Impact of covid-19 on our lives 10 points

The outbreak has dramatically changed Americans’ lives and relationships over the past year. We asked people to tell us about their experiences – good and bad – in living through this moment in history.

By Patrick van Kessel, Chris Baronavski, Alissa Scheller and Aaron Smith

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The outbreak has dramatically changed Americans’ lives and relationships over the past year. We asked people to tell us about their experiences – good and bad – in living through this moment in history.
How does COVID
What is the biggest impact of Covid?
What are the impacts of the COVID

March 5, 2021

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Pew Research Center has been asking survey questions over the past year about Americans’ views and reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. In August, we gave the public a chance to tell us in their own words how the pandemic has affected them in their personal lives. We wanted to let them tell us how their lives have become more difficult or challenging, and we also asked about any unexpectedly positive events that might have happened during that time.

The vast majority of Americans (89%) mentioned at least one negative change in their own lives, while a smaller share (though still a 73% majority) mentioned at least one unexpected upside. Most have experienced these negative impacts and silver linings simultaneously: Two-thirds (67%) of Americans mentioned at least one negative and at least one positive change since the pandemic began.

How we did this

For this analysis, we surveyed 9,220 U.S. adults between Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020. Everyone who completed the survey is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Respondents to the survey were asked to describe in their own words how their lives have been difficult or challenging since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, and to describe any positive aspects of the situation they have personally experienced as well. Overall, 84% of respondents provided an answer to one or both of the questions. The Center then categorized a random sample of 4,071 of their answers using a combination of in-house human coders, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service and keyword-based pattern matching. The full methodology and questions used in this analysis can be found here.

In many ways, the negatives clearly outweigh the positives – an unsurprising reaction to a pandemic that had killed more than 180,000 Americans at the time the survey was conducted. Across every major aspect of life mentioned in these responses, a larger share mentioned a negative impact than mentioned an unexpected upside. Americans also described the negative aspects of the pandemic in greater detail: On average, negative responses were longer than positive ones (27 vs. 19 words). But for all the difficulties and challenges of the pandemic, a majority of Americans were able to think of at least one silver lining.

Both the negative and positive impacts described in these responses cover many aspects of life, none of which were mentioned by a majority of Americans. Instead, the responses reveal a pandemic that has affected Americans’ lives in a variety of ways, of which there is no “typical” experience. Indeed, not all groups seem to have experienced the pandemic equally. For instance, younger and more educated Americans were more likely to mention silver linings, while women were more likely than men to mention challenges or difficulties.

Department of Orthopaedics, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Sarita Vihar Mathura Road, New Delhi, 110076, India

Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer

Abid Haleem: [email protected]; Mohd Javaid: [email protected]; Raju Vaishya: [email protected]

∗Corresponding author. [email protected]

1https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=4047148AAAAJ&hl=en

2https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=rfyiwvsAAAAJ&hl=en

3https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=2Lu3gQ0AAAAJ&hl=en

Received 2020 Mar 21; Accepted 2020 Mar 27.

Keywords: Coronavirus, COVID-19, Pandemic, Healthcare

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Dear Editor,

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has affected day to day life and is slowing down the global economy. This pandemic has affected thousands of peoples, who are either sick or are being killed due to the spread of this disease. The most common symptoms of this viral infection are fever, cold, cough, bone pain and breathing problems, and ultimately leading to pneumonia. This, being a new viral disease affecting humans for the first time, vaccines are not yet available. Thus, the emphasis is on taking extensive precautions such as extensive hygiene protocol (e.g., regularly washing of hands, avoidance of face to face interaction etc.), social distancing, and wearing of masks, and so on. This virus is spreading exponentially region wise. Countries are banning gatherings of people to the spread and break the exponential curve.1 , 2 Many countries are locking their population and enforcing strict quarantine to control the spread of the havoc of this highly communicable disease.

COVID-19 has rapidly affected our day to day life, businesses, disrupted the world trade and movements. Identification of the disease at an early stage is vital to control the spread of the virus because it very rapidly spreads from person to person. Most of the countries have slowed down their manufacturing of the products.3 , 4 The various industries and sectors are affected by the cause of this disease; these include the pharmaceuticals industry, solar power sector, tourism, Information and electronics industry. This virus creates significant knock-on effects on the daily life of citizens, as well as about the global economy.

Presently the impacts of COVID-19 in daily life are extensive and have far reaching consequences. These can be divided into various categories:

A)
Healthcare
- •
  Challenges in the diagnosis, quarantine and treatment of suspected or confirmed cases
- •
  High burden of the functioning of the existing medical system
- •
  Patients with other disease and health problems are getting neglected
- •
  Overload on doctors and other healthcare professionals, who are at a very high risk
- •
  Overloading of medical shops
- •
  Requirement for high protection
- •
  Disruption of medical supply chain
B)
Economic
- •
  Slowing of the manufacturing of essential goods
- •
  Disrupt the supply chain of products
- •
  Losses in national and international business
- •
  Poor cash flow in the market
- •
  Significant slowing down in the revenue growth
C)
Social
- •
  Service sector is not being able to provide their proper service
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  Cancellation or postponement of large-scale sports and tournaments
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  Avoiding the national and international travelling and cancellation of services
- •
  Disruption of celebration of cultural, religious and festive events
- •
  Undue stress among the population
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  Social distancing with our peers and family members
- •
  Closure of the hotels, restaurants and religious places
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  Closure of places for entertainment such as movie and play theatres, sports clubs, gymnasiums, swimming pools, and so on.
- •
  Postponement of examinations

This COVID-19 has affected the sources of supply and effects the global economy. There are restrictions of travelling from one country to another country. During travelling, numbers of cases are identified positive when tested, especially when they are taking international visits.5 All governments, health organisations and other authorities are continuously focussing on identifying the cases affected by the COVID-19. Healthcare professional face lot of difficulties in maintaining the quality of healthcare in these days.

How does COVID

Information overload, rumors and misinformation can make your life feel out of control and make it unclear what to do. During the COVID-19 pandemic, you may experience stress, anxiety, fear, sadness and loneliness. And mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression, can worsen.

What is the biggest impact of Covid?

The High Cost of Health Care This costly spending causes financial hardship for more than 900 million people and pushes nearly 90 million people into extreme poverty every year – a dynamic almost certainly exacerbated by the pandemic.

What are the impacts of the COVID

From school closures to devastated industries and millions of jobs lost – the social and economic costs of the pandemic are many and varied. Covid-19 is threatening to widen inequalities everywhere, undermine progress on global poverty and clean energy, and more.