual narratives of epidemics may consolidate a chaotic series of events, give a sense of purpose and directionality and also to attempt to capture for the reader the experience of the disease. Such methods are a way to engage our attention and to create or direct readers’ anxiety about future epidemics, or, conversely, to comfort us that the epidemic is safely over. However, to write and to read a story set during an epidemic is to work within a set of expectations and constraints. Our cultural values, scientific knowledge base and previously established disease discourse all play a role in how we discuss the current moment. For example, Patricia Wald identifies a certain ‘vocabulary of disease outbreaks’ as beginning during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and being reinterpreted within the outbreak films and science writing of the 90s ( Wald 2008, 2 ). In this case, the vocabulary of ‘emerging infections’ which many of us now use in fact originated within a particular set of political, biological and cultural circumstances (heteronormative, middle-class, 1980s white America and its imagined others).

Within the realm of illness narrative in particular, critical medical humanities scholarship has begun to examine why certain stories of pain and healing are validated while others are not. Within the edited volume by Angela Whitehead et al. (2016) , scholars examine why certain subjects’ experiences are more often discounted: the ‘obese’ (Evans and Cooper), black Americans (Andrews and Metzl), disabled individuals (Tilley and Olsén) and the neurodivergent (Herman). These studies assume that our idea of what constitutes a coherent narrative, and thus our receptivity towards what we read, is influenced by our own cultural and political values. This holds true with our reading of epidemic narratives as well, the structures of which are deeply intertwined with the history of colonialism. We may assume that one writes a story to consolidate a sense of self. However, the concept of ‘self’ which narrative supposedly consolidates, as Sylvia Wynter and others have shown, is at base a colonial construct: the ‘(Western bourgeois) conception of the human’ ‘over-represents itself as if it were the human itself’ ( Wynter 2003, 260 ). In other words, the ways in which certain subjects’ narratives are recognised as human experience while others are not, are influenced by histories of colonial exploitation and racism. 2

One key subject of analysis for Global Health Humanities scholarship is how the legacies of colonial medicine influence which stories of illness are read and in what manner. Colonial medical politics de-authorised the illness experience of indigenous populations, privileging instead white subjects’ perceptions of the health threats posed by foreign lands. For example, as Megan Vaughn (1991) has demonstrated in Curing Their Ills , medical discourse in late 19th and early 20th century Africa worked to undermine indigenous knowledge formations and to construct the ‘African’ as a subject in need of health intervention. Publications as diverse as cartoons, medical journals and public health posters worked to stereotype local health practices and depict the colonial doctor as heroic. John and Jean Comaroff engage the ‘ideology of colonial healing’ that depicted colonialism as driven by humanitarianism ( Comaroff and Comaroff 1992 ). This ideology does not acknowledge whether or not a health intervention is desired by local populations.

Colonialist narratives of cure rest on specific conventions: an exoticised location is pathologised, its inhabitants blamed for their current state of ill health. Western-trained doctors and nurses are depicted as providing a heroic intervention, benefitting local populations and inspiring their gratitude. If the health crisis is not eradicated by the end of the narrative, at the least the worst is averted. Contemporary global health organisations currently draw on similar rhetoric when they depict local populations as suffering from abject poverty and ill health and in need of top-down interventions. As Nicholas King explains, both former colonial medical and contemporary global public health discourses justify the control of disease for protection of western economic growth ( King 2002, 776 ). Postcolonial science fiction or speculative fiction disrupts specific colonialist underpinnings of medical narrative: geographies are interdependent rather than separable; Western forms of medical knowledge are fallible. Most important for my purposes, postcolonial fiction de-stabilises the very assumptions about disease outbreaks as following a specific chronology or temporal progression through presenting instead alternate or recursive temporalities. 3

Works such as Tananarive Due’s ‘Patient Zero’ and Alejandro Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues both use the structures of science fiction to question the traditional temporal unfolding of an outbreak. Historically, scientists such as Ronald Ross tested indigenous bodies as the ‘source’ of disease. 4 Both Due and Morales craft characters who are subject to experimentation, ostensibly in the name of solving the epidemic. These postcolonial science/speculative fictions draw on these histories by using the affective response of the reader to engage the colonial and settler colonial medical practice of experimenting on bodies of colour during a time of disease outbreak.

Postcolonial fiction disrupts or nuances certain Western assumptions about the relationship between temporality and narrative. Paul Ricœur has claimed that narrative and time are inextricable, and that narrative reflects a ‘temporal experience’ ( Ricœur 1984, 3 ) . The work by Patricia Tobin highlights the gendered nature of this narrative structure. She argues that the ‘genealogical imperative’ in Western narrative structures—the way in which language is structured to show cause and effect and seriality—is influenced by its cultural context, namely patriarchal structures of lineage ( Tobin 1978, 8 ) . Subsequent generations of critics have shown that such 20th-century theories of narrative and time were greatly influenced by the structures of 19th-century writing, which manifested a ‘belief in progress’ ( Gomel 2010, 8 ), or ‘linear industrial time’ ( Henrikson and Kullberg 2021, 12 ). Medical Humanities scholars such as Laura Salisbury show that ‘linear narratives that stress deep psychological continuities across time’ might ‘privilege and render problematically universal modes of subjectivity and self-expression that are, in fact, culturally and historically contingent’ ( Salisbury 2016, 444 ).

Critics Elana Gomel, Randall Stevenson and Russell West-Pavlov have suggested that these earlier theoretical assumptions about time and narrative be revised to acknowledge their capitalist-colonialist underpinnings. 5 West-Pavlov claims, ‘Time’s attributes of linearity (“what’s past is past”), universality, quantifiability and commodifiability (“time is money”), and finally contemporaneity and modernity (“newer is better”) all work to structure human existence according to the restrictive but profitable mechanisms of late capitalism’ ( West-Pavlov 2012, 5 ). Rather, he suggests that one cultivate an awareness of reading as ‘digressive’ and an understanding of literature as a ‘playful re-working of the putatively factual givens of reality’, which gestures towards a ‘plethora of temporalities subsisting under the threshold of an all-embracing and coercive time’ (9).

One example of the ‘coercive time’ that West-Pavlov discusses is temporality ‘inculcated’ by colonial education, which embodied a ‘forward vector of progress and incremental acquisition of civilization’ (159). What would happen, he asks, if one were to ‘abandon the sequence’ this time ‘relies on altogether’, taking up instead ‘a notion of overlapping, non-segmented temporal planes’ with ‘many actants with agency’ (166)—what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls ‘ interlocking of presents, pasts and futures’ ( Chakrabarty 2000 )? Postcolonial authors experiment with temporality in their works to unmoor narrative from its colonialist associations with progress. In speaking about Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), Randall Stevenson (2019, 211 ) demonstrates that the literary text ‘illustrates a range of tensions between imperially imposed temporality and influences indigenous to countries colonialism sought to subjugate’. Time is ‘an unsteady affair’ (citing Rushdie, 1981, 79), whereby postcolonial fiction ‘magnifies and valorises unsteady, divergent temporalities’.

For the purposes of the current analysis, the most important aspect of narrative structure and time is its inter-relationship with science. Tobin observes that science follows an ‘arrow of time’ similar to that of traditional chronological narration in stressing causation and effect, hypothesis and proof (8). I would add that this assumption about science is similarly influenced by colonial and national consolidation of the scientific process—recent scholarship has shown that there are narrative multiplicities possible in indigenous scientific knowledge as well. If colonial science ‘instrumentalises nature’, then critics like Masood Raja, Jason Ellis and Swaralipi Nandi suggest that postcolonial science fiction can, by stressing incomprehensibility, ‘magic’ and the unknowable, call into question these scientific logics underpinning narrative ( Raja, Ellis, and Nandi 2011, 5 ). This is not just a theoretical practice, but an embodied one. As Michel Foucault has shown, biopower inscribes control of the life course through social expectations. Arne de Boever, following Edward Said, claims that ‘historically, the rise of the novel coincides with the rise of what Foucault calls governmentality and biopower’ ( De Boever 2013, 9 ). By changing the colonial-scientific temporal logic of narrative, one can attempt to redefine the stakes of one’s own life course. Elizabeth Freeman argues that ‘temporality is a mode of implantation through which institutional forces come to seem like somatic facts’ ( Freeman 2007 ), cited in ( West-Pavlov 2012, 5 ). In the case of an epidemic, the ‘somatic facts’ of infection, illness and healing, on both a national and personal level, are quickly identified according to a normative timeline, which may or may not align with an individual’s lived experience. Instead, as Paula Henrikson and Christina Kullberg observe, ‘lived time is contextually dependent’ (citing Hartog 2003 , 14).

