Three years ago this coming week, spring was in the air. So were the sounds of neighborhood children happily playing nearby. My dogwood tree had finished its usual late-winter bloom, replaced by bustling green leaves.

Birds were chirping, and pollinating bees were hovering too close by on my balcony.

As I write this today, on a beautiful first Saturday afternoon in March, the same scenario applies.

But there are some notable differences.

The howling of loud cars, often racing, is constant. At times it sounds like the Indianapolis 500, 24/7.

These annoying noises have become part of the soundtracks of our lives since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared here in Georgia and elsewhere during the second week of March 2020.

A few days ago, as I pulled out of my office park, three hot rodders were zipping up Johnson Ferry Road, flooring past the Dick’s Sporting Goods store.

They had a rare empty straightaway on that busy corridor and took advantage of it, and I briefly shut my eyes, fearing a crash that fortunately didn’t happen.

Life for most of us has returned to whatever seemed normal before, as the virus has mutated into into less lethal variations. Even those who believed we could eradicate a respiratory virus—something that’s never happened before in human history—now understand that COVID-19 is not going away.

While it was a tragic killer—more than 35,000 Georgians, and nearly 2,000 in Cobb County are among those who have died—the collateral damage stemming from the COVID-19 response figures to be immeasurable, and its effects will last far longer than the danger of the illness.

As surreal as the lockdowns were—something not previously done in Western, supposedly democratic nations—what’s even more troubling now is that there’s little appetite for scrutinizing those mitigations.

Even though many of the narratives—about mask and vaccine effectiveness and natural immunity in particular—are collapsing.

I’ve been skeptical of the restrictions all along, but as a journalist I felt I owed my readers an open mind as this saga unfolded.

During the height of the pandemic, Dr. Janet Memark, director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, periodically briefed the Cobb Board of Commissioners about COVID-19. She provided data, explained why the precautions were needed and reminded all of us to do our part.

She was trying to be helpful and informative, but her script essentially followed whatever messaging came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, whose credibility took a major blow during this pandemic.

Not long after then-Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce said he was keeping county parks open during a state of emergency, he was persuaded by public health officials to close them.

For six weeks in the glorious spring, with our public health experts knowing the outdoors were not only not dangerous but healthy to be in—the gates were locked at East Cobb Park, Mabry Park and others in Cobb County. Playgrounds were closed for a bit longer.

It was absurd then, and it’s even more ridiculous recalling it now.

Just as bizarre was an impromptu meeting of the Cobb Board of Health in the fall of 2021, called essentially to shame the Cobb County School District into reimposing a mask mandate.

On the Zoom meeting, Memark was shown in a room by herself, wearing a mask. The district didn’t budge, but remains a defendant in a federal lawsuit over the lack of a mandate.

Business closures were devastating. A nail salon owner on Johnson Ferry Road told me when she was allowed to reopen after six weeks that she wondered if customers would come through the door.

Even though Georgia was the first state to allow a wide swath of businesses to reopen, not enough of her clientele came back right away, and she closed her doors for good during the early summer.

A hair salon owner further down on Johnson Ferry was still feeling the effects of the closures in December 2020, admitting that federal government relief loans, while welcome, were not going to be enough.

Our state and local leaders here in Georgia and Cobb weren’t nearly as heavy-handed as their counterparts elsewhere, but they should be obligated to explain how they think their actions fared.

My guess is that’s not likely to happen, and not just because they can’t defend what they’ve done. There’s an unspoken desire to move on and put this behind us, but it’s not that easy.

On a personal level, covering COVID was an experience like no other. Of the few events I attended in person during those early months, they invariably required me to submit to having a temperature gun pointed at my forehead.

In June of 2020, not long after the horrific death of George Floyd in Minnesota, I covered a Black Lives Matter rally in front of Trader Joe’s.

I approached a masked woman and her two young masked sons about why they came. We were outdoors, but she shrieked in horror because I wasn’t wearing a face covering.

She accused me of trying to harm her children and refused to talk to me. I’ve been given plenty of no-comment brushoffs in my career, but that one’s near the top of the list.

The woman pictured here without the mask—she had no problem talking to me, although she didn’t give me a last name.

I received a harrowing phone call from a mother after Cobb schools started the 2020-21 school year virtually, her two daughters aching to get back to school with their friends. The woman cried and poured her heart out, then thanked me for the therapy session.

Others left equally agonizing messages in early 2021, trying to schedule vaccination appointments. They were elderly, and the Cobb and Douglas Public Health website had crashed, and there wasn’t a phone number to call.

I’ve never felt more helpless.

As a human being, I wasn’t faring so well the longer the hysteria continued. After a family member had fought off COVID in early 2021, I was on a social media thread with familiar people and pushed back against those demanding vaccine mandates.

A former co-worker kindly informed me that I had the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead Americans on my hands.

The church I attended, like many houses of worship, remained closed for months, and when it reopened, it was very restrictive, with no singing or fellowship, and reservations were required.

My nephew in Florida didn’t get to have his high school graduation in 2020, as the anxieties of adults trumped the once-in-a-lifetime experiences of youth. At least Cobb seniors that year got to have commencement exercises, belatedly.

The power of fear was on display like I’ve never experienced before, and some people will never be the same.

These memories may seem distant now, and I can understand why many don’t want to revisit such a painful time.

But they can’t be memory-holed. Too many people lost their livelihoods and their bodily autonomy over the last three years. Their kids’ schooling was disrupted, social life was flattened and community bonds were ripped apart.

We’re lucky in East Cobb to be in a community that has been able to rebound from this ordeal fairly well, but many people are still hurting, financially, emotionally and socially.

This unprecedented, disastrous response to a virus with a high recovery rate needs to be fleshed out at every level, including in Cobb and Georgia.

Like those calling for a federal COVID policy post-mortem it would behoove our officials here at home to offer one themselves.

I would have only one question for them to answer honestly, if they cared: Do you think it was worth it?

Related:

• Editor’s Note: Giving thanks to East Cobb News readers
• Editor’s Note: The joys of labor in building for the future
• Editor’s Note: Why we’re keeping reader comments—for now
• Editor’s Note: East Cobb News is Alive at Five and primed for more
• Editor’s Note: Community and the East Cobb Cityhood saga

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