WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

Breaking news tonight, the coronavirus outbreak declared a global pandemic.

We will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.

The NBA has suspended its basketball season until further notice.

Reflecting on five years since our lives, our politics, and our country changed forever.

This is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston.

I'm Ashley Locke.

Today on the show, we remember one of the first Americans to die of COVID-19, a son, husband,

DJ, and Baker.

And in the early days of the pandemic, public health experts advised us to stop traveling.

Staying close to home taught us a lesson about the importance of community.

People really had to hunker down, whether it was in their own homes, and suddenly, you know, the 10-block radius around your home never mattered more.

But first, COVID altered our lives and culture in lasting ways.

The Pew Research Center surveyed almost 10,000 people about this last fall and found most agree that the

pandemic drove the country further apart. Scott Tong speaks with Pew's Alec Tyson. In some ways,

the national reaction has really been made up of two competing viewpoints. One, more commonly

held by Democrats, that the health threat is high, it's severe and generally supportive of restrictions and actions. In another viewpoint, more commonly held by Democrats, that the health threat is high, it's severe and generally

supportive of restrictions and actions.

And another viewpoint, more commonly held by Republicans, that while there is a health threat,

it may not be the most intense threat and there are mixed views or less support for some of the

restrictions.

So even all these years later, five years later, we still see echoes of the pandemic and that there are still differences between the parties on how big a deal is COVID and what should we be doing about it.

...