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This week, Times Opinion is marking two years since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. There’s been so much devastation; more than 950,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States alone. But the virus has also been met with one of the greatest scientific efforts in modern history: the remarkably fast development of highly effective vaccines.
Our individual experiences with the pandemic have varied widely depending on our age, health status, economic class and where we live. How can we make sense of all that’s happened — even as the pandemic continues?
Daniela Lamas, an intensive care unit doctor and contributing Opinion writer, is used to navigating situations that feel inexplicable. Entering year three of the pandemic, she decided to take on one of the remaining mysteries of the coronavirus that’s gained widespread public interest: Why do some people not get Covid?
“As an intensive care unit doctor, I often find myself thinking about the apparent randomness of infectious disease,” she writes in a guest essay. “Standing at the bedside in the coronavirus intensive care unit during the first wave, I wondered why young men without identifiable risk factors had become critically ill while their spouses and children were able to manage their symptoms at home.”
In her essay, Lamas digs into the latest science, including a study of couples in which only one partner got sick as well as research into why some centenarians, who were at the highest risk for severe outcomes, survived unscathed. She also returns to one of her own early pandemic patients, a young woman who nearly died of Covid-19 despite having been otherwise healthy.
This week we will publish other essays and conversations that attempt to make sense of what’s transpired. One is about why people’s memories of the pandemic will fade and why some forgetting is healthy. Other articles will explore what went wrong and how institutions can rebuild trust. Some of my Opinion colleagues will be gathering on Instagram on Thursday, March 10, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss parenting during the pandemic, and on Twitter on Friday, March 11, at 10 a.m. ET to discuss what we’ve learned from the past two years of pandemic life.
We’ll continue to explore our pandemic experiences — and what the future might hold — on a rolling basis this week, so please check back. We hope you’ll take some time to read and reflect with us.
Alexandra Sifferlin is the health and science Opinion editor for The New York Times.