By: Hanaan Khabir and Avery Nennmann
Date posted: March 14, 2025
***
It’s been five years since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. The days from March 11-14th, 2020, are etched with individual experiences of the world ending, life coming to a halt, and worry over what comes next. Though the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11th, 2020, it took federal and state governments a few days to catch up. In that confusion, it’s hard to put an official time stamp on the beginning of covid in the collective memory. Still, these vignettes in the moments during the initial chaos can lay the groundwork for remembering those anxiety-ridden days. For Hanaan, COVID began in December when the news began reporting it, working as a volunteer in the ER and seeing people come in droves, fearing they had contracted this virus. But the world officially ‘ended’ when everything in the United States shut down. For Avery, it was a slow trickle, then all at once with her birthday on the 14th of March in Texas – a state that would become contentious in the debate over covid restrictions that came from the community efforts to stop the spread of the virus.
***
Hanaan – It’s December, and COVID is a joke. I’m 16, a volunteer at my local emergency department, and the ED is filled with patients. Every sneeze, every cough, every runny nose and stomach ache is COVID, and it’s funny. The ignorance of patients is funny, a running joke among the nurses in my department. Part of my job is to bring them the questions and concerns of patients, and every question and concern is about this virus. The questions make no sense—I feel insane asking a nurse if you can get COVID from Amazon packages. Every time I repeat these questions and concerns, I’m met with laughter because it’s funny that patients don’t understand. It’s funny that they are so ignorant about how medicine works. It’s funny—until it isn’t.
We got our first confirmed case in late February. A patient was on a boat and later found out that someone on that boat tested positive for COVID. Now, there’s no laughing at symptoms that could be nothing and anything. Now, everything is COVID. Six providers huddle around a single phone, searching for information that doesn’t exist, a test not readily available, a treatment plan that is widely unknown. Now, the ignorance of patients is no longer funny. Now, everything is COVID. Now, that ignorance may actually be fact.
It’s March 7, 2020, and I don’t know it yet, but this is the last time I’ll be in the ED. My birthday is next week, but I don’t plan on coming in, so I bring donuts and coffee. I have been in this ED since October 2019, and at almost 17, I’m realizing that this is exactly what I plan on doing for the rest of my life. My shift is uneventful. It ends with my first experience with blood that isn’t mine. A car accident brings a family to the ED, and I’m wiping the blood off one of the kids’ faces, and that laughter is back. That laughter about COVID because the family appears to be Chinese. At this point, all of us are ignorant. We don’t know that a week from now, the world will end. A month from now, this virus will kill hundreds, if not thousands. A year from now, that joke about China and COVID will lead to unimaginable violence against those who appear Asian. At this point, we’re just as ignorant as the patients we laughed at.
It’s March 13th, and time has stopped. I would liken it to the world ending, and it felt like everything in my life got turned upside down and ripped right out from under my feet, but time has never meant the same thing anymore since 2020.
Avery – It’s March 10th, and I’m standing in a gift shop in the Grand Canyon. A frantic man approached me and my friend, looking to proselytize. Out of breath and standing too close, he begins to explain and show data of a virus coming out of China. Being in my undergrad at the time in Biomedical Sciences, I was aware in December through my infectious disease courses that we were overdue for a bird-like flu and that a new virus was causing rumbles half a world away. The man became more animated, stepping closer to cry out, “We’re all going to die! You need to prepare now! I’m here to get supplies, then I’m getting the hell out of here.” Feeling unnerved from this prophetic interaction, I carried on with my spring break plans. [In hindsight, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11th, and I believe that is what the man was referencing. I think about him a lot.]
The following days blur together for me; I’m uncertain on when things began and ended, but this is markedly due to Texas’s lack of leadership and mitigations. It’s March 12th, and my university in Texas has moved all classes online for 2 weeks. Panic starts to creep in. How am I going to finish my Organic Chemistry Lab online? Do I need to move back home? How severe is this disease? We cut our time in Santa Fe short, as the day dragged on since the pandemic announcement, it began to feel like a ghost town. The unsettled feeling never leaves my body the whole ride home to Texas.
