How will COVID-19 be remembered?

I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately, and among the many reasons for that is a question that seems to buzz around in the back of my head before I close my eyes: How will COVID-19 be remembered?

To be frank, I fear the answer.

The United States has been hit very hard by the pandemic with more deaths than any other nation, including those with larger and more crowded populations and less public health resources.

Communities of color, especially Native-American communities, have seen a disproportionately high amount of infections and deaths owing to a confluence of factors, many the result of systemic racism past and present.

The disturbing increase in racist attacks on Asian-Americans in the wake of the virus, a story often lost in the noise, is also worth mentioning.

The poor have seen their lives become even more difficult and stressful while a disturbing amount of wealthy celebrities — and political figures — have been seen hosting irresponsible gatherings in violation of public health guidelines and human decency as the wealth gap continues to grow.

The pandemic seems to have further exposed nearly every societal inequality and further polarized a nation already deeply divided, with conspiracy “theories” and misinformation about the pandemic running almost as rampant as the virus itself. Not to mention all the fake cures promoted throughout 2020 by people who ... well, the less said about them the better.

But after all of this is over and in the years that follow, will The Great Pandemic of 2020 be remembered as a time when we lost more Americans than World War II and Vietnam combined, as a time of heroism on the part of health care workers and public health, as the catalyst for possible social change, a display of governmental negligence, a time of ever increasing economic inequality, or will it be remembered as a time when it was hard to get a haircut?

In the wake of a pandemic that isn’t even over, I fear the questions this event begs will never be answered, or worse, will never truly be asked.

I believe the isolation and pain and anger and confusion and exhaustion we all feel during the pandemic has caused too many of us to ignore those questions because we all desperately want to go back to normal, to finally be comfortable.

I don’t want to shame people for thinking this way, I do it too, a lot. I’ve been fortunate enough that I haven’t had anyone close to me die from COVID-19 — yet, anyway — my job has been stable, and I have a robust network of people to help me if things go south. But I still feel the pressure and I understand anyone saying, “I just want it to end and never think about it again.”

This is a normal and human response, but it is something we cannot allow ourselves to do.

More than 530,000 Americans have died due to COVID-19, and an — often forgotten in America — 2.7 million who didn’t live in the richest country on Earth have met the same fate.

The repercussions of this pandemic, economic, educational, social, will be felt for years, if not decades.

If no questions are asked in the wake of this pandemic, and we just move on and go back to normal, all that we have suffered will have been for nothing.

Thank you for indulging me.

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Patrick Johnston is a reporter for the Havre Daily News.