We’re already losing sight of what 2020 felt like

In 2020, expressions of gratitude on signs and social media for frontline workers were common. Now, discussions about those who risked their wellbeing to maintain the nation’s functions during the pandemic are rarely heard. In his work “2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed,” Eric Klinenberg urges audiences not to hastily forget the transformations wrought by the pandemic and the lingering effects we continue to face today.

Klinenberg presented this dialogue at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center, where he participated in a panel alongside Rochelle Walensky, the ex-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Professor I. Glenn Cohen, the academic director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics; and Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, the John H. Watson Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

“Numerous events occurred swiftly in 2020, and it’s been difficult for us to assimilate them all,” Klinenberg remarked. “We’re in a stage of denial, hurrying to move forward, and we’re losing touch with what it was like to endure that chaos, that disarray. We are neglecting the losses we suffered.”

Klinenberg’s work interweaves detailed profiles of people across New York City’s seven boroughs with sociological examinations of the pandemic. It investigates the disparities that the crisis intensified, particularly for low-income households and youths in the Bronx who grappled with accessing remote learning or finding alternatives to the free and reduced school meals they depended on.

Additionally, it probes how the pandemic diminished our trust in authorities. In one chapter, Klinenberg recounts a family whose daycare failed to inform them of its reopening due to fears of contracting COVID from a child of a frontline worker. In another instance, he highlights Daniel Presti, a Staten Island bar owner who defied orders to close his establishment in late 2020. Presti became radicalized after feeling that the federal government was not providing adequate support for business owners struggling in response to lockdown measures.

“One of the key issues surrounding trust and distrust that requires further discussion is that we are existing in disparate information landscapes, and there are increasing worries that essential data we need to comprehend our identity and the context of our reality are becoming more difficult to trust and manage,” Klinenberg noted during the panel discussion.

Walensky, who was responsible for providing recommendations to safeguard public health during her tenure at the CDC, addressed Klinenberg’s depiction of the challenging tradeoffs that decision-makers like herself had to navigate. She recalled a school board meeting in her hometown of Newton, Massachusetts, where a mother expressed that she was being asked to abide by coronavirus protocols at the expense of her son’s future.

“She stated, ‘If my son misses wrestling next semester, he won’t go to college,’” Walensky shared. “And suddenly, health is just one element of the equation, while there are truly other profound, crucial considerations that when we focus solely on health, we fail to take into account for society’s long-term wellbeing.”

She emphasized that as a public health official, the ramifications of infectious diseases disproportionately affect the most vulnerable populations.

“I remember being on CNN at one point when the president contracted COVID. They were discussing all the prominent individuals in the White House who were infected in the Rose Garden, in the Senate. And I thought to myself, and actually articulated aloud, ‘What about the butlers and the staff in the White House who are returning home to multigenerational families who, when terms like isolation and quarantine are mentioned, you know they have no means to comply with what you’re asking of them?’”

Klinenberg concludes his book as he commenced the discussion, urging individuals not to rush past such a transformative experience.

“Even though the calendar has advanced,” he writes, “the narrative of 2020 is far from concluded, and its capacity to steer us in various directions remains untapped.”

Klinenberg holds the title of Helen Gould Shepard Professor in Social Science and directs the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.