The Third Plague Year
Started: 2022-03-06 15:49:16
Submitted: 2022-03-06 21:08:49
Visibility: World-readable
Looking back on another year of the global pandemic
Two years ago today was my first day working remotely while the COVID-19 pandemic began to take over the world. I was working in tech, in Seattle; we were the first industry in the first US city to shut down in the face of the coming pandemic. We were too late to contain the virus, but shutting down early did bend the exponential curve and probably saved lives.
I never saw the inside of my Google office in South Lake Union again.
In the two years since the pandemic took over my life it's never been far from my mind. It's completely changed the way I work; most days I don't go into the office at all, and when I do my employer wants me to take an antigen test before I arrive. I wear a mask when I leave the house, unless I'm staying outdoors away from other people. (I was irritated by the dialog around double-masking and upgrading masks, because the people who would heed public health advice around masking are are the same people who are already vaccinated and cautious about spreading the virus.)
After two years of re-opening and re-closing, the one thing I didn't expect is that, even now, I still don't know what the future will hold. Two years ago we could hope for a vaccine, but now we know that even the vaccine isn't enough if not enough people take it and new variants evolve to evade vaccine-provided immunity. Just like two years ago I'm sitting in my house waiting for the next shoes to drop. And now I have an entirely new set of problems to worry about: that we're dropping restrictions too fast, giving up on our hard-fought gains because some people just don't wanna get the vaccine and don't wanna wear masks, and in their selfish narcissism they're going to kill people.
But in my family everyone is vaccinated (and three of us are boosted), and the vaccine is highly effective at preventing serious illness and death, and maybe that's going to have to be good enough for me. I'd feel different if I had a kid younger than 5 (who still can't get vaccinated yet) or someone immune-compromised or with a condition that puts them at risk of serious illness. I can't worry about everyone all the time; the best I can do is try not to be reckless with other people's lives.
There's one more thing that makes March 2022 feel just like March 2020: looming anxiety about how the reaction to the pandemic will affect me in ways that are weirdly specific to me. Last week my employer announced that they'll expect me to start coming into the office again starting in April, with the goal of being in the office three days a week by the end of May. I am not sure I can commute over the mountain into the office three days a week while maintaining the same work-life balance I want. (I've also proven, over the last two years, that I don't need to commute into the office every day in order to get the same work done.) But my tech employer is so obsessed with in-person collaboration that they built an entire spaceship to fit everyone in the same building (and even then we don't have enough space so my office is in another building across the freeway). Even if I am allowed to make an accommodation to reduce my time in the office, living in Santa Cruz is going to be career-limiting, and I don't know how to resolve this.
We've been through a lot in the last two years. The worst is behind us now but there's still uncertainty ahead.
