5 Years Into the Pandemic: Grief Is Still Here, Even Though the World Has Moved On

In March 2020, the world as we knew it permanently changed.

We masked up and sheltered in place. We waved to loved ones through glass. We moved work, school, and socializing largely online. We applauded (and overworked) essential workers. We commemorated milestones like weddings, new births, graduations, and deaths from a distance. We said our goodbyes over FaceTime.

Yet five years later, much of the world has “gone back to normal,” as if the pandemic never happened.

More than 7 million people have died from COVID-19 worldwide, according to the World Health Organization—and those are just the deaths that were reported.

Most of those losses happened here in the United States. And yet, this five year milestone passed with barely a whisper. There was no national moment of silence. No televised tribute. No widespread recognition of the billions of lives changed forever.

As someone who lost a dear friend to COVID, and as a grief coach who supports others living through pandemic losses, I’ve spent the past month talking with clients, friends, and fellow grievers about the same aching question: Why does no one seem to care anymore?

Rebecca Soffer, founder of Modern Loss, called it out plainly on a recent episode of my podcast, Grief Grower: “It’s really hard to move through something difficult unless you feel acknowledged in that thing.”

The fifth anniversary of COVID didn’t just bring back memories of those early, uncertain days; it reopened the wound of being invisible—of grieving in a society that would rather not. Rebecca reminds us that grief “cannot be processed until it is acknowledged.” And so many pandemic losses—both death and non-death—still have not been.

COVID-19 grief goes far beyond the obituary page.

Grief didn’t end when lockdowns lifted. There are billions sitting beside a metaphorical or literal “empty chair” at home, work, school, or their holiday table. People are still living with long COVID. Some are grieving the loss of their bodies, of energy they may never get back. Others lost jobs, homes, relationships, or the very foundation of safety and predictability. Many became estranged from friends and family whose politics surrounding the pandemic were hostile towards their own. Some moved cross-country to become caregivers or seek support. Others spent years without touching another human being.

Mourning and acknowledging the five year anniversary of the onset of the pandemic is not just about commemorating who we lost (although the loss of life alone is devastating); it’s about what we lost—and how quietly we were asked to lose it.

As a grief professional, I was constantly tallying the things COVID took from me: my part-time restaurant job, my in-person social life, my stable mental health, my beautiful commute to work, my trust in political leaders and my fellow humans, and, in 2022, my best friend, Tami.

There were very real moments where I genuinely believed—as many grieving people do—that one day, we’ll all have the opportunity to mourn the bigness of this. We’re surviving day-by-day right now, but in the future, we’ll come together to acknowledge the weight of all this grief.

Rebecca and I talked about the need for a national day of mourning, a time to name our grief and be in community with others who understand. But so far—at least in the United States—a country-wide effort to process COVID loss has yet to manifest.

Five years in, we still don’t have any sort of collective rituals for what happened. There was no eulogy for the millions of people who died. There is no communal roadmap for this unique, life-changing grief.

And so people come to me—in coaching calls, in DMs, in Life After Loss Academy—asking: Am I crazy for still feeling this way? Am I overreacting for still being this upset about COVID?

No, you are not. You are grieving. And in a world that seems to have “moved on,” it makes perfect sense that you feel this way.

The third wave was never a variant. It was grief.

Back in October 2020 during the height of a second wave of COVID outbreaks, Rebecca predicted in NBC News that grief would be the “third wave” of the pandemic. While we experienced a third wave of the virus in 2021, she was right about grief surging forward—a sort of aftermath wave in the wake of repeated loss.

And what makes a grief wave so insidious is that it often arrives after the urgency has faded. When support has dried up. When the check-in texts stop coming. When the world wants you to be “over it,” but your body, mind, heart, and soul are still living it.

What’s worse, much of COVID-19 grief is being met with toxic positivity:
“Don’t let it dominate your life.”
“Everything’s fine now.”
“At least it wasn’t worse.”

Statements like these are not “finding a silver lining.” And they’re certainly not comforting. They are the denial of someone else’s very real pain. As Rebecca wrote: “[Our] grief cannot be sucked away into a statistical black hole. It’s real, it’s nasty, and it requires a lifetime of management.”

We deserve better support surrounding COVID-19.

As a nation—and a world—still reeling from the loss of the pandemic, we deserve leadership that acknowledges the full weight of our grief. We deserve workplaces that don’t require death certificates in order to get three meager days off for bereavement leave. We deserve friends and family members who remember that these anniversaries still ache. And we deserve to remember our people—and our heartbreak—in public, without shame or silver linings.

In the absence of what Rebecca referred to as a “comforter in chief,” it’s up to us. To name what happened. To acknowledge what’s still hurting. To honor grief as an ongoing experience hardwired into our lives, not a brief detour from them.

If you’re still grieving a COVID-related loss, or only just realizing what you’ve carried these past five years, please know you are not too late. You are right on time. Your grief still matters. And you are still allowed to want space for it.

To hear my full conversation with Rebecca about the five year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, check out our conversation on Grief Grower here.