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March 7, 20258 min readCOVID Pandemic Fatigue Has Left the U.S. Vulnerable to New ThreatsThe quarantine fatigue of 2020 became an ongoing pandemic fatigue, a complex set of emotions that continues to affect the nationBy Meghan Bartels edited by Tanya LewisPeople wearing protective masks wait on a subway platform at Grand Central in New York, U.S., on Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesDuring the five-plus years that COVID has existed, our conception of the virus that causes it has been a slippery thing. It has been a terrifying mystery and a daily reality, a killer pathogen and just the flu, an alphabet of variants that burst on the scene only to disappear from public consciousness.Amid all this morphing, what has stayed constant is that COVID has been, in one way or another, wearying in a bone-deep way. It was tiring to disinfect surfaces and then to learn that the virus was in fact airborne. It was tiring to scramble for toilet paper, for masks, for vaccines. It was tiring to fear an invisible virus and to stay away from other people. And it has been tiring to return to societywhether with abandon, fear or something in between.Regardless of how each of us has responded to the viruss threats, its shadow has haunted our lives for five years in ways we never even thought to imagine before we encountered the then novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. I think were all exhausted, and were not actually admitting it, says Alexandre White, a sociologist and historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Thats a problem, he says. Theres real power in mourning and real power in memorial, White says. I think weve too easily moved on from COVID in such a way that we assume that since we all lived through it, theres nothing really more to talk about, and I think that theres a lot more to talk about.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Discussing how each of us experienced the past five years and its many stressorsand listening to others do the samecould be a way to heal the rifts that COVID has left in U.S. society.The Pandemics TollNot long after COVID hit the U.S. in earnest, the phrase quarantine fatigue had come into use. As the days turned to months, the language morphed into pandemic fatigue. But the fatigue itself has had countless sources over the years, and the term has often encompassed many more emotions than simply fatigue, including loneliness, sadness, anger, fear and boredom.Each persons experience was influenced by a host of factors. The most severe one, of course, has been deathso much death. In 2020 COVID killed or contributed to the deaths of at least 385,000 people in the U.S. And in 2021 the number was more than 463,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Losing family members early, without proper deathbed visits or funerals, brought a particular type of pain. And while their rate has declined, the deaths have continued. As of March 6, the five-year death toll was 1,225,281 people. Even now, the tally grows by hundreds every week.Those of us who have so far escaped COVID without it stealing loved ones have nonetheless faced grief, stress and fear, particularly during the early weeks and months of the pandemic, that were unthinkable to many Americans in 2019.Medical professionals suffered high rates of burnout and moral injury. The people classified as essential workersgrocery cashiers and farm workers, delivery drivers and electriciansfound themselves suddenly risking their lives for their jobs. Children abruptly had to learn from a screen, while working parents, particularly mothers, attempted to simultaneously oversee a makeshift classroom. Proms and holiday gatherings, happy hours and vacations were all canceled.In October 2024 half of U.S. adults surveyed about their experience said that COVID took a minor toll on their lives; another quarter say it took a major one. Thirty percent overall said they had experienced a toll that they had not or only somewhat recovered from.El Centro Fire Department firefighter/paramedic Chase Adame decontaminates his PPE (personal protective equipment) after treating a woman who fell in a parking lot in hard-hit Imperial County amid the COVID-19 pandemic on July 21, 2020, in El Centro, California.Mario Tama/Getty ImagesIts not surprising that COVIDs acute stages took a toll in the U.S.or that the recovery has been difficult here. The country was out of practice when it came to dealing with pandemics. Many of the disease scares of recent decadesSARS, MERS, Ebola, Zikain large part spared the U.S. Even the swine flu of 2009, which killed 12,500 people in the country within its first year, fizzled out in less than two years. The spread of HIV/AIDS has been devastating, but its transmission routes have allowed many Americans to feel isolated from its threats. The previous most severe respiratory epidemic the U.S. faced was the influenza pandemic of 1918, a full century before COVID.The 1918 pandemic was very different from the rise of COVID in 2020, says Nancy Tomes, a historian at Stony Brook University. In the U.S. the bulk of influenza infections occurred during just a couple of months in the fall of 1918 and while the nation was at war.People were used to devastating infectious diseases in the early 20th centurystill, the U.S. public struggled with pandemic restrictions. Even at a time when the majority of Americans had experience with deadly infectious diseases and were much easier to scare, they had trouble changing their behavior to prevent the spread of something fast-moving, she says.Since then scientists and doctors have had some success in taming germs, thanks to the twin wonders of vaccines and treatments, Tomes says. Americans had started to expect that theres a drug for everything and a vaccine for everythingand that if there is a dangerous new disease and there isnt an immediate cure or vaccine for it, somebody has done something wrong, she says.The Many Flavors of Pandemic FatigueWhen