Questioning the narrative patterns of science, and particularly colonial science, does not lead one to an antiscience or antimedicine stance. To argue that disease treatment is not equally available to all, and that this inequality both reflects pre-existing colonial priorities as well as reinforces existing racial and national disparities, is not to argue against medical research or treatment. Medical research and treatment are needed. Rather, the critique focuses on two aspects of medical narrative logic: one which claims that Western medical science is the apex of modernity, and that this modernity is offered or given to others, and the other that depicts disease eradication in a chronological and definitive arc. By understanding these logical assumptions as constructed rather than inherently ‘true’, one may approach stories of chronic illness, or stories of repeated or ongoing outbreaks, not as unusual but as endemic to a global system of medical inequality.

Furthermore, reading literary descriptions of physical symptoms and suffering causes an embodied reaction in the reader specific to the disease being invoked. In Postcolonial Poetics , Elleke Boehmer claims that reading “sets off a cascading set of inferences, which the reader processes at different simultaneously unfolding cognitive (semantic, sensory, kinaesthetic) levels, their responses modifying and adjusting as the communication develops” ( Boehmer 2018, 8 ) . When considering the multisensorial experience of reading about illness, one must assume that in specific scenes of suffering, and throughout the work, we are plunged into the space-time of disease particular to that disease itself. The structure of illness from disease (acute vs chronic) is also embedded in the chronology and structure of literary texts (for more, see Howell 2018 ). By creating this affective response in relationship to a fictional disease, these following literary works invite the reader to reflect on how we behave towards one another during times of health crisis, without the specific anchor of a named plague. I suggest that critical engagement with specific literary works about epidemics allows us to practice the radical, speculative exercise of imagining a more equitable present as well as future. These works subvert the Patient Zero myth and disease stigmatisation; encourage us to consider what a decolonised medical praxis would look like and allow us to be aware of our own experiences of embodied reading.

The Rag Doll Plagues by Alejandro Morales (1992) explicitly critiques colonial medicine’s exploitation of Mexican bodies during a fictional, mysterious illness called La Mona in 1788 Mexico City. The book directly engages the colonial value systems that are embedded with the treatment of epidemic disease. The novel self-consciously invokes the tradition of colonial judgmentalism towards ‘uncivilised’ populations, in order to turn this stereotype on its head. Morales’s narrator, Don Gregorio, the First Professor of Medicine, Anatomy and Surgery in his Majesty’s Empire, is a Spaniard who visits colonial Mexico to ‘implement these new [medical] procedures’. In addition to improving sanitation, the ‘new procedures’ he introduces ‘to the native population’ includes a great deal of cauterisation, surgery and amputation, as if seeking to quite literally cut out all that is rotten and diseased in the colonies, including the ‘hedonistic carnal acts’ he witnesses (28).

Each section of this tripartite novel shifts locations and times, thus disrupting colonial narratives of progress. This ‘collapsing of linear time’ is emphasised by the ‘phantasmic atemporal characters Gregory and Papa Damian, who appear in each of the three books of the novel’ ( Joyce and Garay 2013, 141 ). Morales’s novel follows a tradition, as with the work of Gabriel García Márquez (1988) , which undermines colonial assumptions of medical progress. When García Márquez’s character Juvenal Urbino returns to his Caribbean home from medical training in Europe, he brings back all the disparaging assumptions about indigenous subjects’ inadequate hygiene and backwardness with him. The novel describes Urbino as arriving home with ‘the beard of a young Pasteur’ (106).

The clearest articulation of The Rag Doll Plagues’ critique of colonial medical legacies can be found in its last section. Don Gregorio’s descendants discover that residents of Mexico City, who are called ‘Mexico City Mexicans’, have a uniquely healing property to their blood that perhaps has been caused by their survival of La Mona in the 18th century. These Mexican citizens become valued and commodified, their blood used for infusions to cure people during a ‘major plague’ (183). Through reverse-colonisation via transfusion, ‘Mexican blood would gain control of the land it lost almost two hundred and fifty years ago’ (195). Morales’s novel points towards the double-edged sword of biological essentialism: whether being decimated or valued for their blood, disparaged or fetishised for their relationship to place, the colonised subject’s body is commodified by the dominant political power. Finally, as Joyce and Garay demonstrate, the The Rag Doll Plagues ’ focus on the male doctor/scientist, on a quest for self-improvement and discovery, is not unproblematic in its gender politics, as could be said of other famous pandemic fiction such as Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain .

By showing the breakdown in social relationships, pandemic fiction can inspire the readers to imagine a different world, where we choose to relate to one another during a time of crisis with more humanity. Tananarive Due’s short story ‘Patient Zero’ (2010) engages the harvesting of immune groups’ blood or body parts for study or the development of antibodies, with or without their consent. ‘Patient Zero’ is narrated by a 10-year-old boy, Jay, who is the subject of study in a research facility during a future pandemic. Jay has recovered from ‘Virus-J’, while everyone else around him dies. He is thus labelled the ‘Patient Zero’, and made both the subject of study as well as the recipient of hostility and misunderstanding.

Due uses the innocent voice of a child narrator to undermine the stigmatisation that occurs during a pandemic. The Patient Zero is a mythic figure who reassures us that pandemics have a traceable beginning. Jay questions his label at the first patient: “that was when I first learned how people tell lies, because that wasn’t true. Somebody on my dad’s oil rig caught it first, and then he gave it to my dad. And my dad gave it to me, my mom and my brother” ( Due 2001, 9 ). His sense of injustice highlights the uncertain timeframe and geography of pandemics. Jay’s own temporality is different from the official timeline. This official timeline has the goal of certainty rather than truth.

This work of speculative fiction also plunges the reader into the experience of being experimented on. Jay recounts that the doctors and nurses at the containment facility “take so much blood from me all the time, until they make purple bruises on my arms and I feel dizzy” (12). He continues,

“I think they have even taken out parts of me, but I’m not really sure. …I had surgery on my belly a year ago, and sometimes when I’m climbing the play-rope hanging from the ceiling in my room, I feel like it hasn’t healed right, like I’m still cut open. … I don’t hate anything like I hate operations” (12).

Jay’s physical symptoms are not from the virus but from his doctors’ search for the virus’s cause. These are described in visceral detail, so that the reader can imagine being dizzy from multiple blood draws, or aching from multiple surgeries. The story invites us to balance the cost of specific individuals’ pain against the larger goals of scientific discovery, especially during times of uncertain and emerging knowledge when that pain may or may not lead to a cure.

The text is important in terms of Health Humanities’ critical engagement with scale—if one is the only person who suffers from an undiagnosed illness, does that make one’s suffering less legitimate? If someone recovers from an illness that kills many, which community will welcome them? As a story by a black American author about one boy being blamed for a pandemic, ‘Patient Zero’ also invites us to read within the framework of America’s historical and present medical abuse of bodies of colour. From Tuskegee to COVID-19, black Americans have received inadequate or abusive medical treatment. The erroneous creation of race as a biologic category has been used to justify medical experimentation on groups of black people since the times of slavery (see Roberts 1997 , 2011 ; Hogarth 2017 ).

It is outside the scope of this article to fully address the continuities and divergences between colonial medicine practised by Britain in India, for example, with colonial medicine in Mexico, alongside medical exploitation of black Americans. 6 Narrative experimentations also will reflect authors’ distinctive cultural and historical associations with time and the body. However, while different national literatures invoke distinctive histories of medical treatment, reading these works in conjunction offers specific insights. One becomes more aware of the political stakes of aggrandising medical ‘modernity’, and one can see more clearly the power differentials that relate to who lives and who dies during a pandemic (see discussion of biopolitics and the right to ‘make live and let die’, in Society Must be Defended by Michel Foucault 1976; 2003 ). This practice encourages reading disease, not as an inherent manifestation of biological and historical circumstances, but also as a symptom of longstanding injustice.

