P.S. - Five Years Since Lockdown
Reflections on 5 Years Since Lockdown, how to start journaling and (actually) stick to it, + all my recent obsessions
Hi friends!
Happy April!
We’re a week into the new month, but since it’s the first Monday, I’m dropping in with your monthly bonus issue of P.S. March was full, and I’ve got a long list of favorites to share.
Today’s issue is on the longer side, so if you’re short on time, the key below can help you jump around:
🔒 Lockdown, Revisited
📝 How to Make Journaling Stick
🎧 Worth the Listen
👩🏽🍳 Recipes to Try
📚 Books to Add to Your List
🎥 Reel Roundup
🔒 Lockdown, Revisited
This March marked five years since the start of the COVID lockdowns. It's wild to think about. Those early pandemic days feel like a different lifetime, and also, like just a few weeks ago.
Reflecting on the anniversary, The Daily released an episode with a title sure to attract attention: “Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?” The episode features two academics, Stephen and Frances Lee, both prominent political scientists whose recent work has pushed back on the previous assumption that aggressive lockdowns were the best way forward. They’re also the authors of the new book In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, and they posed some really interesting questions worth reflecting on.
At the time, lockdowns became a political and moral lightning rod. And in many left-leaning spaces (mine included), it felt like a given that they were not only necessary but perhaps ended too soon. But Macedo and Lee push back, pointing to pre-pandemic research that suggested lockdowns likely wouldn’t contain a virus effectively—and to newer data that shows lockdowns slowed transmission but didn’t have much of an impact on overall mortality.
They also make a crucial point: public health policies don’t exist in a vacuum. Even if something should work in theory, it doesn’t mean people will comply in practice—and what people will actually do often matters just as much as what they should do.
At some point, lockdowns became a moral test, a symbol of caring, of doing the right thing. But five years later, I hope we can revisit these policies with more nuance and less certainty. If we’re interested in learning from these five years, we must be willing to hold our beliefs up to the light.
Early in the pandemic, I journaled a lot. I have an entry from nearly every day of those first few months. It’s probably the most consistent record I’ve ever kept—and going back through those pages now feels surreal. Check out this entry from March 17th, 2020:
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Join our paid community to unlock the rest of this issue, including:
🔒 Lockdown, Revisited
📝 How to Make Journaling Stick
🎧Worth the Listen
👩🏽🍳Recipes to Try
📚 Books to Add to Your List
🎥 Reel Roundup