COVID first hit, many people leaned into their communities, making sacrifices in attempts to protect neighbors and loved ones. But as time went on, communal thinking seemed to fray in the face of clear challenges. Solidarity disintegrated as a host of factors lumped into a diagnosis of pandemic fatigue took root.Scientists scrambled to understand COVID and the virus that caused itwith some remarkable success. But to everyday people living in fear, the process was a far cry from the grade-school vision of how settled science works. This was a lot more uncertain, says Richard Carpiano, a public health scientist and sociologist at the University of California, Riverside. What the public really got out of this was a front-row seat to watching science unfold.Early in the pandemic, some people who survived COVID didnt fully recover. These long haulers, as they were soon dubbed, fought against medical systems that didnt expect the new virus to trigger an array of disabling long-term conditions that came to be known as long COVID. Today people with this condition are learning how limited support for people with such disabilities can be in the U.S.While a virus was invading peoples bodies, it also really crept into these fault lines of our society and our culture. Richard Carpiano, public health scientist and sociologistUnsurprisingly, COVID hit societys least-privileged members hardest: people of color, low-income people and the elderly. Inequality haunts every epidemic, White says. Epidemics can cause inequities in a society, but more often than not, they prey very effectively on the existing inequities within the population.Pandemic action plans failed to account for opposition to safety measures, including school closures, mask mandates and vaccination, says Andrew Lakoff, a medical anthropologist at the University of Southern California. Political actors seized on this dissent to drive people apart. We were suffering from anxiety and a lot of people getting sick and dying, and the social fabric was getting torn apart, he says.Despite the viruss novelty, scientists produced effective vaccines against it on a miraculously short time line, deploying them within a year after infections began. But existing antivaccine efforts that focused on childhood vaccines and targeted mainly parents also moved fast, latching on to the new vaccines. The COVID vaccine that the whole population had to take diffused a lot of the antivaccine discourse into the general public, Carpiano says.Throughout it all, medical professionals who had risked their lives from the beginning found themselves not only still facing a constant onslaught of patients but now also trying to squash misinformation and denial about the disease.As these threats built and COVID continued to bulldoze its way across the U.S, people moved away from collective care for one anothers health. COVID shots became an annual ritual for some, but only one in every four or five adults in the U.S. now gets the vaccine. Only 4 percent of U.S. adults report regularly wearing a mask, which reduces transmission of not only COVID but also colds, the flu and other respiratory infections. COVID was a radical test of collective unity, and America deeply unveiled its individualism and lack of collective heart, says Emily Mendenhall, a medical anthropologist at Georgetown University.COVIDs Continuing ImpactWhatever the source of fatigue, the U.S. public generally was eager for the COVID pandemic to end. Pandemics end when a sizable proportion of the population feels that theyre not at risk from the disease anymore, White says. This occurs regardless of how accurate the assessment is or how poorly it applies to the rest of the population. Theres a certain luxury in claiming a pandemics ending, he says.In March 2025 its easy to feel the world is just as chaotic as it was five years agoor worse. I think people are sick of talking about COVID, and I dont think its because people don't care, Mendenhall says. I think its just because there are so many more pressing issues right now.The pandemic pushed U.S. society past its limits in ways that continue to reveal themselves. Donald Trump is president again, politics are more divisive than ever, and bird flu threatens to become the next human pandemic, even as the president is axing science and social safety nets.The timing may not be a coincidence, given how the pandemic made people reevaluate their relationship with the government and the role they want it to play in their lives. While a virus was invading peoples bodies, it also really crept into these fault lines of our society and our culture, Carpiano says. It makes us think about our social contract with our government in terms of what it means to provide for our well-being and for our safety.None of these trends bodes well for the U.S.s ability to effectively respond to the next public health crisiswhether its avian influenza or something else. White sees a sharp contrast with the 1918 pandemic: by its end, no one wanted to talk about it, but its memory helped inspire the creation of the World Health Organization and other antipandemic measures. Today its primarily community organizers and long COVID activists, as well as public health experts, who are leading efforts to turn the painful experience of COVID into something that can help prepare us for future disease threats.Pandemic preparedness is not a last-ditch solution; its really a constant set of strategies for monitoring such threats, White says. Im concerned today with pandemic defeatismwhere rather than maintain systems prepared for another pandemic or continue combating COVID-19, we might be too quickly choosing to ignore the very real risks that are out there and instead throw up our hands, suggesting that theres perhaps nothing we can do.In our exhaustion, that strategy may sound appealing. But it risks even more dire consequences than the ones COVID has brought. That would be such an incomprehensible tragedy, White says. We can do betterand we have to do better, for each other.
