Jessie Thompson, a 36-year-old mother of two in Chicago, is reminded of the Covid-19 pandemic every day.
Sometimes it happens when she picks up her kids from daycare and then lets them run around a neighborhood park on the way home. Other times, it’s when he gets out of the shower at 7 a.m. after a daily workout.
“I always think: In my past life, I should have been on the train in 15 minutes,” said Ms. Thompson, a United Airlines manager.
A hybrid work schedule has replaced her daily commute to the company’s headquarters in downtown Chicago, giving Ms. Thompson more time with her children and a deeper connection with her neighbors. “The pandemic is such a negative memory,” he said. “But I have this bright spot of goodness from it.”
For much of the United States, the pandemic is now firmly in the past, four years to the day since the Trump administration declared a state of emergency as the virus spread out of control. But for many Americans, the effects of the pandemic are still a prominent part of their daily lives.
In interviews, some people said the changes are subtle but undeniable: their world seems a little smaller, with fewer social connections and fewer crowds. Parents who started homeschooling their children never stopped. Many people continue to mourn relatives and spouses who died from Covid or complications from the coronavirus.
The World Health Organization withdrew its designation as a global health emergency in May 2023, but millions of people who survived the virus are suffering from prolonged Covid, a mysterious and often debilitating condition that causes fatigue, muscle pain and cognitive impairment.
A common feeling has emerged. The changes wrought by the pandemic now seem permanent, one that may have permanently reshaped American life.
Before the pandemic, Melody Condon, a marketing specialist in Vancouver, Washington, who is immunocompromised, said she had a stronger sense of trust in other people.
“Unfounded or not, I believed that for the most part, others would take small actions to keep me and people like me safe,” Ms Condon, 32, said.
But now he has encountered people who resist taking a Covid test or wearing a mask in some cases.
“What they’re communicating is that they don’t care about my health and my life,” Ms Condon said. “I’ve lost so much trust in others.”
For Paris Dolfman of Roswell, Ga., a mild Covid infection in 2022 turned into an excruciating case of long-term Covid that has turned her life upside down.
Ms. Dolfman, 31, is now mostly bedridden, depending on her mother for full-time care. But she said her outlook on life had broadened, despite her painful condition.
“One day I looked out the window and saw happy little birds on a branch, and I just imagined what it would be like to have the freedom to do what your body wants to do,” she said. “I decided to focus on the smaller things. Not to focus on the big picture, but to focus on the little things that I have.”
Clint Newman, of Albuquerque, spent the first year of the pandemic in isolation, alone in his apartment.
“I went over 12 months without touching another human being,” he said. “It was brutal. It scared me very deeply.”
Mr Newman said he was observing what he believed to be the lasting effects of the pandemic around him.
“I see it in people’s anger, people’s aggressive driving,” he said. “There just seems to be a lot of unhappiness and anger in the world right now. And I think a lot of that goes back to the lockdown.”
After Mr. Newman came out of solitary confinement, he realized that the course of his life had also changed. He decided he didn’t want to be alone again. After joining a dating app, he met a woman, Shay, and the two married in 2022.
“The pandemic is something I carry with me, consciously, all the time,” he said.
Four years after contracting Covid, Cindy Esch, of Liberty Lake, Wash., said she had to come to terms with a different life than the one she lived before.
She and her husband used to go on adventures, especially on their sailboat, the Passion. But her case with long-term Covid has been so difficult – she often feels intense fatigue that leaves her exhausted for days – that the couple have been forced to sell their two-storey house and move into a house with no stairs.
Doctors told Ms. Esch that she and her husband must be extremely careful not to contract the virus a second time, which could further endanger her health.
“I just don’t want to get Covid again – it’s something we think about all the time,” he said. “It’s part of my daily life. It became part of who my husband and I are.”
