Five years after the coronavirus pandemic began, COVID is usually spoken of in the past tense—as if it happened.
But nothing as big as COVID just goes away. The disease forced us to rebuild our society almost overnight. Although the days of lockdowns and mass deaths are behind us, disruptions of this magnitude will inevitably have long-term, if not permanent, consequences.
America today is simply a different country than it was before COVID, although some of the impacts are difficult to measure. The pandemic has undoubtedly changed US politics, for example, but by how much and in what direction is difficult to quantify given all the other factors at play.
Over a million deaths and counting
The most important and obvious result of COVID is the number of lives it has taken and continues to claim. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 1.2 million people deaths in the US from COVID-related illnesses. During the first wave of infection, up to 15,000 people died every week. Later, an even deadlier wavewhich began in late 2020 has peaked at more than 25,000 deaths per week. Although those days are thankfully behind us, COVID still kills several hundred people every week.
Long-term health effects
The health impact of the virus, of course, goes beyond mortality. There was more than 100 million confirmed COVID cases in the US, although this figure likely significantly underestimates the actual total. Most people make a full recovery, but some do not. Millions of people have reported facing lingering and in some cases debilitating effects from long COVID.
There are 4 million more Americans with disabilities in 2024 than there were five years earlier. Not all of this increase can be attributed directly to COVID, but there has been a significant increase in the number of people reporting cognitive impairment over the past five years.
How we work
When public places suddenly became transmission sites for a deadly virus, America's white-collar workers suddenly had to learn to do their jobs remotely. Many of them never returned to the office. More than a third of U.S. workers now do some or all of their work from home, according to the latest available data.
Employers have been trying to persuade their workers to return to the office for years, but to no avail. Many home workers enjoy remote work so much that they would be willing to reduce wages or even leave to save it.
Beyond the impact on individual companies, the rise of remote work has also dealt a huge blow to the commercial real estate industry. According to one estimate, office buildings across the country lost a total of $250 billion in price because so much space is left vacant. Some cities have all but given up on having some of these offices ever filled again and have begun the arduous process of trying convert them to residential housing.
How we learn
American schools also closed en masse in the early stages of the pandemic. Unlike remote work, which has had an unclear impact on productivity, distance learning has proven to be a poor substitute for face-to-face learning for most students. The pandemic has caused widespread learning loss five years later it still hasn't been fixed. Anger over what many see as unnecessary or excessively long school closures has fueled the rise sharp decline satisfied with the country's schools. In most states, public school enrollment has fallen from pre-pandemic levels.
School closures also served as an impromptu nationwide experiment in homeschooling. While many parents were eager to get their children back into the classroom, millions decided that educating their children in their own homes was the best choice for their families. Homeschooling has a long history in the United States, but in recent years it has developed from its religious roots to become more diverse – both in its structure and in the types of families that practice it.
How we vaccinate
Data from American schools is also one of the best ways to measure another important social trend in the wake of the pandemic: increased skepticism about vaccines. Anti-vaccine sentiment is nothing new in America. But this point of view has become increasingly widespread over the past few years as unfounded fears about COVID-19 vaccines appear to have increased. spilled into a more general mistrust of all vaccinations. How recent measles The Texas outbreak showed that this shift could have deadly consequences.
The way we look
The coronavirus has dealt a particularly big blow to the film industry. Annual box office revenue fell by $9 billion after theaters across the country were forced to close. Production also stopped, meaning there were fewer releases to lure audiences back to the theater once safety concerns subsided. The industry has made significant progress over the past few years, but its output and revenues are still well below what they were at the start of the pandemic.
With no choice but to seek entertainment at home, Americans turned to their televisions and studios poured billions into streaming platforms to secure their share of the audience. Over the past five years, our relationship with television has changed dramatically. Traditional cable has cratered while streaming services are thriving. Last year viewers watched worth 23 million years streaming content, according to Nielsen. This shift not only affects how we enjoy TV, it could serious consequences on the long-term health of the industry.
How we spend
Beyond any one industry, the pandemic has had a lasting impact on the overall U.S. economy, but not in the way most expected when the world ground to a halt five years ago. The economy has taken dive initially, but quickly recovered – thanks in part to trillions of dollars in stimulus from Congress. By the beginning of 2021, it not only recovered the losses caused by the pandemic, but also began to grow rapidly.
Over the past few years, we have seen strong economic growth, low unemployment, rising wages, and record highs in the stock market. But these positive trends are combined with persistently high inflation, which leads to rising prices for key consumer goods.
Nowhere has the price surge since the pandemic been more impressive than in housing. A surge in new remote workers seeking more space and city dwellers moving to less densely populated areas has sent demand soaring in a housing market already facing chronic undersupply. In just two years, the average sales price of a home in the United States has risen by more than $150,000. Price pressure isn't just affecting homeowners. Tenants have also witnessed a significant increase in housing costs. High interest rates have stabilized the situation to a certain extent, but housing is still less affordable than it has been in recent decades.
