The COVID-19 pandemic is over, but the changes it brought to politics, work and play remain

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Five years ago, millions of Americans began asking the same question.

How long will this go on?

The COVID-19 pandemic was just getting started and the world as most had known it was changing in ways that would affect the lives of everyone. Kitchen tables became homework spaces. Schoolchildren got their lessons on laptops via Zoom. The term “essential worker” became synonymous with doctors, nurses and the checkout clerk at the grocery store.

Everything seemed to be changing, all at once, and no one knew how long it would take to return to normal.

Today, Americans still don’t know. The pandemic is over, but if normal means a return to life as it was before the pandemic, this isn’t normal.

From the way Americans work and play to the way they vote and worship, the pandemic continues to touch lives every day. Enquirer reporters set out to examine how and why.

For children, there's no place like school

Most students can't learn if they aren't physically at school. Nothing proved this better than the COVID-19 pandemic.

When schools sent students home to learn remotely in March 2020, a lot of educators thought it was a temporary inconvenience. But some districts, including Cincinnati Public Schools, continued to close for COVID-19 outbreaks well into 2022.

Karen Eads, a Norwood City Schools elementary teacher, said the first-graders who came to her classroom after remote kindergarten weren't the same as students she'd taught in the past. Some didn't know their letters and numbers, how to count or what sounds each letter makes.

“They usually know those kinds of things when they get here," Eads told The Enquirer in 2021.

Learning losses fueled by the pandemic persist today, despite the millions of dollars the federal government funneled to schools in hopes of bringing struggling students up to speed. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, students lost about half a year of instruction in math because of the pandemic, and nearly a third of a year of instruction in reading.

'The news is not good:' Reading, math scores in Ohio still worse than pre-pandemic

Their social skills suffered, too. Being away from other kids for so long left them ill equipped for the most basic interactions.

"Working together collaboratively, sharing, things of that nature," said Eugene Blalock, Jr., superintendent of North College Hill City Schools. He and his teachers also have noticed students are more "easily angered or agitated" these days.

This combination of academic and social regression among students has left teachers to bear the brunt of kids' bad behavior, while working overtime to get students back on track. School leaders are getting creative to address these needs – with some making more drastic changes than others.

Blalock's district, for instance, was the first in the region to switch to a four-day week after the pandemic.

The goal, Blalock said, is to give teachers more time to plan lessons and use data to drive instruction that will “meet the students where they are.”

Remote work is a pandemic survivor

After the pandemic was declared in March 2020, stay-at-home orders and an overall state of panic among many employees meant millions of office workers would be working from home.

Downtown work hubs, including Cincinnati's, emptied in a hurry. Five years later, many companies are requiring employees to return to the office, while others embrace the work-from-home ethos as a new way of doing business.

“We're seeing a gradual shift back to working in the office, but we're also seeing some smaller companies moving in the opposite direction,'' said Colleen Pfaller, a consultant with Cincinnati-based One Digital, a human resources and consulting firm.

"Some companies see (remote work) as an employee benefit and are just now offering it for the first time to help them stand out and give them a competitive advantage'' when it comes to recruiting, Pfaller said.

She said a strong labor market over the past several years has helped shift power to employees who may insist on remote or hybrid work options or threaten to leave.

“I think work-from-home will be permanent,” Pfaller said.

That's especially true for younger workers in the computer and tech industries, where the competition for highly skilled workers puts employees in the driver's seat.

In the Cincinnati metropolitan area, 39.6% of millennials (ages 27 to 44) worked off-site, making up the largest group of remote workers in the area, according to a recent analysis of Census data by CoworkingMag – a digital magazine.

Millennials were followed by Generation X (ages 45-60), which made up 34.5% of remote workers and Baby Boomers (ages 61-79), who accounted for 17.2% of remote workers.

