For Americans of a certain age, “Where were you on March 11, 2020?” might not rank quite as dramatically as “Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001?” But the full, stunning aftermath of the former could easily eclipse the latter, if it hasn’t already for some deep thinkers.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which was declared three years ago Saturday by the World Health Organization, has led to death and destruction thousands of times worse than the terrorist attacks now known simply as 9/11. While 9/11’s impact was immediately felt and came without warning, the breadth of the pandemic’s impact has been infinitely wider and deeper.

For nearly a generation, it was believed that the societal changes forced upon us by 9/11 could never be surpassed by anything other than military warfare. The eternally ramped-up security, political upheaval, uglified public areas with unceremonious barriers — not to mention the 2,996 attributed deaths — was more than enough to stagger the memory. Memories, incidentally, that today’s young adults could never be expected to have.

Boy, was that wrong. How easy it could be to forget the stages of the increasing clampdowns, necessary isolation, original uncertainty and anxiety of life — both before and after the existence of COVID-19 vaccines.

Yet, time passes and perspectives change. For me, 9/11 still brings bittersweet memories of once being able to walk all the way to airport gates without a ticket and not having to take off shoes or ditch liquids. Of not seeing ugly containers and barriers inserted before important buildings, to thwart possible terrorists. Of not being treated like “other” unfortunate countries’ frightened people in public areas.

Before 2001, that wasn’t life in the US, youngsters.

Mostly, though, it reminds me that my father unexpectedly died the next day. Never to wake up from his night’s sleep, after an emergency room visit two days earlier shamefully failed to detect a broken back and internal bleeding after a fall from his wheelchair. His birthday, coincidentally, is Saturday.

In that way, 9/11 means something much different to me than most people. Yet I’ll still share similar scars of that Tuesday when three hijacked airliners forever jolted the mood and public actions of the world’s greatest nation.

And so it will be with COVID-19 as well. For some, death did not visit. Yet they will be inconvenienced by emergency measures — some in place forever — all the same. 

More people have been touched by death and poor health because of COVID than the 9/11 tragedy, no doubt. All of us, regardless of geography or any desire to fly, have had to battle the ruthlessness of an invisible, non-aligned demon. It has wiped out Democrats and Republicans, Americans and citizens of other nations alike, without prejudice and almost with equal disregard.

Check that. Some have been hit harder than others, of course. Long-term care workers and leaders know that better than anyone: The elderly and health-compromised have been the biggest victims of the pandemic. And by extension, long-term care workers have also been affected the most. They have had a front-row seat to the highest percentage of deaths and infections and represent a still-unsettled workforce.

By most accounts, more than 200,000 long-term care workers have vanished from the LTC landscape. Most may never return, unlike other healthcare sectors’ lost employees, who have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels by now.

Worse, those who stayed on nursing homes’ front lines throughout did something most others never have had to do: Head into a setting daily where COVID-19 was confirmed to be at its most lethal. By extension, they put their own family at risk; and then had to expect that those same family members would curtail their activities so the nursing home employee wouldn’t become a pipeline of deathly germs into their facility.

Those who weren’t there won’t be able to relate.

But hopefully as time passes, just like with 9/11, some psychological and physical pains will fade. Never totally or forever. But time has a way of changing things.

And that is the hope today. That the passage of time does a good deed. Surely a year from tomorrow, the fourth anniversary of the declaration of the pandemic won’t sting as much. 

As nursing home personnel have known since long before the deadliest public health emergency in a century barged onto the scene, there is no direction to look but forward.

And the only way to have a chance at success is to continue to roll out of bed each day and show up, no matter where you call home or work.

James M. Berklan is McKnight’s Executive Editor.

Opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News columns are not necessarily those of McKnight’s.