Paired with the growing social unrest within the country, this time was a breeding ground for growing resentments and misinformation.
Hanaan – It’s now March 13, 2020, and instead of a happy birthday, I wake up to the world ending. President Trump shuts down the country—no domestic or international travel, no non-essential services, no school. The hospital shuts down volunteer services, the speech I was supposed to give is canceled. The day I turned 17 felt like the world had stopped. I get calls, not to wish me a happy birthday, but to ask my opinion as a budding medical professional, and I have nothing to say. I’m not angry or sad; I’m terrified. To me, the world has stopped. Every day, someone is dying from something that was once just a joke. Doctors and nurses are quitting or committing suicide, the death toll and the slowly increasing hatred becoming a burden too much to bear. I’m terrified because this could be me one day. On March 7, I was sure this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life, and now it’s June, and I can’t say that with the same certainty.
Avery – It’s March 14th, my 20th birthday. Texas leadership has not declared quarantine, has not restricted travel, and is keeping businesses open, so my family and I go to dinner in downtown Ft Worth to celebrate my getting older as the world crumbles around me. The restaurant was nearly empty, adding to the unease and my regret and embarrassment at being outside after our government had officially declared a pandemic. Sometimes, it feels like I’m right where COVID left me – blowing out the candles of my 20th birthday. Frozen in time with what could have been.
The rest of 2020 goes by in a blur, filled with medical appointments, online classes, and escaping to the countryside. As the pandemic progressed, I saw the hospital in my small college town fill up to the brim with patients, some on beds in the hallway, and only necessary personnel entering the hospital. I was only allowed in because of the severity of my growing brain tumor, putting me in an immunocompromised state that shifted how I navigated the pandemic. By December 2020, I was the first in line with the geriatrics and immunocompromised to receive the vaccine. I was a huge advocate for protecting ourselves against this disease and led efforts to get all of my close friends vaccinated by March 2021.
For Texas, this is when the timeline splits. The state had reopened by June 2020, so by the beginning of 2021, in many minds, the pandemic was already over – despite the growing number of cases. It became business as usual, despite classes continuing to be online and restaurants and venues still beholden to federal regulations. Paired with the growing social unrest within the country, this time was a breeding ground for growing resentments and misinformation.
Hanaan – It’s 2021, and I’m back, this time as a CNA, and it’s not fun. No one laughs at sneezes, coughs, and runny noses. I wear two masks and a face shield, I change in the garage, and I don’t greet my family until I take a shower. People say it’s over. People say masks are silly and there’s no point in wearing them. People are protesting masks and vaccine mandates because it’s all fear-mongering. But all I can think about is how it used to be funny, and now it’s not. How a cold can now be COVID, and COVID can kill. And how it’s not over.
Avery – From 2022 to now, 2025, I could see these shifts growing larger in its polarization. In early 2022, I lived in Germany, where the lockdowns and precautions were ever-present and akin to the beginning of 2020. For the rest of the world, there were still mitigations to take and apps and new technology that aided in taking those steps. From the outside looking in, America was the Wild West, where covid was able to run amok with no clear leadership from both state and federal governments. This really emphasized the individualism that seeps into every corner of our society.
Hanaan – Today is March 12, 2025, and my birthday is tomorrow, and I still wear a mask because now it’s COVID, the flu, the measles, RSV, and a bunch of other things. Tomorrow is my birthday, and still, no one laughs at sneezes, coughs, and runny noses. It’s been five years, and everything is still not funny.
Avery – Today is March 14th – I’m 25. Covid has taken so much and altered my life’s trajectory in ways I still may not even understand. I feel more cautious now than I was at the beginning of 2020, but now with an unshakable knowledge of the realities of what a pandemic can do and what it did do. My only hope is that we can do better for next time and that I will be released from the shackles of time.