A Long-Awaited Return to Normalcy and Lessons to Learn

A weeklong spring break turned into two weeks. Then it became the end of all in-person activities in the spring 2020 semester. On March 11, 2020, the NBA suspended play for its basketball season after a player tested positive. The next day, the MLB announced it was delaying its season, which was set to start later that month. The same day, the NCAA announced that its basketball tournament and all other spring championships would be canceled. What was happening?

It felt like the whole world came to a screeching halt. No sports, no school, traditional 9-5 work was going remote. While lots of us initially welcomed the change of pace, few likely realized how this would turn our lives and lifestyles upside-down, and how long it would be this way.

As the chairman of the Young Conservatives of Texas chapter at Texas Tech at the time, I selfishly felt gutted, because this meant no more in-person meetings, socials, or events of any kind. Our state convention was canceled. The year was done. I have no doubt this feeling was shared by many other people. For lots of Tech students, their student organizations are their greatest source of community, of belonging. To have it ripped away, even in the name of public health, is impossible to grasp.

So the semester went on for another two months. I stayed with my family in Waco for the rest of the spring, watching Zoom lectures and submitting assignments online. It was lonely. I was isolated from everyone, a situation not unique to myself. All this time we were told that all we had to do was “Stay at home. Wear a mask. Social distance from others.” Pretty easy instructions to follow. But it goes against our nature. People are social creatures. What was there to look forward to? What was the reason to get up in the morning?

The numbers are clear: Mental health suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a survey from January 2021, 41.1% adults in the U.S. reported having symptoms of anxiety or depressive order, a number that jumped from about 11% in a National Health Interview Survey conducted in 2019. In the same January survey, substance abuse and suicidal thoughts were reported for adults aged 18-24 at much greater rates than compared to all adults, (25% to 13% and 26% to 11%, respectively.)

The question I have is how much of this was a natural result of living through a pandemic, from fear of contracting the virus and health problems that may arise from it, and how much is a result of public policies by governors and mayors that treated the general public like their subjects?

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick made headlines in March 2020 when he made an appearance on the Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and made the case for allowing society to essentially function normally. He was accused of wanting to “kill Grandma” for the economy. Lots of people that were uncomfortable with lockdowns were accused of something similar.

Patrick’s plea fell on deaf ears. Mask mandates were put in place. Businesses were entirely shut down. Millions lost their jobs. A new culture was introduced, at levels not seen before, where people were incentivized to not go to work and not be productive. Even to this day, businesses are having incredible difficulty finding workers. The unemployment rate has slowly trickled back down to 5.2 percent in August after peaking at nearly 15 percent last year and spending the first few months of 2021 around 6 percent.

In-person classes resumed at Texas Tech and most schools in the fall of 2020, with lots of restrictions in place. Online options were in place for lots of classes, and in the classroom, masks and the all-too-familiar “social distancing” was still required. While finally being around others was sorely welcome, it was hardly normal. Outside of campus, restaurants and bars were still dealing with capacity restrictions and required to carry out Governor Abbott’s mask mandates. In Lubbock and many other cities around Texas, establishments had their liquor licenses revoked as a result of not properly enforcing the mandates.

It was a bizarre feeling, and in Texas, no less, where we pride ourselves on personal freedom and enjoy telling government bureaucrats to take a hike. Yet somehow we allowed this to take place. Surely we would have done something about this overreach in the legislative session earlier this year, right? Think again. While there were some conservative victories, we saw no real reform to the Governor’s emergency powers in the Texas Disaster Act.

In March of this year, Abbott finally lifted the mask mandates and capacity restrictions that he unilaterally decided to implement in July 2020. Also welcome, it seemed to be somewhat of a political calculation following a poor performance in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s straw poll in March 2021, where he received zero percent of the vote.

So we are now in September of Year Two of the pandemic. Capacity restrictions are no longer in place, state mask mandates are no longer in place, and things are starting to feel like normal again. College football is in full swing, and we can basically all go back to how things were before. Wonderful.

Even at this stage, it is impossible to forget what has taken place over the last 18 months. How the mere freedom to travel, meet with friends, grab a drink, and do all the basic things that make life enjoyable, were illegal. If Texas wants to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again, we have to start to connect the dots and understand that the kind of people we elect impact our lives, whether we like it or not. This starts at the top, including the governor, and goes down to our state representatives and to our local elected officials. We need to be smarter about who we elect and scrutinize those in office more closely.

More importantly, we need to cherish our community and express it by caring for our friends and family, by showing them what they mean and not taking them for granted. Throughout the pandemic, and especially in those first few months, I realized how important to my own health it was to have those social connections. When they were gone, I was much worse off. If anything can be learned from what we all have gone through, it should be to kindle those tight relationships and not let them flame out. Let’s not let it take a pandemic to see that importance.