What if we'd known COVID would last 2 years?

The follies and foibles of life in the pandemic

Chicago.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

When the NBA abruptly canceled its season in 2020 as the "novel coronavirus" surged across the country, Americans didn't know what to expect. In the following days, a series of "shelter-in-place" orders were issued by governors across the country, and Americans were told that it would take "two weeks to flatten the curve" of infections to avoid overwhelming hospitals. Many individuals, in turn, calibrated their pandemic expectations around a relatively brief interruption to normal life.

But two weeks turned into two months and somehow, this week, into two awful years.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.