Becoming so notorious that we are almost reluctant to even repeat its name,  COVID-19 has been a constant topic of discussion ever since it hit foreign shores from its origin. News media has been covering updates on this virus for over a year now, and every part of life has been affected by it. From healthcare to economy and school to social life the pandemic has created a wave of change in nearly every area of living that could be thought of. Even the environment has seen its changes throughout the pandemic. Whether they are positive or negative, it is important to be aware of these changes.

Unsurprisingly, the healthcare system has been the most directly affected by this pandemic. Over-the-phone medical care has become much more prominent, helping people to realize how easy to access it can be. Rapid-style medical research has shown effectiveness in finding solutions to health problems. Stable and satisfactory mental health has proven its importance, as well as has illustrated how something as simple as leaving the house can affect it. 

Perhaps the most lasting impact on healthcare, however, will likely be the financial effect COVID-19 has made on the system. Overall, medical institutions have lost a plethora of money due to all of the Covid testing, research funding, overwhelming numbers in hospitals and other pandemic expenses. 

According to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, “The American Hospital Association estimates a financial impact of $202.6 billion in lost revenue for America’s hospitals and healthcare systems, or an average of $50.7 billion per month.” Health care is not free, and the money for these things does not come out of thin air. Our healthcare will likely be catching up from these financial blows for years to come. Relative to healthcare’s financial challenges, our economy has experienced its struggles as well.

Prior to Covid, quarantine was not a familiar concept to the public. With the national lockdowns that America underwent, our economy came to a screeching halt. Many would argue that the country has even entered a global economic crisis.  Overall business rates crashed when people could no longer leave their homes. The citizens of Utah were even asked to eat out during lockdown to support local businesses who would struggle with no customers. 

Jana Terrell, one of many who worked from home through this pandemic, shared with me her experience. “Covid really affected the business of the company I was working for. People could no longer afford products they used to be able to afford and the company lost a lot of customers because of that,” she said. Many companies struggled with this same issue, causing some of them to go completely out of business. With people unable to leave their homes, businesses were not the only ones without their normal attendees, though. Schools saw what were perhaps the most substantial effects of lockdown.

For students around the world, education has been affected by COVID-19 regulations. As many may remember, schools across the country shut down in March of 2020 and some of them never reopened. Teachers had to learn how to reach their students from beyond the classroom and teach them the curriculum without overwhelming them, not to mention all while being swamped with emails and work to do themselves. Students had to learn how to teach themselves and encourage productivity in themselves while at home all day. Many of said students, and teachers, have experienced mental burnout with school due to the stress of these circumstances. 

Allison Bridge, a teacher at Bingham, stated, “Covid has affected the way I teach by my having to reevaluate my lessons for their ability to be easily adaptable to online learning and also having to decide what parts of the curriculum to cut out because of losing Fridays for instruction.” Not only do teachers have to revise the way they normally teach, but they also must decide which parts of their curriculum is most worth keeping in, resulting in overall learning decreasing. 

Bridge also said, “I find that most students seem to feel that if I can’t see half their faces, they’re somehow hidden completely from view. It’s taken longer than it ever has to feel as though I am connecting with students.” The student-teacher relationships that classrooms normally withheld are no longer as feasible as they were prior to Covid restrictions.  

More mentionable effects on education include a platform that may sound familiar: Zoom. This app, and others like it, have made at-home learning much more attainable for those who need it. Canvas has also become widely used among teachers to give their students a place to find all of their work, both done in class and assigned for home. 

Students have more access to learning when they are unable to be present at the school than they ever had before. Zoom classes, whether they are more hated or more appreciated, have allowed education to reach beyond the classroom. In relation to these communication methods changing, social life has taken a different route as well.

When it comes to video chatting, such as facetime, skype, zoom etc, some have claimed that it has made them feel much more disconnected from their normal socialization. Talking through video technology can create a feeling of distance between the people communicating. Many students who have done classes over video chat dislike these methods of communication due to issues with connection leading to video and audio lagging and overall call failure. 

It is also more difficult for people to have group discussion with these methods because of these same issues, which can lead to people talking over each other and getting cut off. This is one of the many struggles that have become all too familiar to people through COVID-19. Social life has been affected by the virus in other ways as well.

With the dangers of the virus lurking in social events, in-person activities and conversations were placed on the back burner. Text, video chat, and social media have become the means of communication more than ever before. As if the world was not already becoming increasingly more reliant on cell phones to carry social interaction, Covid created a dynamic in which communication was primarily over the phone. This has created an increase in phone addiction and reliance in the world. This means society has gotten much more comfortable with avoiding in-person contact and communication, a direction the world was already facing as phones have become more prevalent. The world has seen effects in much more physical, noticeable ways too, though.

The environment has surely experienced effects due to Covid. On the downside of things, there has been a lot of medical waste from the pandemic, as well as a decrease in help when it comes to environmental issues that previously existed. 

On the more positive end, there was a mentionable decrease in air pollution as people were staying in their homes rather than driving around to their daily normalities. There was also a decrease in water pollution in many areas with people remaining in their homes as well. This has brought attention to the difference that can be made in damaging our environment with day-to-day habits, such as driving, creating waste and even recreational activities like fishing and hunting. 

The population of many animals has boomed during the pandemic, allowing those that were on the brink of extinction or endangerment a greater chance to beat these circumstances. These changes are rather temporary, but the effect can be permanent if people notice how nature thrives when a few harmful practices are cut out every day.

COVID-19 has become something that the world will never be able to forget. It affected every area of life and many of these effects will be lasting. Both positive and negative, the world will continue to experience changes that otherwise would not have come about without the global pandemic we have pushed through together.