These conversations are unfortunately timely due to the racial disparities exemplified by COVID-19 illness and death rates ( Chowkwanyun and Reed 2020 ). In a recent article, authors Yoshiko Iwai, Zahra Khan and Sayantani DasGupta exhort medical professionals to practice what they term ‘abolition medicine’: ‘imagining… ourselves into a more racially just future invested in enriching communities’ and (thereby) working ‘toward a future of health and social justice’ ( Iwai, Khan, and DasGupta 2020, 158 ). As of 12 June 2020, the Centers for Disease Control (2020) showed that ‘age-adjusted hospitalisation rates’ for ‘American Indian or Alaska Native’ as well as black people are approximately five times, and Hispanic or Latino people four times, that of non-Hispanic white people. According to the CDC, this is due to factors such as dense population, caused by housing segregation; proportionately higher risk of living in a food desert and depending on public transport or being an essential worker and having no sick leave. The devastating effects of COVID-19 on communities of colour are exacerbated because ‘racism, stigma and systemic inequities undermine prevention efforts, increase levels of chronic and toxic stress and ultimately sustain health and healthcare inequities’ ( Centers for Disease Control 2021 ). This moment is revealing the faultlines within our systems and making clear the impact of ongoing stress and violence on the bodies of people of colour. Health Humanities research is engaging the overlapping categories of systemic violence that have caused unnecessary and avoidable human suffering.

Examining postcolonial pandemic fiction is relevant to our current moment. The ‘Patient Zero’ is a temporal trope used to exoticise and blame racialised subjects, whether in a formerly colonised country such as Guinea or in an American context. This individual is often identified with marginalised groups, an easy scapegoat to protect normative group identity. One observes the Patient Zero myth uncritically reproduced within contemporary scholarship. For example, in a preface to the newest edition of Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present , seminal medical historian Frank Snowden (2020) connects COVID-19 with Ebola through the image of human-non-human transmission in an ‘exotic’ locale: in 2013, “a small child played in the hollow of a tree near the garden of his home in Guinea…The misfortune of the four year-old boy was to inhale viruses shed in the dejecta of the displaced bats” (ix). Guinea in 2013 becomes Wuhan in 2019: ‘this sequence of events, transposed to an urban context, probably recurred at a bushmeat “wet market” in Wuhan, China’, where ‘unhygienic passageways’ become a ‘giant petri dish’ (ix–x).

This new preface to Epidemics and Society risks invoking the same colonialist judgmentalism critiqued by García Márquez and Morales, and risks ‘othering’ the Patient Zero as in Due’s short story. In fact, as Kelly, Keck, and Lynteris (2020, 1 ) demonstrate in Anthropology of Epidemics, ‘While the viruses that spill over from wild animals to remote village populations occupy pride of place in these end-of-the-world fantasies, today the pathogens that could spark global pandemics might as easily evolve in antimicrobial-rich hospital environments in Europe and the United States’. Both histories and works of fiction about pandemics ask us to project ourselves into a disease’s beginnings; however, popular disease rhetoric is often based on the assumption of the self as inviolate, threatened by external forces. ‘Patient Zero’ invites us to enter into the experience of vulnerability, not only of the uninfected but of the ‘carrier’ by employing the voice of a child. Therefore, even as our physical bodies are in quarantine from pandemic illness, or to avoid pandemic illness, we can recognise the ways in which our stories are embedded in embodied experience, and how affective reading practice connects our own bodies to others’.

Plague has its own vocabulary. The texts by Due and Morales use a haemorrhagic framework of metaphors and images to describe the effects of disease on the body. The images are drawn from bacterial infections causing acute and immediate suffering. When reading COVID-19 narratives, whether first-person accounts written by sufferers, health practitioners, family members or fictionalised accounts, Health Humanities scholars must engage with this disease’s unique descriptive lexicon. Patients’ narratives offer experiences of respiratory distress and isolation; technologically-mediated communication; neurological and cognitive aftereffects. Healthcare practitioners find themselves cast in roles they did not audition for. 7 The study of postcolonial science fiction and speculative fiction suggests that one keep in mind the ways in which authors can portray health injustice by subverting the linear temporality offered by medical discourses.

Furthermore, postcolonial and social justice scholars stress the importance of oral history as a critical methodology that can complicate official narratives. Historian Indira Chowdhury argues for the practice of oral history to understand science in the postcolonial context, specifically the ways ‘scientific practice has adapted to local and contingent factors’ ( Chowdhury 2013 ). Quoting writer Chimamanda Adichie, Christine Lemley argues that critical oral history can subvert the ‘danger of a single story’: in the case of Adichie’s experience, the dominance of a Western-centric, stereotypical viewpoint of her upbringing in Nigeria. According to Lemley, critical oral history ‘exists to contextualise story and create spaces through which people who are underrepresented in dominant systems use agency to identify and act on struggles to build new possibilities’ ( Lemley 2013, 7 ). In the context of a pandemic, critical oral history offers diversity in terms of venue, perspective, and positionality to stories of illness and healing. Genres of study include interviews, as well as drawings, documentaries and material objects. In the section that follows, I draw on social media postings, emails and interviews in order to demonstrate how critical oral history about COVID-19 can contribute to postcolonial Health Humanities scholarship.

COVID-19 stories and layered temporality: healthcare workers and long COVID survivors

Text message, 11 February 2021: Why did you come [to the home] when you knew you had a known COVID-19 exposure and no negative test? Reply: It had been 10 days. Email sent to all faculty and students, from Texas A&M University, received 6 September 2021: Close contact is defined as being within six feet for a cumulative 15 minutes over 24 hours with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Vaccinated individuals do not have to quarantine, while unvaccinated must quarantine. Oral history excerpt, ‘B’: I said, I am going to be walking and I’m going to leave (the hospital) at the date in which you [the doctors] prescribe, which I believe was the 21st of January. If I remember correctly. […] All these difficult, very difficult things but I wasn’t going to take any other sort of answer and I left on January 21st. ( B, interview 2021 )

During a pandemic, official time and personal lived time diverge. COVID-19 is morphic, variable, emerging; both respiratory and neurological in its effects; both acute and chronic in manifestation. However, the guidance set by public health entities such as the CDC must by necessity be standardised, in order to provide individuals guidance on how to behave to curb the spread of disease. Our success as a nation is then measured by how well we have followed official time and its interlocking health guidelines; our individual success is measured by how well we have avoided illness or progressed towards healing on a specific timeline. We exercise bodily autonomy in the individual interpretation of that time, and our body’s relationship to it. We create space for alternate temporalities through narrative and art, as well as through other means.

In the first excerpt above, the speaker reminds someone of his individual responsibility and how he had broken a social contract by not heeding that responsibility. In the official email, Texas A&M University leadership places responsibility on the teacher or student for calculating the minutes they have been exposed to someone who is COVID-19 positive within 24 hours, in order to determine if they should quarantine. In the third excerpt, oral history participant ‘B’ sets his own goal for his discharge date after 3 months in the hospital with acute COVID-19, as a motivation to get well. The very length of his hospitalisation belies the CDC’s implied average timeline of illness: even ‘severely ill’ people can expect to re-enter society after 20 days, the website reads ( https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/duration-isolation.html ).

One may form an appreciation for alternate and divergent illness temporalities through studying narratives of COVID-19. By so doing, one may also bear witness to the ongoing human impact of the pandemic. This analysis in no way undermines quarantine, masking or self-monitoring practices. Rather, it stresses that individual lived time is very different from official guidance, and official guidance insistently overlooks systemic inequalities. For example, 2 weeks’ quarantine (during the pre-vaccine era of COVID-19) for someone who is self-employed might be a hardship that pushes that person closer to financial precarity. Racism and xenophobia can make the time one waits for equitable and humane medical treatment interminable. Time spent away from one’s small children due to an exposure; time spent away from one’s beloved in hospital; time spent asking one’s body to perform tasks that used to come easily; time spent waiting for a referral to a specialist to study a little-known symptom: these minutes, hours and days are agonisingly slow. Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder can cause someone to revisit the same time again and again, compounded by lack of widespread understanding and acknowledgement of one’s illness.

Our temporalities are acutely distinct, and also shared; fractured, and also continuous. Historically important, but not yet historical. The disease is both personally isolating, and creates global interconnection, as patients read others’ narratives from Italy, China or New York online, predicting what might be their future symptoms. Stories from the COVID-19 pandemic reflect this unique temporality: they capture something of the world in which they occurred, emerging as photo essays, texts, vlogs, Facebook posts, Tweets, scraps of paper slid under the door within a shared household, or notes written by practitioners on the glass separating a hospitalised patient from the hallway.

