March 17, 2025 by Emilia Hall and Savanah Winter (‘26)
This month marks the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic that shook the world back in 2020. As we look back on how far we have come since then, it is only appropriate we take a walk down memory lane. This deadly disease was first discovered in Wuhan, China in December of 2019 and quickly spread across the world. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared it an Internal Public health Emergency and then in March a pandemic. The first lockdowns and social distancing rules were a new experience for us but quickly became our reality for the next months. Businesses and schools shut down and everyone was told to stay at home. There was a toilet paper fiasco, and everyone stocked up in case the stores ran out. Our hospitals had an overwhelming number of patients where doctors and nurses were working around the clock to save people. We slowly started adapting to the “new normal” with online learning and remote working becoming very prevalent. Now 5 years later it feels like a whole different world, but we are still seeing the effects of the pandemic today.
Our education system took a big hit from the impacts of Covid. Many students are still experiencing leaning challenges due to the time lost in the Covid years. Saratoga Springs Junior Mia Khazin said, “I’m still struggling in math to this day because of missing critical years in Covid.” And it’s not just Khazin experiencing these struggles many other students across the country are too, according to the Hechinger Report the math skills of students grade 8-12 are farther behind then they were before the pandemic. Not only is their education behind but also social and behavioral skills. According to Saratoga Springs Highschool Spanish teacher Kevin Colella, “Students social skills and interactions with their peers and teachers are not up to par with the way they were before Covid.” But Colella said that he has been noticing students are slowing starting to interact and volunteer in class more in the past few years.
Looking back, the world has come a long way since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. The past 5 years have proven to be incredibly difficult, and the effects continue to impact the world today for people of all ages. The isolation this pandemic caused was tremendous and delayed learning, social skills, and growing up all together for populations all over the world. As time goes on, the issues get better but don’t disappear. It will take resilience and hard work to move on and fix the large impacts this time had on our planet. However, as hard as it may seem, it is crucial to keep moving forward. By interacting with others again and talking about the past, we as a society can learn and grow to heal from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Resilience is a huge factor that holds significance and is an important trait to take forward while recovering from this world-wide pandemic. But, if as a world, we can come together and be strong, we can mend the broken parts from the pandemic and bounce back to be better than where we were all those years ago.