There's no such thing as moving on from COVID-19

These days, it’s not uncommon to hear that we’re moving on from the pandemic. But what exactly does that mean? A few months ago, I went to Lamb County, Texas to find out. Nearly one out of every 100 residents in these rural, panhandle towns has died from COVID-19, one of the highest death rates in the nation. Many people there were immersed in right-wing misinformation during the pandemic, and they continue to believe that the virus was not that bad, even when they know people who died from it. Others are still angry over the loss of people they loved, but they don’t have a clear idea of who to blame. It became clear to me that the pandemic was not merely an event over the past three years—it’s a reverberating, resonating crisis that still affects people to this day, and which changed places like Lamb County forever.

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