Some of the first overtures at narrating hospitalised patients with COVID-19 suffering were performed by their healthcare practitioners. Rafael Campo, a poet and medical internist, has spoken about the challenge of communicating with and hearing the stories of severely sick patients with COVID-19. He says “some patients living with this disease are literally silenced. When that tube goes in someone’s throat to support their breathing, it physically takes away the voice” ( Gibson 2020 ). In response, he has turned to writing poetry as “a kind of a channel for some of the experiences that I’m having and that we’re having”. He says that healthcare practitioners’ writing can “shed light on what people are actually experiencing who have this illness and who are dying from it and who don’t have that voice, which is so necessary for us to hear”.

In his poem-in-draft ‘The Doctor’s Song’, Campo incorporates some of the foregoing imagery in the first few lines: ‘The ventilator’s rise and fall/The yellow gown’s swish down the hall’. These are markers of embodied time: one imagines oneself in the setting of the hospital, seeing the rhythm of the ventilator and hearing the sound of the gowns. It is implied that these are repeated, ongoing sounds. Even while an individual’s case comes to a crisis, leading to discharge or death, the healthcare practitioner’s experience is of inexorable time, where case after case succeeds the other. Campo captures the doctor’s own frustration:

The stethoscope won’t be an instrument of hope: It merely amplifies the gallop, makes audible the broken heart.

The space that a poem creates between each line emphasises the gaps in the doctor’s knowledge. The speaker’s stethoscope amplifies the patient’s ‘broken heart’, but also, by implication, the doctor’s own, facing that which cannot be controlled.

In a poem about cardiac and respiratory symptoms, the poem as a form also makes us mindful of these symptoms through our embodied reading. We breathe in the pauses between lines, or feel the scansion’s echo in the rhythm of our own heartbeats. Finally, with the line ‘The Doctor’s Song is not heroic’, Campo undercuts the expectation that doctors’ heroism in the face of a pandemic should be the focus of COVID-19 narration. From the comment in Campo’s interview that his patients are ‘silenced’, one assumes he agrees that it is important to hear more stories by patients themselves.

Therefore, in addition to literary works like poetry, first-person narratives of COVID-19 illness are necessary to understand the ongoing and debilitating temporality of the disease. The following narratives were collected under a grant-funded, cross-disciplinary oral history project titled ‘Global Health and the Humanities’ (IRB2018-1513M). My collaborators included Violet Showers Johnson and Laura Dague, as well as graduate researcher Michelle Yeoman and undergraduate assistant Trinity Buchanan. We are following the Oral History Association ethical guidelines, including gathering informed consent, performing advance training for interviewers, including diverse voices, using open-ended questioning methods within interviews, recording and transcribing the oral histories, identifying an open-access repository for anonymised transcripts, and making research publications available to interviewees ( https://www.oralhistory.org/oha-statement-on-ethics/ ). Oral histories were conducted from 2018 to 2019 with participants in Sierra Leone and Sierra Leonean diasporic communities in Dallas, Texas. These interviewees were asked questions about their experiences with the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and with endemic malaria.

The follow-on project included COVID-19 oral histories collected via an online video conferencing platform, with subjects based across the USA. Future research outputs will engage from a comparative perspective the role of oral histories in illuminating global health crises. However, for the purpose of this article, only the COVID-19 oral histories are excerpted and analysed. Participants for these interviews were recruited using social media networks and posting boards related to COVID-19, and selected to represent diversity of perspectives. All excerpts used in publication are anonymised to the level that the participant should not be identifiable. Readers who have certain first-hand experiences of COVID-19 may find the following descriptions difficult to read. If a reader were to wish to avoid this section, the conclusion to this article’s argument appears with the paragraph beginning ‘Often, psychology’.

First, SurvivorCorps Facebook Group Posts (2020) provide a platform for patient advocacy and social justice work. They also provide an opportunity to study how illness narratives of chronic debility can be used as a form of protest against those who might suggest that falling numbers marks a tapering off of the pandemic’s human impact ( SurviviorCorps ). As ‘a grassroots solution-based movement’, the online support group SurvivorCorps seeks ‘to mobilise the sharply increasing number of people affected by COVID-19 to come together, support and participate in the medical and scientific research community efforts’. The Facebook group is open membership, which means that anyone can join and post. It provides a venue for those who have never received formal medical treatment to commiserate, and for those who have received medical treatment to compare diagnoses and interventions. Members post pictures and ask questions about their own symptoms, drawing on the shared knowledge of the group; they post one-line or two-line obituaries of loved ones who have died. The moderator publicises survivors’ interviews in news outlets and opportunities for members to participate in academic research studies. As the public group grows and gains more recognition, the experiences shared by this group are also driving science and social science policy and research. Punctuation and spelling have been kept verbatim in the examples that follow.

‘Long COVID’ sufferers use the forum to validate each-others’ experiences, using a form of collective as well as individual story-telling. They are co-constituting a narrative of chronic illness within a sociohistorical context that instead encourages closure and healing. One of the methods through which they do this is by stating how long their symptoms have persisted at the beginning of their narratives. One poster writes, “I was a firefighter/paramedic at the time of infection. I am on day 130. I have a collapsed lung—was never hospitalised, and have experienced about 70 symptoms” ( SurvivorCorps Facebook Group Posts 2020 ).

Many posters document their difficulty receiving proper treatment. One poster received a false negative test, and spent months suffering without adequate medical support: “after 4 lung x-rays 3 EKGs and 3 C Scans, and one new primary Doctor later… visit to a lung specialist…it was determined that the negative COVID-19 test administered was a false negative…next step for me a scheduled Bronchoscopy which allows doctor to visualize scar tissue and nodules that have formed in my lungs” ( SurvivorCorps Facebook Group Posts 2020 ). Another says that when she started feeling ill she “called my doctor’s office and they said I should be given a test because of my asthma and to call the walk in. I called, was asked a bunch of questions, and told i didn’t qualify”. A final poster shares, “I have not been able to receive any medical care due to lack of belief and insurance and workers comp issues”. For some of these individuals, a timeline of COVID-19 illness never officially ‘began’ on their medical records. Their stories are only available in private diaries and through social media. In order to provide ongoing treatment, their future practitioners will need to piece together a health history invisible to digital patient charts and laboratory results. This process of recreation will be a narrative one, whereby patients craft their own timeline and causality in reporting the long-term impact of their illness. Finally, the number of long COVID-19 survivors who are uninsured or underinsured needs further investigation—oftentimes these sufferers may have avoided hospitalisation and tried to cope at home. This economic inequality directly impacts how the data about their suffering, whether medical or narrative, will be accessed and analysed in the future.

Common descriptions emerge across narratives, which capture the cyclical and inexorable temporality of illness with COVID-19. Specifically, many call the illness a rollercoaster, with the associations of a frightening and unexpected ride that ends up where one began. On a roller coaster, emotions are intensified, but movement is circular. A further example reads, “107 days later I still continue to fight off this horrific rollercoaster of a virus. This virus is relentless…” ( SurvivorCorps Facebook Group Posts 2020 ). Many keep a log or journal of exactly how many days they have been sick. Another poster is still suffering after 4 months: “It was a roller coaster for about 2 weeks in isolation of my room”. A final poster says, “Hi, I am ___ and I have been riding the Coranacoaster for 16 straight weeks”.

Taken together, the ‘long haulers’’ experiences are being studied as emerging medical knowledge. Neurological and psychiatric symptoms, less well understood by the medical community, are being documented by symptom surveys based on members’ experiences ( Lambert, Natalie and SurvivorCorps 2020 ). Some symptoms, like hair loss and sadness, were not previously represented on the CDC list. These posts are also developing a new lexicon for illness narratives. Metaphors such as ‘coronacoaster’, as well as precise physical descriptions, offer their fellow sufferers, as well as interested readers, a new way to understand the lived experience of the disease.

Although this creation of new knowledge and community is a mobilising and unifying experience for many members, some are also experiencing mental distress from not feeling supported adequately medically or not understood within wider discussions of the disease. They express a drastic shift in physical ability and sometimes feeling alienated from their pre-COVID identity. One poster says, “I feel like I’ll never be the same again” and another says, “I’m praying that we all eventually make it back to who we were before this”. Notable is the language of identification—not I’ll never feel the same again but I’ll never be the same again; not we can make it back to where we were (in terms of lifestyle) before this but to who we were.

