Unpacking our collective COVID-19 trauma, five years on

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Five years ago, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Since then, there have been lockdowns, a recession, two presidential elections and more than a million American lives lost from the disease. In many ways, life feels like it’s back to normal, but David Wallace-Wells, a writer for The New York Times, argues that the pandemic still has a grip on American life, from our faith in public health institutions to the way consumers feel about the economy. On the show today, Wallace-Wells walks us through how Americans neglected to process the seismic impact of the pandemic in the rush to recover from it, and how it’s left us more self-interested and less empathetic. Plus, how this can help explain disgruntled consumers and a growing appetite for risk-taking in the economy.

Then, we’ll get into how responses to public health emergencies have shifted to the realm of the private sector. And, we’ll hear listeners’ reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic, five years on.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

“Opinion | How Covid Remade Our America, Five Years Later” from The New York Times
“30 Charts That Show How Covid Changed Everything in March 2020” from The New York Times
“Gyms, pets and takeout: How the pandemic has shifted daily life” from The Washington Post
“It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Pandemic.” from The Atlantic
“Opinion | Covid’s Deadliest Effect Took Five Years to Appear” from The New York Times
“More Universities Are Choosing to Stay Neutral on the Biggest Issues” from The New York Times

Got a question or comment for the hosts? Email [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, listeners. Our goal at Marketplace is to raise the economic intelligence of the country,
0:06.5	and that goes for teens and young adults, too. The newest season of Financially Inclined, hosted by
0:12.2	Janelli Espinall, tackles topics like how to align your values with your money decisions,
0:18.5	the skill of negotiating, and what you can get out of internships.
0:23.5	Financially inclined is presented in partnership with Greenlight, the debit card and money app for teens.
0:29.7	Greenlight helps teens learn to earn, save, spend wisely, and invest.
0:34.8	Tune in to financially inclined wherever you find your podcasts.
0:47.5	Hello everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as
0:52.4	all of us. I'm Kyle Rizdahl, Tuesday, March the 11th, five years ago today.
0:58.7	The World Health Organization said that COVID-19 was a pandemic.
1:02.3	Tom Hanks announced that he had COVID in Australia, along with his wife, Rita Wilson, the NBA, shut down its season.
1:08.8	This is what it all happened.
1:10.6	And since then, we've had a lockdown, a recession, a couple of presidential elections,
1:15.7	a million Americans dead from this virus.
1:19.3	And while things feel like they're back to normal, they kind of are not in a way.
1:23.9	Anyway, that's what we're going to talk about.
1:26.4	Yeah, I mean, we've had so many changes
1:28.9	that are just baked into our lives now because of the pandemic like hybrid work, the explosion
1:35.5	in online shopping, delivery. And we want to know more about the pandemic's lingering effects
1:42.0	on society as well as the economy. So here to make us smart is
1:46.5	David Wallace Wells, a science writer and essayist for The New York Times. He's been writing
1:50.9	about how COVID-19 is still shaping our world. Welcome to the show, David.
	...

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