Overall, 13.2% of workers were working remotely or in a hybrid manner at the end of 2023. Before the pandemic, fewer than 6% did so. Cincinnati companies like Procter & Gamble, GE Aerospace and Cincinnati Financial all still have at least some portion of their office employees working a hybrid schedule that allows two days or more of work from home.

One of the consequences of all that remote work is a surge in unused office space in Cincinnati and around the country.

According to Moody’s Analytics, office vacancy rates reached 20.4% last year, compared to 16.4% in 2019.

The political divide is deeper than ever

TJ Roberts wanted to get out of political activism and focus on law school in 2020. Then the pandemic hit, and Roberts made politics an even bigger part of his life.

He now serves as a state representative for almost 50,000 people in Northern Kentucky.

Roberts, a Republican, is part of a new era of politicians on both sides of the aisle who ran for office in the months and years after the start of the pandemic. Some were moved by the impact of COVID-19 on the poor or by other social issues. Others, like Roberts, voiced loud opposition to government shutdowns, mask requirements, church closures and mandatory vaccinations.

Roberts was one of several people who filed a lawsuit against Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear when he banned mass gatherings, including church on Easter Sunday. They said Beshear was violating their religious freedom and a judge agreed. 

Beshear had to pay $270,000 in attorney’s fees.

When Roberts ran for office in 2024, he handily beat his GOP opponent and won the general election with 70% percent of the vote. His race was emblematic of a schism among more traditional Republicans and those, like Roberts, who embraced President Donald Trump and far-right positions.

“What we see right now," Roberts said, "it wouldn't have happened without COVID."

The reason, he said, is that before COVID, most people didn’t think much about the government’s ability to impact their lives unless they got pulled over for speeding or didn't pay taxes on time. COVID-era restrictions and the uneven economic recovery that followed flipped that narrative.

According to the Pew Research Center, trust in federal institutions, elected officials, the U.S. Supreme Court and public health professionals plummeted in the wake of the pandemic.

“That was the thing that really just brought me back in” to politics, Roberts said. “The government is never going to stop trying to trample upon the fundamental liberties of the people."

Strong feelings like those have deepened the nation’s political divide, contributing to heated rhetoric over any number of issues, from immigration to abortion. And major differences remain in how Republicans and Democrats view public health and vaccines.

Beshear, the Democratic governor whose response to COVID inspired Roberts’ new political activism, has lamented the pandemic’s impact on national discourse.

“COVID should have never been infused with politics,” he said in 2021.

Health care employment bounces back but not everywhere

COVID-19 didn’t lead to a mass exodus of health care workers, as some experts predicted during the traumatic first year of the pandemic.

But it did shake up the health care industry. While employment is strong today in hospitals and physicians’ offices, nursing homes and other facilities still haven’t recovered and struggle to find enough workers to care for patients.

“There was, at a certain point in the pandemic, a lot of discussion about whether everybody was going to be quitting their health care jobs,” said Emma Wager, a senior policy analyst at the health policy nonprofit KFF. “The data shows that that has not happened.” 

She said that may be because wages in health care have kept pace with inflation, increasing between 20% and 25% since 2020.  

Still, the recovery isn’t universal. Hospitals and doctors’ offices returned last year to pre-COVID employment levels, according to Wager and her team's analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but skilled nursing and elder care facilities remained below 2020 staffing levels.  

“That does continue to be a big problem,” Wager said.

Yet even in hospitals, where employment has recovered, the staff isn’t the same as before the pandemic.

Kylee Ham, a nurse who's worked in the emergency department of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for over six years, said new nursing school graduates and travel nurses, who are not based in the hospital, have filled out the ranks in the years since the pandemic.

“Many of those experienced nurses have left the profession,” Ham said.

Board president of the Registered Nurses Association, UCMC’s local chapter of Ohio’s largest nurses’ union, Ham said the staffing data also doesn’t account for changes in work conditions since the pandemic. She said patients and families are more aggressive, possibly because of longer wait times in emergency rooms, making the jobs of nurses and doctors more difficult and even dangerous.