This demonstrates what chronic illness scholars have pointed out is a risk in terms of a balance between one’s ambition for one’s life and one’s daily ability: ‘The tension within the experience of chronic conditions lies in the uncertainty whether this separation or alienation [with the world one inhabited before] can be reduced’ ( Barnard 1995, 42 ). Added to the uncertainty inherent in all chronic illnesses is the extra uncertainty for COVID-19 survivors because they are infected with or recovering from a disease about which much is still unknown. However, scholars of chronic illness and literature also have pointed towards the creative potential offered when authors create a ‘chronic poetics’. Hillary Gravendyk claims that chronic poetics provides a mode through which the reader co-constitutes meaning with the text. She defines chronic poetics as the ‘perception and artistic practice that allows the shared conditions of embodiment to emerge from the text’ (cited in Day 2017, 95 ), especially the work’s focus on ‘simultaneity, chronicity, duration and other forms of embodied perception’ ( Day 2017, 95 ).

Online forums and groups provide a particularly promising avenue to study COVID-19 narratives, because the real-time and communal nature of the storytelling that occurs in these settings can capture the temporality of pain in new and multifaceted ways. Social media can make pain visible, by incorporating photos, screen shots and condensed stories; it also creates ‘networks of voices engaging and reinterpreting pain’ through ‘multimodal communications’ ( Gonzalez-Polledo and Tarr 2014, 1467 ). In the process of ‘sharing pain experiences and meanings’, participants create new kinds of storytelling, where the ‘teller and audience’ meet within the story. Thus, ‘new forms of patient expertise emerge through communicating about chronic illness online’. As the SurvivorCorps community demonstrates, patients can use storytelling (and information sharing, and grassroots campaigning) to exercise ‘transformative agency’ to affect “not only their own health care, but also the quality of health care for others” ( Hinson and Sword 2019, 106 ).

This article began by introducing, and then intentionally revising, a ‘global’, or ‘public health’ chronology of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, to show the constant changes in our current temporality. It then created a framework for analysis of temporal innovations in pandemic literature by analysing examples from late-20th-century-postcolonial and speculative fiction. This final section has examined online COVID-19 narratives from 2020, and now turns to very recently gathered and transcribed oral histories from October 2021. Articles have their own internal chrono-logic. By ending with these recent oral histories, I am both introducing emerging original Health Humanities research, as well as illustrating the ongoingness of COVID-19 survivors’ own stories. Specifically, the genre of recorded and transcribed oral history offers unique opportunities to understand the stories of COVID-19 as full of nuance and multiplicity. Oral histories are digressive and capacious narratives, originating before editing and streamlining have imposed a chronology of illness. Interviewees return to a specific moment of significance multiple times; their stories wind through and around difficult experiences. Audio recordings include the patter of conversation that one engages in to feel at ease. They also show the mundane temporality of chronic illness as it impacts daily life.

The extracts that follow are from an interview with a middle-aged father and former army medic, who was working in a prison when he contracted COVID-19. He was hospitalised from October 2020 through January 2021, and is seeking medical retirement due to the ongoing physical effects of his illness. When asked if he could think of one moment that illustrates living during the time of COVID-19, ‘B’ (alias) responds with a historically significant mortality marker before turning to a brief encapsulation of his own illness. The interviewee first says, “we just surpassed the deaths for the Spanish flu, which is just crazy” ("B. Interview," Global Health and the Humanities project, 2021). Both this marker, as well as his narrative of symptoms that follows, stresses the ongoing nature of the pandemic, in both its national and personal impact. B explains,

So for the rest of my life, I’m going to be dealing with permanent issues, including pulmonary fibrosis, scar[s] on my heart. I had a heart attack during my period when I was in my medication-induced coma. I have vision loss. I have to wear glasses now, prior to COVID, I had 20/15, 20/20 vision. So I have to wear actually prism glasses because my balance was affected. Also, I have significant memory loss, short- and long-term memory loss. ("B. Interview," Global Health and the Humanities project, 2021)

This list is matter-of-fact and declarative. However, timing shifts between past crises (“I had a heart attack”), present condition (“I have vision loss”) and future predictions (“for the rest of my life”). The final sentence, regarding B’s memory loss, implies what an effort it may be to deal with the physical symptoms, and to recall and organise these symptoms into a recognisable order. The embodied effort of telling a story—the mental exhaustion, thirst and sadness that come with the telling—are integral to the texture of this recording. Temporal layering and fragmentation are part of the unique quality of COVID-19 storytelling.

B’s story is interrupted at one point when the sensory memory and trauma of his extended hospitalisation causes him to be overcome with emotion. His story is a necessary companion to Rafael Campo’s poem. While the doctors treating patients with COVID-19 may be wrestling with uncertainty and loss as they see the rhythmic rise and fall of the ventilator, it becomes apparent that for at least some of their patients, the sensory memories of the hospital’s temporal rhythm (especially procedures done repeatedly) are not rhythmic but intrusive and traumatic. B says,

I have a lot of problems with … I recently had to go into the emergency room for chest pain…When I got there, there were many triggers that occurred when I was there. So be it the smell of the deodorizer disinfectant cleaner that they use on the floor to the fluorescent lights, to the Hoyer lift that was above me, that they used to have to transfer me when I couldn’t move, when I was bedridden. All those things came back to me and I’m sorry, I… Interviewer: No, please. Yeah. Take your time and I understand, this is difficult. BB: It still affects me emotionally.

This transcript shows a dialogue that unfolded as a lived conversation via Zoom. Therefore, in reading it, one is immersed in the temporality of the interview: not the same temporality as the recording, but an individual reading of that temporality as reflected in text. When B breaks off, it is a temporal as well as spatial break for the reader. However, one does not know if the pause was 3 seconds or 3 minutes. Therefore, one does not know how long to hold one’s breath out of concern for the speaker’s well-being. Perhaps our eyes need to leave the page for a moment. Perhaps our heartbeats quicken. The next line, “it still affects me emotionally,” registers as a thunderclap through its very understatement. These are just some possible embodied responses to reading—however, they are meant to suggest that it will be important to reproduce first-person narratives of COVID-19 illness in their original form. One must be attuned to the way the genre influences how one reads, and to how one’s own embeddedness in this moment influences interpretation.

Often, psychology and brain sciences presuppose that trauma disrupts the teller’s access to ‘natural’ narrative ordering: ‘an essential dimension of psychological trauma is the breaking up of the unifying thread of temporality’ ( Stolorow 2003, 158 ). However, postmodern and postcolonial criticism, as previously demonstrated, offer us the possibility that time is co-constituted between physical and cultural realities. Narrative shows us, not the ‘reality’ of a universal time, but how disparate one person’s experience of lived time can be to another’s. That is to say, the same chronological time of hospital staff, organised by shift changes, regular cleaning of the floors and daily functions performed for the patient’s body, are registered by the patient’s subjectivity as acutely traumatic and recursive time.

More work needs to be done understanding COVID-19 survivors’ experiences from a disability studies perspective. Rebecca Garden argues that ‘narrative, particularly first-person accounts, provide a critical resource by representing the point of view of people with disabilities and by offering a means of examining the social context and social determinants of disability’ ( Garden 2010, 70 ). One goal of disability studies is increased accessibility for disabled persons. Accommodating disabled and chronically ill ‘long haulers’ may mean reconfiguring our understanding of the pervasiveness of chronic COVID-19, and encouraging communities to understand these long-term effects.

One of the challenges of oral history and auto/biographical scholarship is discussing the import of others’ experiences in terms they have not used themselves. Not all posters or interviewees cited herein associate themselves with antiracist or disability rights activism. Instead, this article means to use critical oral history in order open up analytical frameworks useful to analyse the emerging stories of COVID-19, making space for the multiplicity of these speakers’ own experiences. This is an important intervention, as many of the patient stories thus far have been curated by the organisation publishing them—whether this is a public health organisation using the story for educational purposes, or a hospital advertising the quality of its care. For example, a story titled ‘Grateful to be Alive’ represents the experience of Ernesto Castro, a patient at UC Health, Greeley, Colorado. Castro’s experience is framed using illness narrative clichés such as “he fought for his life”. The article stresses the heroic nature of the hospital workers (“Health workers greeted him and jumped into action”). His interviewer encouraged a specific kind of testimonial storytelling, so that when he is directly quoted it is to commend his practitioners: “If it wasn’t for the UC Health staff, I don’t think I’d be here” ( UC Health 2020 ).

Postcolonial and disability studies can help one to focus on the lack of health access and health inequity during a time of pandemic, and to help us to envision radical new ways of storytelling that do not impose closure on narratives of illness with COVID-19. Health Humanities scholarship regarding chronic pain and chronic illness narratives demonstrates the importance of cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for non-linear or fragmented narrative structures. In uniting these approaches, the project is to create discursive space, and interpretive flexibility, around these narratives. By so doing, one may help resist their instrumentalisation within medical or nationalist discourse.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Not applicable.

