The Churn

Panniversary: Here’s What We Learned Together In The Year of Our Coronavirus

Butter ATLMarch 11, 2021

One year ago today, the World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 coronavirus was a “pandemic.” We had no idea what we were in for, or just how much the world would change, but here we are.

The 1-year anniversary of the pandemic, a.k.a. the “panniversary,” brings us to an inflection point. Those of us who have so far survived have almost certainly known someone who passed away from COVID, or at least someone who knows someone. It’s a point in modern history in which the phrase “What a time to be alive” has significantly new meaning.

So, without going deep into everything we’ve been through together, we’re looking back and what we’ve witnessed and experienced since March 11, 2020.

We Learned Trump Wasn’t Invincible

It’s beyond fair to say that the chances of the former president being reelected looked a lot better before his complete failure to manage the federal response to COVID. It also didn’t help that he caught it himself and seemed willing to do anything he could to act like it wasn’t happening. However you feel about President Biden, who’ll address the nation tonight, you can’t say that his approach to the pandemic is the same or worse than his predecessor. It’s historically hard to beat an incumbent in an election, but Biden’s huge margin of victory was clearly increased by the fact that Trump fumbled the American effort to stop or even slow the virus, and he paid for it last November.

We Learned That Working From Home… Actually Worked

Remember when employees’ only means of getting their managers to relax WFH policies was to lobby corporate H.R. departments? Who knew it was even less of a big deal than we thought when we were asking? Everything was fine, so much that we now might look forward to getting the hell out of the house and being in the office. Speaking of which…

We Learned That Partying From Home Can Only Work For So Long

Sure, a virtual gettogether was better than nothing, and still is. It sufficed for a while, until it became more than a little dystopian. Pretending you could be a nightlife savage while actually alone and streaming into a “room” from your office chair? Virtual convention lobbies? Literally everybody getting on IG Live? All-virtual everything? Jesus… Clubhouse? Even Verzuz became a drag after a while. Thank Xenu for vaccination and Vitamin D.

We Learned the Value of Lotion

You don’t even want to think about how much hand sanitizer we’ve each rubbed into our skin in the last 365 days. For a while you couldn’t even find decent lotion, or at least the reasonably priced stuff — not that that Suave Cocoa Butter would do any good. It’s gonna take years of that thick yellow shea butter they sell at the nature shop to get us back to a place of moisture. Let the healing of your dry-ass, permanently crusty hands begin!

We Learned that Art is Essential

Some highly deserving and amazingly talented visual artists had a very good year, in what has been a big, vividly bright spot in the coronavirus era. Our homes became cooler and more colorful, while creatives used Instagram and other means to keep us seeing life’s beauty. Don’t let it end with the pandemic — keep supporting your local art community.

We Almost Learned How to Make Homemade Bread

It’s always a good thing to become savvier at cooking. It’s sometimes weird when everybody does the same thing at once, and homemade bread may have started as an innocent-enough shared experience but it became something far more sinister. Next thing you know, fools were posting pictures of their focaccia and sourdough like they were actually good-looking or edible. Thankfully it was just a cry for help, and we’ve mostly moved from that phase back to making bread that’s actually sensible. What’s the point of getting quarantine thick on whole grains? Shout out to biscuits. 

We Learned That Paper Towels and TP are Not Promised

Sheesh it got real for a couple months. Folks were speed-walking into every grocery store in existence trying to beat each other to the paper products aisle, where at best you’d find some off-brand brand of single-ply tissue, or similarly flimsy paper towels. And who among us didn’t have to substitute one for the other for a dire week or two? We were there too, brothers and sisters. We know.

Musicians Learned That They Too Were Keeping Us Alive

Music is medicine for loneliness, and being apart meant we all needed someone to sing to us. From D-Nice kicking things off with amazing DJ sets in the early days to Verzuz reminding us of the importance of having a deep musical catalog, this past year proved that great songs can help keep you going when everything goes crazy.

We Learned How a Pandemic Affects Fashion and Style

When a guy like Tim Gunn goes fashionably off-script and starts dressing like Dem Franchize Boyz in his white tee, you know sh*t done changed. Athleisure became the new business casual, with the daytime exception of what you wore on the top half when you had to be on Zoom or Google Meet. Lord knows what was going on under the desk… Thankfully some of y’all creatives (shout out to Nancy Pelosi) figured out how to achieve star-level mask drip, giving inspiration to those of us who were all-too-ready to rock one of those transparent welder’s face shields. 

Police Learned That Brutalizing Citizens Is Harder to Hide When Everybody’s Bored

There surely would have been protests and demonstrations following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor no matter what we were doing. But having the nerve to kneel on a man’s neck in broad daylight, on camera, and recklessly killing an innocent Black woman while erroneously serving a no-knock warrant, turned what might’ve been seen as another miscarriage of justice into a cause to rally against social injustice and racial inequality. Speaking of which, DO NOT FREE DEREK CHAUVIN.

We Learned That The Government Really Can Print Money

Who even knew that the government could sent a check to every American if it wanted to? The American Rescue Plan’s $1.9 trillion price tag means that the U.S. has spent $6T and counting to keep American capitalism floating. And as we know, many businesses were unable to hold on between last spring and today. And while the nation’s wealthiest people somehow continued to make huge profits, many people are still struggling and need help more than ever.

We Learned How to Make a House a Home

Look around your humble domicile. Do you have more plants, and did they survive? Good for you! What about general cleanliness — purging and simplifying, and such. You got a little better at it, right? So did we. Aye, how about that home garden? Did something grow something edible? Us too! Ours even had a little extra energy but that’s another story… But for the most part, many of us took the opportunity to create a much more livable environment, which was essential to being locked inside a place that might’ve rotated between place of refuge, office, schoolhouse and favorite restaurant/bar.

We Learned That Restaurants With Good Takeout Are Most Likely to Survive

So many great places to eat and drink closed here in Atlanta and elsewhere, and this happened just as the city’s culinary vibe was becoming undeniably competitive with top dining destinations around the world. Sadly, the pandemic forced many of the most innovative restaurants and bars, which were never meant to offer anything close to a fast-casual experience, to shutter. But while this was happening, your favorite pizza, taco, sandwich, burger, wings and barbecue places thrived. If you were looking for data on what type of restaurant is the best investment of time and money, the pandemic gave a mouthful.

And We Learned a Whole Lot More.

In addition to the cementing of our appetite for online shopping, at-home fitness, video gaming (from consoles to GameStop stocks), we’re still finding out more about ourselves than we’d perhaps ever learned without this challenging time.

Yes, it has come at a great cost. The cruel nature of COVID-19 took some of the best people in the world away too soon. The loneliness we joke about here was absolutely crushing for some folks, particularly those of us who are most vulnerable. Many people still have not recovered, whether stricken by the coronavirus itself or the economic effects of job losses and the general expenses of life, which certainly didn’t take a vacation while COVID kicked our collective ass. 

One thing we learned, even above the idea that most of us survived or that some of us are tougher than we knew (which is probably more of a flex than a good observation), is that there is still plenty of good in this crazy, crazy world. Sure, some of us didn’t help at all, but those of us who did are the ones we’ll remember the most, and the ones we’ll always owe a debt of gratitude. 

We owe it to ourselves to take what we’ve learned and improve from here. We owe it to those who aren’t here to see the panniversary with us. We owe it to those who spitefully turned their backs and left us to fend for ourselves to defeat COVID-19, and with more vaccinations, continued diligence with masks, handwashing and other precautions, and resilient responsibility for ourselves and our neighbors, we can’t lose. 

The only way through something is through it. Let’s keep moving forward from this unbelievably difficult year together.