PANDEMIC
Moving Past the Massive Hit to our Checkbooks
And all the things we must learn to be proud of now, a year later
It has been a year now. A year that has changed us all. In the great wreckage, 2.5M lives have ended around the world, more than 520,000 here at home. (Remember when 30,000 dead seemed like a high number?) Millions of families have had to unceremoniously say goodbye — no funeral, no church gathering, no sitting shiva. Against this backdrop, millions more carry great pain for the other losses they have endured since March 2020: the economic ones. These are the disappointments we feel guilty discussing in public, so I will discuss them here. Because when you’re healthy and beating Covid, it’s hard to complain about the massive hit you have taken in your checkbook. But it has been heartbreaking for millions.
This week alone, I talked to a friend who lost the business he has built for 17 years. Wiped out. After working tirelessly for decades on end, he will walk away with nothing. I chatted with a friend who missed the chance to buy her dream home because the pandemic is wreaking havoc on the real estate market. She and her family will not be moving into the very house she has worked day-and-night-and-weekends to buy. I consoled a friend who had to claim unemployment for the first time in his life…