Ethics approval

Texas A&M University IRB2018-1513M. Participants gave informed consent to participate in the study before taking part.

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the contribution of the Global Health and the Humanities oral history project collaborators and interviewees for collecting the oral histories. Thanks to Violet Showers Johnson, Laura Dague, Michelle Yeoman, Trinity Buchanan, Lise Saffran and the oral history interviewees who shared their stories.

1. For more on the cultural values of endemic and epidemic disease in narrative, see The Endemic Pandemic by Larsen (2020) and Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory by Nixon and Servitje (2016) . Specifically, Nixon and Servitje claim that “Epidemic discourse so thoroughly structures our world that it is endemic to our processes of social construction” (2).

2. We may assume, based on Western norms of storytelling, that human subjects seek to unify their sense of self through narrative. However, as Angela Woods has demonstrated, some of us do not have ‘the propensity or orientation towards narrativity: the feeling of deep psychological continuity with one’s past self, married with the desire to frame experience, tell stories and revise the past’ ( Woods 2011, 73 ).

3. Rosemary Jolly has pointed towards the importance of self-questioning in memoirs by Western subjects: the doctor-writer’s misunderstanding, she suggests, demonstrates the ‘limits of colonial diagnostic knowledge’ and ‘works against the narrator-as-doctor enacting the colonialist fantasy of remedying, or ministering to, the chronically ill indigenous subject’ ( Jolly 2016, 528 ). These works make visible in a specific way how colonialist medical practices do harm.

4. For more on medical experimentation in colonial settings, see Africa as Living Laboratory by Tilley (2011) and Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics by Chakravarty (2012) .

5. Recently, Elaine Freedgood also questions our assumptions about 19th century realism. Freedgood suggests that our perceptions of this literary past rests on post-1970s aesthetic valuation and that we thereby overlook 19th century novels’ ‘oddness’. She also questions the ‘aesthetic racism’ that has valued realism in the novel ( Freedgood 2019 ).

6. ‘The logics of dispossession and elimination, which are key tenets of a settler colonial model, were not isolated to British imperialism; they were also central to Spanish and Portuguese imperial projects’ ( Castellanos 2017, 778 ).

7. Rishi Goyal’s recent work stresses how the label of healthcare workers as ‘heroes’ serves to distract from the ‘deep institutional betrayal’ they were subjected (inadequate supplies, protections and support) during the pandemic ( Goyal 2020 ).

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Contributors JH is the sole author.

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests None declared.

Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Refer to the 'Methods' section for further details.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

Caleb S.

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Published on: Feb 22, 2023

Last updated on: Nov 22, 2023

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

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Writing a compelling and informative essay about this global crisis can be challenging. It requires researching the latest information, understanding the facts, and presenting your argument persuasively.

But don’t worry! with some guidance from experts, you’ll be able to write an effective and persuasive essay about Covid-19.

In this blog post, we’ll outline the basics of writing a persuasive essay . We’ll provide clear examples, helpful tips, and essential information for crafting your own persuasive piece on Covid-19.

Read on to get started on your essay.

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Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

  • COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
  • Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
  • Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

  • Introduction
  • Background Information
  • Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
  • Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

If you're in search of a compelling persuasive essay on business, don't miss out on our “ persuasive essay about business ” blog!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

Interested in thought-provoking discussions on abortion? Read our persuasive essay about abortion blog to eplore arguments!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

Looking for a persuasive take on the topic of smoking? You'll find it all related arguments in out Persuasive Essay About Smoking blog!

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively. 

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources 

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback 

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19 

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

  • The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
  • Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
  • The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
  • The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
  • Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
  • The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
  • The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
  • The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
  • Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
  • The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

MyPerfectWords.com is a professional essay writing service that can help you craft an excellent persuasive essay on Covid-19. Our experienced essay writer will create a well-structured, insightful paper in no time!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide

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As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it’s published—Cohan awards them with extra credit.

As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University’s Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols.

Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment (COE), began teaching the Global Change and Infectious Disease course in 2009, when the COE was established. “I wanted very much to contribute a course to what I saw as a real game-changer in Wesleyan’s interest in the environment. The course is about all the ways that human demands on the environment have brought us infectious diseases, over past millennia and in the present, and why our environmental disturbances will continue to bring us infections into the future.”

Over the years, Cohan learned that he can sustainably teach about 170 students every year without running out of interested students. This fall, he had 207. Although he didn’t change the overall structure of his course to accommodate COVID-19 topics, he did add material on the current pandemic to various sections of the course.

“I wouldn’t say that the population of the class increased tremendously as a result of COVID-19, but I think the enthusiasm of the students for the material has increased substantially,” he said.

To accommodate online learning, Cohan shaved off 15 minutes from his normal 80-minute lectures to allow for discussion sections, led by Cohan and teaching assistants. “While the lectures mostly dealt with biology, the discussions focused on how changes in behavior and policy can solve the infectious disease problems brought by human disturbance of the environment,” he said.

Based on student responses to an introspective exam question, Cohan learned that many students enjoyed a new hope that we could each contribute to fighting infectious disease. “They discovered that the solution to infectious disease is not entirely a waiting game for the right technologies to come along,” he said. “Many enjoyed learning about fighting infectious disease from a moral and social perspective. And especially, the students enjoyed learning about the ‘socialism of the microbe,’ how preventing and curing others’ infections will prevent others’ infections from becoming our own. The students enjoyed seeing how this idea can drive both domestic and international health policies.”

A sampling of the published student essays are below:

Alexander Giummo ’22 and Mike Dunderdale’s ’23  op-ed titled “ A National Testing Proposal: Let’s Fight Back Against COVID-19 ” was published in the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

They wrote: “With an expansive and increased testing plan for U.S. citizens, those who are COVID-positive could limit the number of contacts they have, and this would also help to enable more effective contact tracing. Testing could also allow for the return of some ‘normal’ events, such as small social gatherings, sports, and in-person class and work schedules.

“We propose a national testing strategy in line with the one that has kept Wesleyan students safe this year. The plan would require a strong push by the federal government to fund the initiative, but it is vital to successful containment of the virus.

“Twice a week, all people living in the U.S. should report to a local testing site staffed with professionals where the anterior nasal swab Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, used by Wesleyan and supported by the Broad Institute, would be implemented.”

Kalyani Mohan ’22 and Kalli Jackson ’22 penned an essay titled “ Where Public Health Meets Politics: COVID-19 in the United States ,” which was published in Wesleyan’s Arcadia Political Review .

They wrote: “While the U.S. would certainly benefit from a strengthened pandemic response team and structural changes to public health systems, that alone isn’t enough, as American society is immensely stratified, socially and culturally. The politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that individualism, libertarianism and capitalism are deeply ingrained in American culture, to the extent that Americans often blind to the fact community welfare can be equivalent to personal welfare. Pandemics are multifaceted, and preventing them requires not just a cultural shift but an emotional one amongst the American people, one guided by empathy—towards other people, different communities and the planet. Politics should be a tool, not a weapon against its people.”

Sydnee Goyer ’21 and Marcel Thompson’s ’22  essay “ This Flu Season Will Be Decisive in the Fight Against COVID-19 ” also was published in Arcadia Political Review .

“With winter approaching all around the Northern Hemisphere, people are preparing for what has already been named a “twindemic,” meaning the joint threat of the coronavirus and the seasonal flu,” they wrote. “While it is known that seasonal vaccinations reduce the risk of getting the flu by up to 60% and also reduce the severity of the illness after the contamination, additional research has been conducted in order to know whether or not flu shots could reduce the risk of people getting COVID-19. In addition to the flu shot, it is essential that people remain vigilant in maintaining proper social distancing, washing your hands thoroughly, and continuing to wear masks in public spaces.”

An op-ed titled “ The Pandemic Has Shown Us How Workplace Culture Needs to Change ,” written by Adam Hickey ’22 and George Fuss ’21, was published in Park City, Utah’s The Park Record .

They wrote: “One review of academic surveys (most of which were conducted in the United States) conducted in 2019 found that between 35% and 97% of respondents in those surveys reported having attended work while they were ill, often because of workplace culture or policy which generated pressure to do so. Choosing to ignore sickness and return to the workplace while one is ill puts colleagues at risk, regardless of the perceived severity of your own illness; COVID-19 is an overbearing reminder that a disease that may cause mild, even cold-like symptoms for some can still carry fatal consequences for others.

