The stages of pandemic emotion: from horror to hope to rage — and now, an anxious optimism

The first days of summer this year saw Americans jubilant, as Covid-19 cases plummeted across the country. The sentiment morphed to anger as the Delta variant exploded, and as vaccine holdouts prolonged the pain of the pandemic — and then to despair, that even with remarkably protective shots, some communities with low vaccine coverage endured their worst stretches of the crisis. Now, with trend lines heading in the right direction, we’re moving toward a kind of timid optimism. “People are almost holding their breath,” said Columbia University epidemiologist Wafaa El-Sadr. “They’re encouraged, but at the same time, they’re hypervigilant. It’s really a result of prior experiences.” There are reasons to allow, at least partially, for an exhale. The Southern states that witnessed horrific summertime waves have seen them subside, after the Delta variant swept through so many of the people who remained susceptible. Nationally, cases have fallen by a third in recent weeks, and have been dropping for enough time that now deaths are coming down. Hospitalizations have declined to below 75,000 for the first time in weeks. All those metrics got so high, however, that they have quite a ways to plunge to reach the levels of June.