An image of a person writing in their notebook inside their home.
As the end of 2020 approaches, it can be meaningful to reflect on the diverse impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on different areas of life and how that might affect one’s outlook for the year 2021. The unprecedented changes brought about by COVID-19 have required people to adapt to situations that they could never have predicted and face a wide variety of challenges at school, work, home, and their personal relationships. The suffering and death caused by COVID-19 has been deeply painful for many people. The pandemic has also shed light on various socioeconomic issues such as access to affordable healthcare, access to adequate technology to enable remote learning/remote work, and the financial hardship caused by job loss. People of color and people with lower incomes have been disproportionately impacted by lack of access to resources and are more likely to hold jobs that cannot be performed remotely.
In what ways have you witnessed people adapting to the disruption caused by COVID-19? Consider different aspects of life, such as the way people go to school, who they spend time with, routine activities such as eating and exercise, what people are doing for fun, etc. You can discuss examples from your own life, from society at large, or both.
Taking into consideration the disparate impacts summarized above, has COVID-19 changed your opinions on healthcare, technology, and/or the economy in any way? What takeaways do you think would be useful for the U.S. to consider in a post-COVID world?
Although it remains unclear how quickly or slowly life will return back to normal in 2021 and beyond, how is your 2020 influencing your expectations for 2021 (the types of experiences you may or may not have, the activities you may or may not do, what goals you want to achieve, etc.)?
This prompt was written by Allison Chow, a Words Alive volunteer.