“A mandatory paid sick leave policy for every worker, ideally across the globe, would allow essential workers to return to work when necessary while still providing enough wiggle room for economically impoverished employees to take time off without going broke if they believe they’ve contracted an illness so as not to infect the rest of their workplace and the public at large.”

Women's cross country team members and classmates Jane Hollander '23 and Sara Greene '23

Women’s cross country team members and classmates Jane Hollander ’23 and Sara Greene ’23 wrote a sports-themed essay titled “ This Season, High School Winter Sports Aren’t Worth the Risk ,” which was published in Tap into Scotch Plains/Fanwood , based in Scotch Plains, N.J. Their essay focused on the risks high school sports pose on student-athletes, their families, and the greater community.

“We don’t propose cutting off sports entirely— rather, we need to be realistic about the levels at which athletes should be participating. There are ways to make practices safer,” they wrote. “At [Wesleyan], we began the season in ‘cohorts,’ so the amount of people exposed to one another would be smaller. For non-contact sports, social distancing can be easily implemented, and for others, teams can focus on drills, strength and conditioning workouts, and skill-building exercises. Racing sports such as swim and track can compete virtually, comparing times with other schools, and team sports can focus their competition on intra-team scrimmages. These changes can allow for the continuation of a sense of normalcy and team camaraderie without the exposure to students from different geographic areas in confined, indoor spaces.”

Brook Guiffre ’23 and Maddie Clarke’s ’22  op-ed titled “ On the Pandemic ” was published in Hometown Weekly,  based in Medfield, Mass.

“The first case of COVID-19 in the United States was recorded on January 20th, 2020. For the next month and a half, the U.S. continued operating normally, while many other countries began their lockdown,” they wrote. “One month later, on February 29th, 2020, the federal government approved a national testing program, but it was too little too late. The U.S. was already in pandemic mode, and completely unprepared. Frontline workers lacked access to N-95 masks, infected patients struggled to get tested, and national leaders informed the public that COVID-19 was nothing more than the common flu. Ultimately, this unpreparedness led to thousands of avoidable deaths and long-term changes to daily life. With the risk of novel infectious diseases emerging in the future being high, it is imperative that the U.S. learn from its failure and better prepare for future pandemics now. By strengthening our public health response and re-establishing government organizations specialized in disease control, we have the ability to prevent more years spent masked and six feet apart.”

In addition, their other essay, “ On Mass Extinction ,” was also published by Hometown Weekly .

“The sixth mass extinction—which scientists have coined as the Holocene Extinction—is upon us. According to the United Nations, around one million plant and animal species are currently in danger of extinction, and many more within the next decade. While other extinctions have occurred in Earth’s history, none have occurred at such a rapid rate,” they wrote. “For the sake of both biodiversity and infectious diseases, it is in our best interest to stop pushing this Holocene Extinction further.”

An essay titled “ Learning from Our Mistakes: How to Protect Ourselves and Our Communities from Diseases ,” written by Nicole Veru ’21 and Zoe Darmon ’21, was published in My Hometown Bronxville, based in Bronxville, N.Y.

“We can protect ourselves and others from future infectious diseases by ensuring that we are vaccinated,” they wrote. “Vaccines have high levels of success if enough people get them. Due to vaccines, society is no longer ravaged by childhood diseases such as mumps, rubella, measles, and smallpox. We have been able to eradicate diseases through vaccines; smallpox, one of the world’s most consequential diseases, was eradicated from the world in the 1970s.

“In 2000, the U.S. was nearly free of measles, yet, due to hesitations by anti-vaxxers, there continues to be cases. From 2000–2015 there were over 18 measles outbreaks in the U.S. This is because unless a disease is completely eradicated, there will be a new generation susceptible.

“Although vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing infection, if we continue to get vaccinated, we protect ourselves and those around us. If enough people are vaccinated, societies can develop herd immunity. The amount of people vaccinated to obtain herd immunity depends on the disease, but if this fraction is obtained, the spread of disease is contained. Through herd immunity, we protect those who may not be able to get vaccinated, such as people who are immunocompromised and the tiny portion of people for whom the vaccine is not effective.”

Dhruvi Rana ’22 and Bryce Gillis ’22 co-authored an op-ed titled “ We Must Educate Those Who Remain Skeptical of the Dangers of COVID-19 ,” which was published in Rhode Island Central .

“As Rhode Island enters the winter season, temperatures are beginning to drop and many studies have demonstrated that colder weather and lower humidity are correlated with higher transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” they wrote. “By simply talking or breathing, we release respiratory droplets and aerosols (tiny fluid particles which could carry the coronavirus pathogen), which can remain in the air for minutes to hours.

“In order to establish herd immunity in the US, we must educate those who remain skeptical of the dangers of COVID-19.  Whether community-driven or state-funded, educational campaigns are needed to ensure that everyone fully comprehends how severe COVID-19 is and the significance of airborne transmission. While we await a vaccine, it is necessary now more than ever that we social distance, avoid crowds, and wear masks, given that colder temperatures will likely yield increased transmission of the virus.”

Danielle Rinaldi ’21 and Verónica Matos Socorro ’21 published their op-ed titled “ Community Forum: How Mask-Wearing Demands a Cultural Reset ” in the Ewing Observer , based in Lawrence, N.J.

“In their own attempt to change personal behavior during the pandemic, Wesleyan University has mandated mask-wearing in almost every facet of campus life,” they wrote. “As members of our community, we must recognize that mask-wearing is something we are all responsible and accountable for, not only because it is a form of protection for us, but just as important for others as well. However, it seems as though both Covid fatigue and complacency are dominating the mindsets of Americans, leading to even more unwillingness to mask up. Ultimately, it is inevitable that this pandemic will not be the last in our lifespan due to global warming creating irreversible losses in biodiversity. As a result, it is imperative that we adopt the norm of mask-wearing now and undergo a culture shift of the abandonment of an individualistic mindset, and instead, create a society that prioritizes taking care of others for the benefit of all.”

Dollinger

Shayna Dollinger ’22 and Hayley Lipson ’21  wrote an essay titled “ My Pandemic Year in College Has Brought Pride and Purpose. ” Dollinger submitted the piece, rewritten in first person, to Jewish News of Northern California . Read more about Dollinger’s publication in this News @ Wesleyan article .

“I lay in the dead grass, a 6-by-6-foot square all to myself. I cheer for my best friend, who is on the stage constructed at the bottom of Foss hill, dancing with her Bollywood dance group. Masks cover their ordinarily smiling faces as their bodies move in sync. Looking around at friends and classmates, each in their own 6-by-6 world, I feel an overwhelming sense of normalcy.

“One of the ways in which Wesleyan has prevented outbreaks on campus is by holding safe, socially distanced events that students want to attend. By giving us places to be and things to do on the weekends, we are discouraged from breaking rules and causing outbreaks at ‘super-spreader’ events.”

An op-ed written by Luna Mac-Williams ’22 and Daëlle Coriolan ’24 titled “ Collectivist Practices to Combat COVID-19 ” was published in the Wesleyan Argus .

“We are embroiled in a global pandemic that disproportionately affects poor communities of color, and in the midst of a higher cultural consciousness of systemic inequities,” they wrote. “A cultural shift to center collectivist thought and action not only would prove helpful in disease prevention, but also belongs in conversation with the Black Lives Matter movement. Collectivist models of thinking effectively target the needs of vulnerable populations including the sick, the disenfranchised, the systematically marginalized. Collectivist systems provide care, decentering the capitalist, individualist system, and focusing on how communities can work to be self-sufficient and uplift our own neighbors.”

An essay written by Maria Noto ’21 , titled “ U.S. Individualism Has Deadly Consequences ,” is published in the Oneonta Daily Star , based in Oneonta, N.Y.

She wrote, “When analyzing the cultures of certain East Asian countries, several differences stand out. For instance, when people are sick and during the cold and flu season, many East Asian cultures, including South Korea, use mask-wearing. What is considered a threat to freedom by some Americans is a preventive action and community obligation in this example. This, along with many other cultural differences, is insightful in understanding their ability to contain the virus.

“These differences are deeply seeded in the values of a culture. However, there is hope for the U.S. and other individualistic cultures in recognizing and adopting these community-centered approaches. Our mindset needs to be revolutionized with the help of federal and local assistance: mandating masks, passing another stimulus package, contact tracing, etc… However, these measures will be unsuccessful unless everyone participates for the good of a community.”