“There's not a shortage of nurses,” Ham said. “There's a shortage of nurses willing to work under unsafe conditions.”

More takeout food, fewer trips to restaurants

Outside of health care, few businesses were hit harder by COVID than restaurants.

The pandemic not only shuttered restaurants nationwide, it led to massive worker shortages as chefs, cooks, waiters and dishwashers left for more stable employment.

A correction soon followed, with owners offering higher wages and more benefits to lure back employees. But that, along with higher food costs, led to higher prices on restaurant menus that continue to this day.

Another trend that appears here to stay is the popularity of third-party delivery services, such as UberEats and DoorDash. The use of third-party delivery services increased three-fold during and after the pandemic, said John Barker, president of the Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance.

While that trend means customers are still spending at restaurants, it comes at a cost for restaurant owners: Most third-party services charge commissions to restaurants of 20% to 30%.

“Delivery fees have skyrocketed for restaurants,” Barker said. “It lowers their margins." But given that so many diners are choosing them, most restaurants owners now consider them a necessary evil."

"It is both essential and terrible at the same time," said Anthony Sitek, who owns several Cincinnati restaurants, including Crown Cantina, Losanti, Rosie's Italian and Five on Vine. He said services like DoorDash and UberEats cut into their bottom line significantly.

While the steady business he receives from delivery orders helps Sitek with essential costs, including payroll, the money they generate pales compared to what he would make if people came into his restaurants like they did before the pandemic.

Other restaurant owners say they’ve reluctantly embraced delivery services, too, seeing it as a way to stay competitive, especially among younger diners who are more comfortable with having their food delivered and with paying more for it.

“After many years of fighting them away, we added DoorDash last March," said Mike Burke, owner of Zip’s in Mount Lookout. “That added a giant increase to our carry outs. As much as I dislike them, they added a significant increase to our bottom line.”

What annoys many restaurant owners, Barker said, is the loss of control over the experience customers have when they visit their restaurants. Some food just doesn't travel well, Sitek said.

"Eating at a restaurant is so much better," he said. With delivery, you are getting an inferior product. French fries just don't taste the same if they've been sitting in a car for an hour."

'COVID affected the practice of faith seriously'

The Rev. Jan Schmidt knows the numbers as well as anyone.

The Catholic priest monitors the annual data on Mass attendance in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and he can see for himself how many of his fellow Catholics attend the services he presides over every week at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains.

To put it simply: There aren’t as many in the pews as there used to be. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 131,000 Catholics attended Mass every week in the archdiocese. Last year, about 113,000 did.

“COVID affected the practice of faith seriously,” said Schmidt, director of the Center for Parish Vitality. “We’re slowly, I think, climbing out of that hole.”

Schmidt is a man of faith, but there is evidence to support his belief. After a precipitous fall in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Mass attendance has rallied a bit. Climbing by at least a few thousand every year since.

Yet it has not come all the way back. And this worries not just Catholic leaders, but those of other faiths who are experiencing a similar trend. Church attendance is better than during the pandemic, but it’s not what it was before the pandemic.

“Fewer people are attending church. Fewer people are religious,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit group that studies faith in America.

“Some people speculated after COVID that there might be a bounce back, but we really haven’t seen that,” she said.

The big question is how much of the decline is related to COVID and how much already was happening. Churchgoing and church membership have been in decline generally for decades as Americans have drifted from organized religion.

In 2003, according to Gallup, 61% of Americans said religion was very important in their lives. In 2019, it was down to 49%.

Today, it’s about 45%.

To some, blame falls on disruptions like the clergy abuse scandal in the Catholic Church or divisive arguments over gay marriage, abortion or other politically charged issues in any number of faiths. To others, it’s more about the secular world crowding out religious belief.

Schmidt is optimistic. COVID may have given some a reason to walk away, he said, but the slow uptick in attendance after COVID is reason for hope.

“In general, I think people are coming back,” he said. “They need it. They need God.”

This story has been updated.