After a year of a coronavirus pandemic, the tired world looks back – and forward

No one was left untouched.

Not the Michigan woman who woke up one morning, his wife dead by his side. Not the domestic worker in Mozambique, her livelihood threatened by the virus. Not the North Carolina mother who struggled to keep her business and her family in the midst of growing anti-Asian ugliness. Not the sixth grader, exiled from the classroom in the blink of an eye.

It happened a year ago. “I was hoping to come back after that week,” said Darelyn Maldonado, now 12. “I didn’t think it would take years.”

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On March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, few could predict the long road ahead or the many ways in which they would suffer – the deaths and agonies of millions, ruined economies, lives destroyed and almost universal solitude and isolation.

A year later, some dream of returning to normal, thanks to vaccines that seemed to materialize as if by magic. Others live in places where magic seems to be reserved for richer worlds.

At the same time, people are looking at where they were when they understood how life would change dramatically.

As of March 11, 2020, confirmed cases of COVID-19 were 125,000 and reported deaths were less than 5,000. Today, it is confirmed that 117 million people have been infected and, according to Johns Hopkins, more than 2.6 million people have died.

That day, Italy closed shops and restaurants after closing due to 10,000 reported infections. The NBA suspended its season and Tom Hanks, filming a movie in Australia, announced that he was infected.

That night, President Donald Trump spoke to the Oval Office nation, announcing the travel restrictions in Europe that triggered a transatlantic race. Airports flooded with unmasked crowds in the days that followed. Soon, they were empty.

And that, for much of the world, was just the beginning.

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Today, thanks to her vaccination, Maggie Sedidi is optimistic: “Next year, or perhaps the following year, I really hope that people can begin to return to normal life.”

But it is hard-won optimism. Sedidi, a 59-year-old nurse at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, the largest hospital in South Africa and across the continent, recalls that she was devastated when the first cases appeared last March.

And she remembers being terrified when she received the COVID-19. His manager fell ill at the same time and died.

South Africa has had Africa’s worst experience with the virus by far. The country of 60 million people has had more than 1.5 million confirmed cases, including more than 50,000 deaths.

“You can imagine, I was really, really scared. I had all the symptoms except dying,” she said, with a grim survivor’s smile. His recovery period was long.

“I had shortness of breath and tightness in my chest. It lasted six months, ”she said. “I never thought it would go away.”

But she has healed and is back at work in the surgical ward. Others were not so lucky. In the United States – the country most devastated by COVID in the world – 29 million were infected and 527,000 died.

Latoria Glenn-Carr and his wife for six years, Tyeisha, were diagnosed in a hospital emergency room near their home on the outskirts of Detroit on October 29. Despite Latoria’s scruples, they were sent home.

Tyeisha, 43, died in bed next to his wife three days later.

“I woke up on Sunday and didn’t feel a pulse,” said Glenn-Carr.

A month later, COVID killed Glenn-Carr’s mother as well.

In moments of silence, in prayer, Glenn-Carr thinks she should have pushed for the hospital to stay with Tyeisha, or should have taken her to a different hospital. She is also angry with America’s political leaders – in particular, Trump, who she believes is more concerned with the economy than with people’s lives.

“If he was more empathetic about issues and concerned about people, in general, he would have taken him more seriously,” she said. “And because of that, 500,000 people died.”

She joined a group of survivors for people who lost loved ones to COVID. They meet weekly at Zoom, exchange text messages and help with the grieving process. Glenn-Carr knows that he will fear birthdays and mothers’ days that will not be celebrated.

“Nothing goes back to how it was,” she said.

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At Queen Anne Healthcare in Seattle, Jean Allen, 96, was infected and recovered. But 19 of his fellow residents and two dear team members died.

Deaths have been decreasing, but isolation and boredom continue. Allen is now fully vaccinated. She is tired of sleeping her days away, of having only limited visits with other residents.

She remembered the yarn shop she ran decades ago, where she taught knitting and chatting with customers, and thought she might take up that old hobby, which she learned from her grandmother around 1930.

“I’m starting to get this feeling: it’s time to go back and do something,” she said. “If you find knitting needles, say sizes 3 and 5, notify reception. They will deliver them to me.”

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With the pandemic, difficult times have come to so many places. In Nepal, the flow of foreign adventurers arriving to climb Mount Everest has stopped – a disaster for guides like Pasang Rinzee Sherpa.

Sherpa climbed Mount Everest twice and spent 18 years helping climbers at the highest peaks in the Himalayas, usually earning about $ 8,000 a year. In the past 12 months, he has had no income.

Sherpa had to beg his landlord in Kathmandu to give up the rent. He borrowed money from friends, cut expenses, stopped sending money to his parents, who own a small farm. He lives off two simple meals a day, cooking them in his room.

It has been difficult. “We are mountain people, used to walking freely in nature,” said Sherpa. “But for months, during the blockade, we were forced to be confined to a room in the city of Kathmandu. It was mental torture for us.”

In Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world, maid Alice Nharre recalled the desperation of people forced to stay home because of a virus that some initially thought was not real.

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“People thought, ‘We’re going to stay home, without government help – how are we going to survive?’” She said.

The southern African country’s government has promised that the $ 20 relief payment would be given for three months to those who lost their jobs.

“It never happened,” said Nharre, 45. “My mom signed up, but the money never came. We don’t know what happened to him.”

With the delivery of the COVAX initiative this week, the country has about 700,000 doses of vaccine for its 30 million inhabitants. It is not clear when they will be widely available.

“Maybe it’s for doctors and big people. For us little people, we don’t know,” she shrugged.

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When Trump started calling COVID-19 the “China virus”, Joyce Kuo tensed.

“It was like, ‘Here we go, get ready,'” said the 36-year-old furniture maker from Greensboro, North Carolina.

Soon after, she recalled, when she took her three children to the dentist, a white woman in the waiting room pulled her daughter close and instructed loudly, “You need to stay away from them. They probably have that virus.”

More than once during the pandemic, Kuo and others in his family encountered this type of racism. Although born in America, she was troubled by reminders that other people thought she did not belong in that country.

Meanwhile, Kuo and her husband were trying to boost their outdoor furniture business in the face of government closings. They started using upholstery to make fabric masks, which allowed them to remain open as an essential business and continue to pay their 25 employees.

Kuo remembers being constantly stressed; it seemed that supermarket shelves were always without basic food and toilet paper. Later, because of the lack of teachers, she started giving home lessons to her children – aged 4, 6 and 8 – while trying to do the job.

“I think that for any parent with children, working from home is almost a joke. Do what you can,” said Kuo. “Many times my homework was done after the kids went to bed.”

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Life changed for Darelyn Maldonado last March, during her library class. She remembers being seated at the table with her close friends, talking to the teacher about COVID-19. The teacher told them that her school in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, would be closed – soon, she said.

For the next 12 months, she lived in limbo and online.

Where she once woke up excited to go to school, she now struggles without giving and receiving that she has been sitting in a classroom.

There are good times. Sometimes your Shih Tzu sits on your lap and licks the computer screen during class. Or her 1½-year-old brother, who grew up from a child to a child during the pandemic, opens his bedroom door.

But Darelyn lives with the concern that someone she loves may die. There is also the frustration of having to give up softball and so many other things that make her happy.

“I don’t have many friends anymore,” said Darelyn.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Her city’s parents have waged a pressure campaign to reopen schools, and she is due to return to school on March 16.

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A year from now, on March 11, 2022, she imagines herself doing all the things she missed in this endless pandemic year.

“Playing outdoors with friends, playing softball with the dog,” she said. “Being with the people I love the most.”