The COVID-19 Pandemic
- margeauxcandlin
- Sep 12, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 5
(Van den Heuvel, 2020)
Pandemic Reflections
Inspiration from :
Izzy Van den Heuval: "Resting Place."
Fear
Fear traveled around the globe as the pandemic spread.
COVID-19 was transmitted through droplets, physical contact, and airborne particles.
Will I get sick? How sick? Who will I know that will die?
Symptoms could be as subtle as a cold, or the virus could cause complete respiratory failure, leading to death.
Over and over again, we heard the same refrain:
Not enough.
Not enough ventilators.
Not enough healthcare providers.
Not enough personal protective equipment.
In days and weeks, more patients died than many clinicians had witnessed in their entire careers.
Healthcare Providers
Healthcare providers were called heroes, frontline staff, and essential workers.
Behind those titles were human beings bearing witness to staggering loss—while holding fear, exhaustion, grief, and moral distress inside their own bodies.
Isolation
Hospitals and clinics closed their doors to visitors.
Those infected with COVID-19 often died alone—or with only a nurse at the bedside.
People facing other illnesses underwent procedures and appointments without friends or family.
Nursing homes and assisted living facilities shut down visitation entirely.
If the virus entered a facility, it could claim many lives, sometimes devastating entire communities of residents.
Distance became the prescription.
Public health officials repeated:
Stay six feet apart.
Wear a mask.
If you are sick, stay home.
The Migration
The world paused.
City streets emptied. Offices closed. Schools fell silent.
Those living in densely populated areas felt trapped within their own walls.
People began searching for space—for safety, quiet, and air.
Where can I go?
Where will I not be afraid for my life?
Those with financial means migrated toward rural areas, small towns, and natural landscapes.
Nature’s magic—once background—became visible again, newly essential.
Mortality & Impermanence
Mortality was no longer abstract. Impermanence was no longer philosophical.
Questions long avoided surfaced:
If time is finite, does the path I’m on still make sense?
Is my life meaningful?
Why am I working so much?
Why am I always rushing?
The pandemic slowed us enough to hear these questions clearly.
Civil Rights
In May 2020, Derek Chauvin suffocated George Floyd in public view. He knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes, even as Floyd pleaded:
I can’t breathe.
The footage spread across the world.
Echoes of America’s history of public lynchings reverberated.
We were forced to ask:
Are we still living in an era of racial terror—hidden behind policies that promise equality?
Are we under an illusion?
Trust in law enforcement fractured. Police became symbols of oppression rather than protection.
The Pressure Cooker
Protests erupted. At times, they spilled into looting and violence.
Daily routines had already been stripped away. Uncertainty, grief, and loss of control simmered. A collective rage—shaped by generations of injustice and unresolved trauma—rose to the surface.
Anti-Racism
Voices like Ibram X. Kendi reframed the national conversation. Racism was no longer defined solely as overt hatred, but also as the subtle, unconscious biases within us all.
To deny those biases became, itself, a form of racism.
Human beings naturally gravitate toward those who resemble themselves. Anti-racism asks us to notice that tendency—and to practice awareness, humility, and ongoing learning.
Protection & Community
Amid fear, another instinct emerged: care.
In Italy, people stood on balconies singing together: Italy will make it through.
In my own neighborhood, evenings were filled with bells, clapping, and cheers for frontline workers. Neighbors shopped for the immunocompromised. Prescriptions and groceries appeared on doorsteps.
Connection adapted. Zoom dinners replaced restaurants. FaceTime bridged physical distance.
Gratitude grew—for health, for community, for loved ones.
The Vaccine
The race to develop a vaccine became a global priority. In unprecedented timeframes, mRNA vaccines were developed, tested, and distributed at a global scale.
Then came the debate.
Did mandates infringe on personal freedom? Was it worth the risk to protect others? Had science moved too fast?
Vaccination became both a moral and political question—echoing long-standing debates about bodily autonomy.
Looking Back — and Forward
By 2026, the pandemic has passed, though its imprint remains.
The question is no longer whether we survived—but whether we learned.
The pandemic asked something of all of us. It asked us to notice what we usually rush past—our vulnerability, our interdependence, our need for one another.
Even now, as life speeds back up, those lessons remain available. We can choose to remember what mattered when everything stopped.
Community is not optional—it is essential. Care is not weakness—it is wisdom.
Moving forward, I hope we carry that knowing with us. Not perfectly. Just consciously.
Artwork by Andrea Candlin in honor of the victims at Annunciation School September 2025:
Acknowledgements
This reflective narrative was written by me and represents my own experiences and perspectives. I used OpenAI’s ChatGPT (GPT-5) as an editorial tool to support formatting, organization, and stylistic refinement. All content, analysis, and interpretations are my own.
References:
Bailey, Z. D., Feldman, J. M., & Bassett, M. T. (2021). How structural racism works—Racist policies as a root cause of U.S. racial health inequities. New England Journal of Medicine, 384(8), 768–773. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMms2025396
Brooks, S. K., Webster, R. K., Smith, L. E., Woodland, L., Wessely, S., Greenberg, N., & Rubin, G. J. (2020). The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: Rapid review of the evidence. The Lancet, 395(10227), 912–920. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30460-8
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020). COVID-19: Cases, data, and surveillance.
Kendi, I. X. (2019).How to be an antiracist. One World.
Lai, J., Ma, S., Wang, Y., Cai, Z., Hu, J., Wei, N., ... & Hu, S. (2020). Factors associated with mental health outcomes among health care workers exposed to coronavirus disease 2019. JAMA Network Open, 3(3), e203976. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.3976
Richardson, M., & McEwan, K. (2020). Effects of contact with nature on health and wellbeing. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 45, 371–392.
Shaukat, N., Ali, D. M., & Razzak, J. (2020). Physical and mental health impacts of COVID-19 on healthcare workers: A scoping review. International Journal of Emergency Medicine, 13(1), 40. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12245-020-00299-5
Van den Heuvel (2020) created Resting Place, which was included in The art of printmaking: Process and passion exhibition at the Steamboat Art Museum.
Comments