Madison Szabo '23, Caitlyn Ferrante '23

A published op-ed by Madison Szabo ’23 , Caitlyn Ferrante ’23 ran in the Two Rivers Times . The piece is titled “ Anxiety and Aspiration: Analyzing the Politicization of the Pandemic .”

John Lee ’21 and Taylor Goodman-Leong ’21 have published their op-ed titled “ Reassessing the media’s approach to COVID-19 ” in Weekly Monday Cafe 24 (Page 2).

An essay by Eleanor Raab ’21 and Elizabeth Nefferdorf ’22 titled “ Preventing the Next Epidemic ” was published in The Almanac .

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Frank hernandez – a short story of the covid-19 pandemic in my life.

Frank Hernandez

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short narrative essay about covid 19

A laptop has the ZOOM software open during a Friday afternoon work meeting due to social distancing on April 3.

As the COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, I knew my life would dramatically change. I just didn’t know how much.

Some professors were already talking about transitioning to online learning, some of my plans were starting to fall apart, and I found myself washing my hands at every chance I had.

At first, things were not that bad – Spring Break had been extended for a week and my university decided to transition to online learning for the rest of the semester. As I live on the Mexican side and study and work in the U.S., this meant that I didn’t have to cross the border every day for the next two months a half – quite a relief.

A laptop has the ZOOM software open during a Friday afternoon work meeting due to social distancing on April 3.

For the next weeks, my life was fairly tranquil. I had the time to read more than I normally do – something I was overly happy about.

this is an image

I was able to cook more often than I normally do, and generally had to improvise because going to the supermarket every time something was missing wasn’t really an option.

short narrative essay about covid 19

Someone stirs vegetables in a pan as the water is boiling in a pot on April 25 Saturday afternoon.

I even started planting my own chiles.

short narrative essay about covid 19

Someone waters the chile plants as they continue to grow on April 6 Monday morning.

Though I knew things were not alright and people all around the world were suffering the devastating effects of this pandemic, I still found some comfort in cooking with my family on a Friday morning.

short narrative essay about covid 19

A plate with flour lies in the center of the kitchen next to a plate of chiles rellenos ready to be cooked on April 10 Friday morning.

short narrative essay about covid 19

Chiles rellenos are being fried on a pan on April 10 Friday morning.

this is an image

It was until mid-April that the pandemic started affecting me negatively – or my plans to be precise. I had submitted a paper to a conference in Oneonta, New York, which was cancelled due to the outbreak in the state. Fortunately, the conference organizers created a website where the accepted papers can be found.

short narrative essay about covid 19

The Archipelago website was designed by the SUNY Oneonta Undergraduate Philosophy Conference committee to highlight the papers that were accepted to the conference on April 17-18 in Oneonta, New York, but was cancelled due to the pandemic.

I was also planning on taking a language course in Germany during the summer, which was also cancelled.

short narrative essay about covid 19

The letter of acceptance to a German language summer program in Munich lies in a table in my room.

I thought this was bad enough to be honest. Some of my biggest plans for the summer had fallen apart because of this new Coronavirus. I never imagined how much worse it could get. It must have been my privilege that made me blind.

Around the same time I had discovered my plans were being abruptly changed, two people in my family were suspected of having the virus. One of them was severely affected, the other was in a more stable condition but by the time he found out that he had tested positive for COVID-19, he had already infected most of his family.

As days passed, things were not getting any better. In a matter of weeks we lost two people in the family.

I hesitated a lot about sharing this story, but I finally realized that I couldn’t not include them in a story about my life during COVID-19.

As Texas starts opening up and maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez – my hometown – are trying to reopen, I felt it was my responsibility to share the story of real people who were fatally affected by this pandemic.

This is no simulation and we shouldn’t minimize it. People are dying.

I assure you all, you don’t want to look back at these times thinking of people you’ve lost.

Editors Note: Frank Hernandez spent the summer doing a remote internship with Investigate Midwest , an independent news publication of The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Due to the high level of contributions he made to reporting projects, the organization extended his internship into the Fall 2020 semester.

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short narrative essay about covid 19

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    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.

  3. How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

    Oct. 21, 2020, at 9:53 a.m. 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...

  4. 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

    Science 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...

  5. I am not invincible: My COVID-19 story

    Yes, I tested positive for COVID-19. I fell victim to this virus: a nasty, lingering virus that gave me the worst symptoms I've experienced to this day that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. My story is to warn you that this is not the common cold or a regular flu. This virus is serious. My name is David, and I am an otherwise healthy 27-year ...

  6. Covid-19: The story of a pandemic

    Covid-19 deaths in the US pass 100,000, making America the country with the highest number of coronavirus deaths recorded so far. June 2020. 25 June. Cases begin to rise again.

  7. Essays reveal experiences during pandemic, unrest

    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.

  8. 12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

    Below, we offer 12 projects for students, all based on pieces from The New York Times, including personal narrative essays, editorials, comic strips and podcasts.

  9. The Meaning of Living in the Time of COVID-19. A Large Sample Narrative

    Data Analysis. The analysis aimed to map the main dimensions of meanings underpinning the set of contents of the narratives collected and defining the SUs through which respondents make sense of their COVID-19 experiences. Each dimension of meaning can be conceived of as a generalized meaning component that was highlighted by the interviewees to talk about the time of COVID-19 and that ...

  10. Defining the COVID-19 Narrative

    The core narrative of the pandemic, and arguably the central one, is the presence of inequities. COVID-19 exposed inequities in morbidity and mortality, who bears the burden of steps we have taken ...

  11. A call for Essays: stories from the frontline during the COVID-19

    A call for Essays: stories from the frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic - The Lancet Respiratory Medicine Comment | Volume 8, ISSUE 11, P1074, November 2020 Download Full Issue A call for Essays: stories from the frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic Sophie Woolven Published: October 16, 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600 (20)30463-X

  12. Covid 19 Essay in English

    Download PDF Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic.

  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. Seven short essays about life during the pandemic

    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....

  15. Personal Narratives of COVID-19

    Together Again: Personal Narratives of COVID-19 Uniting the Seton Hall Community. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life at Seton Hall as it has for millions of others around the country and the world. In the name of saving lives, the social distancing needed to slow the spread of the virus has scattered us into our homes around the region ...

  16. Editor in Chief's Introduction to Essays on the Impact of COVID-19 on

    Editor in Chief's Introduction to Essays on the Impact of COVID-19 on Work and Workers. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a global pandemic, indicating significant global spread of an infectious disease ( World Health Organization, 2020 ). At that point, there were 118,000 confirmed cases of the ...

  17. Narrative complexity in the time of COVID-19

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, medicine and public health have grappled with challenges related to individual behaviour and decision making, both in terms of infection and more recently concerning the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines. Social theory has long pointed to the role of narrative when trying to grasp the complexity of understanding and decision making in times of crisis.

  18. Tell your story with COVID-19 Narratives

    COVID-19 Narratives is a series of five online writing sessions offered at no cost to all University of Colorado staff. Participants respond to writing prompts that are designed to allow expression of their thoughts and feelings about distressing experiences.

  19. COVID-19 narratives and layered temporality

    The essay outlines the ways in which narrative approaches to COVID-19 can draw on imaginative literature and critical oral history to resist the 'closure' often offered by cultural representations of epidemics. To support this goal, it analyses science and speculative fiction by Alejandro Morales and Tananarive Due in terms of how these works create alternative temporalities, which ...

  20. Persuasive Essay About Covid19

    1. Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 2. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19 3. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine 4. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration 5. Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19 6. Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19 7.

  21. Students' Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published

    Kalyani Mohan '22 and Kalli Jackson '22 penned an essay titled " Where Public Health Meets Politics: COVID-19 in the United States ," which was published in Wesleyan's Arcadia Political Review. They wrote: "While the U.S. would certainly benefit from a strengthened pandemic response team and structural changes to public health ...

  22. A short story of the COVID-19 pandemic in my life

    Frank Hernandez - A short story of the COVID-19 pandemic in my life. A laptop has the ZOOM software open during a Friday afternoon work meeting due to social distancing on April 3. As the COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, I knew my life would dramatically change. I just didn't know how much.

  23. Paragraph Writing on Covid 19

    Paragraph Writing on Covid-19 in 100 Words. Coronavirus is an infectious disease and is commonly called Covid-19. It affects the human respiratory system causing difficulty in breathing. It is a contagious disease and has been spreading across the world like wildfire. The virus was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China.