Go for the gold: Your Weekend Briefing

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March 14, 2021

By Remy Tumin and Jeremiah M. Bogert, Jr.

Welcome to a special edition of the Weekend Briefing.

Times Square on March 11, 2020.Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

A year ago, we realized everything was about to change.

We rushed to the store to get cleaning supplies and canned goods. Our bosses told us to stay home. Millions of students across the country started remote learning. For a while, toilet paper was a hot commodity. And so much more.

This week was the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaring a global pandemic, but also of something deeper: It has been a year since we had to unexpectedly and dramatically alter the way we live. Most of those changes are still part of our daily routines.

In the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that “things will get worse before they get better.” Far worse, it turned out.

Veronica Salazar at the funeral service in Orange, Calif., for her father, Israel Salazar, who died in January from Covid-19.Alex Welsh for The New York Times

At least 533,904 Americans have died from the coronavirus; the global death toll stands at 2.6 million. One in three Americans is grieving the loss of someone who died of Covid-19. Many of the virus’s victims were vulnerable, while others had been entering new chapters in their lives.

The pandemic is not over, and the U.S. death rate remains at nearly 1,500 people every day. The scarring is likely to linger for years to come.

But a year in, we are dining out on a sliver of optimism. President Biden has held out two distinct dates of hope: May 1, when all adults in the U.S. will be eligible to receive vaccines, and July 4, when modest Independence Day celebrations might start to show a resemblance to life like it once was.

Today we’re devoting this briefing to reflecting on a year of living with the coronavirus pandemic and how we have carried on, despite months of pain and disruption.

Panicked shopping at a Costco in Brooklyn last March.Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

For many, the beginning of something different was not a single event but a cascade of decisions, happenings and headlines.

“There was a palpable fear in the restaurant, and that fear was of each other,” Zachary Kaplan of Virginia told The Times. “Friends stood at a distance. There was less joy.”

He was one of 27 readers who shared with us the moment they knew the pandemic would change their life.

Serena Williams serving to Victoria Azarenka in an empty Arthur Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Open in September. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

In sports, it was more obvious: The clocks stopped. In the days between March 11 and March 13 last year, sports arenas fell silent overnight, and tournaments were canceled. The virus took the sports world as much by surprise as it did the other parts of our society.

“I didn’t think I knew the name of it,” Serena Williams told The Times about those first days of the pandemic. “I didn’t think it would spread.” Williams said that she had gone into lockdown early, when the Indian Wells tournament in California was canceled on March 8. “I just went home and stayed,” she said.

Edelina Bagaporo, 17, of Chula Vista, Calif.

Isolation hit in different ways, and our relationships became defined by distance.

More than 5,500 young people wrote in to The Times about how the pandemic had affected their lives. Being a teenager in the U.S. during the pandemic was lonely, disorienting, depressing and suffocating, they said. As one 16-year-old said of the generation’s pivotal moment: “Making history is way overrated.”

And we learned to cope differently. The enforced separations of the pandemic have brought a particular kind of mourning to many grandparents.

“It feels like a double loss,” said Kathy Koehler of Ann Arbor, Mich. “I’m losing time with this newborn that I’ll never get back. And I didn’t get to see my daughter and son-in-law fall in love with him and become parents. I felt so cheated.”

We navigated being together while being apart, redefining romantic and platonic relationships — and self-reliance. Some of us called in to the Times Primal Scream Line and just let it all out.

Chet Gordon, a long-haul trucker, checks his work hours at the Allentown Service Plaza in December.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

Lockdowns looked different depending on your class, race and gender. Higher-income families could more easily work from home and avoid dangerous in-person interactions. Essential workers kept the country running, while millions lost their jobs.

These charts show how the pandemic clearly divided the country along two story lines — the haves and the have-nots. In response, mutual aid groups sprouted up across the country to help neighbors who had been left behind.

Those of us who could work from home mostly did (and still do). Making a home office the office prompted us to ask: What are we putting up with? And why? This forced period of slowing down has been a chance to find out, Roxane Gay writes.

Leaving the office happened so fast that we didn’t have time to say goodbye — to our work friends, to our work plants. That includes The Times newsroom in New York City. Watch this silent movie about our silent office.

Sesame noodles are a signature dish at Hwa Yuan in New York City.Craig Lee for The New York Times

We found new creative outlets.

While our favorite restaurants shuttered, we started making their famous recipes at home. These 19 songs got us through the quiet. And we turned to books for comfort, distraction and escape in a tremendously upsetting year.

Great art will be made from this time, about this time, inspired by this time. Until then, we asked 75 artists to open up about their creative travails and triumphs this year.

Photograph by Jessica Lehrman; Art by Mario Hugo

Saturday nights had a different rhythm.

Do you remember what it felt like to be held and kissed by friends and strangers? “Remember we memorialized special occasions in sweat on foreheads,” Yolanda Wisher writes in Opinion, “the melting heat of a room made only for your joy?” Her essay offers a visceral reminder.

The arts superfan Edward Minieka of Chicago saw 105 live performances in the before time. Now he watches TV. We also gathered scenes from around New York City as the lights on Broadway dimmed and the 24-hour city sighed to sleep. These pictures tell a story of a city ruptured — and of resilience.

Herman Jensen Jr., 77, receiving a vaccination in Hartford, Conn., in February.Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Now, the “After” may soon be upon us.

About 68.9 million people have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 36.9 million people who have been fully vaccinated, with an average of 2.54 million shots administered daily. Hurdles remain — getting shots into arms, improving access to communities of color and addressing global disparities — but there is finally a light at the end of this.

“Just as we were emerging from a dark winter into a hopeful spring and summer is not the time to not stick with the rules,” President Biden said Thursday. “This is not the time to let up.”

“Keep wearing a mask,” he said, because “beating this virus and getting back to normal depends on national unity.”

Virus restrictions are starting to lift in Los Angeles.Allison Zaucha for The New York Times

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THE LATEST NEWS

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York is in survival mode.

Mr. Cuomo is plotting a path to salvage his job, his legacy and a potential fourth-term re-election run in 2022, according to Democrats familiar with his thinking, amid mounting allegations of sexual harassment and other misconduct. On Friday, Mr. Cuomo denied the allegations and said would not leave office or bow to “cancel culture.”

Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as most of New York’s congressional Democrats have called for his resignation.

Mr. Cuomo, our politics reporter writes, “finds himself sliding from hero-level worship to pariah-like status with the kind of astonishing speed that only the friendless suffer.”

Stimulus payments to many Americans will begin arriving in bank accounts by direct deposit this weekend, the Treasury Department said. Payments will be released in batches over the next several weeks, with some coming in the mail in the form of checks or debit cards.

The $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package represents a political about-face in the fight against poverty. While providing an array of benefits to the middle class, it also delivers more immediate cash assistance to low-income families than any federal legislation since at least the New Deal. Behind that shift is a realignment of economic, political and social forces.

The question now is how long the moment will last.

Separately, a Times investigation found that nursing homes had manipulated a government rating system in ways that masked problems — and left them unprepared for Covid-19.

And finally, catch up on some great journalism with The Weekender.

Our editors also suggest these eight new books, the latest TV recommendations from Watching, five narrated Times articles and new music from SZA and more.

Did you catch up with the news this week? Test your knowledge with our news quiz. And here’s the front page of our Sunday paper, the Sunday Review from Opinion and our crossword puzzles.

Today is the start of daylight saving time, and by the time you’re reading this, you’ve most likely “lost” an hour of sleep but gained an hour of sunlight.

Enjoy, and have a sunny week.

Claire Moses contributed to this briefing.

Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6:30 a.m. Eastern.

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