This has knocked me for a bigger loop, and I was working in midtown when the planes hit NYC.
I was back at work back then in a week or two, but for this, I’ve been working from home since March and may do so for the rest of the year. I’m also stunned at how bad the global response has been, how unprepared how many countries were, and how stupid people can be. On top of that, we have Great Depression-levels of unemployment, and that’s with trillions of dollars in stimulus. Every time I go into a supermarket or other store and see everyone separating and wearing masks, it’s just so surreal.
Aside from the sick, dead, and those who are financially in trouble, I also feel terrible for young adults and kids – they are missing real socializing time, education, proms, graduations, all these life events. At my 50+ age, one year is similar to another, but for them, each year should be different and special. Instead, they’re spending all their time cooped up in the house with the likes of me.
September 11th made us go through more security and we started a couple of wars. This feels like there may be permanent changes to how we live and travel, at least until some sort of vaccine comes along (if ever).
I hope something good comes from all this.
Like governments that plan for the future. The public taking science more seriously. People demanding competence in government.
At least I hope. But who knows.
9/11 was a bigger initial shock, but Covid-19 has been the bigger overall impact.
Covid, for certain. I was abroad when 9/11 happened, but it was a single event, and, as utterly surreal as that day was, it registered with me as a one-off. I had no psychological or mental repercussions because of it. With COVID, I had a good 6 weeks there where I felt a bit out of my mind, just not quite myself, constantly on edge, no appetite, sleeping terribly, losing weight, and it led to me to self-medicating until I finally saw a doctor and after a couple weeks, I managed to get everything back on track, and we’re good now.
So, yeah, Covid, without any question.
9/11 was dramatic but it didn’t make me afraid to enter a public building for months like COVID has.
I don’t know what I would have answered in March, and I’m not sure I know what to answer now. This is objectively more serious, and has probably had a bigger impact on my life (although 9/11, and post-9/11 travel issues did put an end to a long-distance relationship with someone I thought at the time that I might marry, so it’s hard to tell). But I feel like the emotional impact hasn’t been that big, probably because I was 43 and not 25? But if somebody in my family dies, it will be. But I don’t know that yet? I dunno. Ask me when it’s over.
Another way Covid has impacted me much more is that 9/11 was the fault of no fellow Americans (except perhaps some in the intelligence community or FBI, and even then it was probably very hard to detect.)
Covid, on the other hand, is so extremely severe in America BECAUSE of the willful ignorance or stubbornness of tens of millions Americans, who have been given AMPLE warning and information aplenty and still will not comply.
The two events knocked me for very different kinds of loops, so without more precision in the question it is hard to say. But if I refine the question to “Which was more emotionally disturbing to you in the days immediately following?” (which still could use some work, since we don’t have a clear “day zero” for Covid) I will say 9/11.
I had the sense to be vaguely frightened of Covid 19 a while before it had a local impact. But the terror was mitigated both by uncertainty (“maybe it won’t be as bad as our worst-case scenarios…”) and the fact that it wasn’t an intelligent act of deliberate aggression against me or anyone I identified with.
With 9/11, the emotional impact was instantaneous and heartbreaking. I was watching live TV when the plane flew into the second WTC tower, which removed any doubt that it was an accident. I started crying uncontrollably, and for weeks afterward my first thought every morning when I opened my eyes was, “People who hate America launched a horrible attack on us and the world will never be as innocent as it was before.”
Of course, by any objective measure Covid 19 is far worse in terms of impact: more deaths, horrible economic consequences, immeasurable damage to lives around the globe. But it is more of a “frog in gradually boiling water” situation, and also I know that the virus doesn’t “hate” anybody, there is no intelligence behind it willing harm upon anyone. I know that the pandemic is costing more lives than 9/11 (directly, at least) but there was not a single, clear moment of realizing that a momentous disaster occurred, the way there was with 9/11.
Of course, by any objective measure Covid 19 is far worse in terms of impact: more deaths, horrible economic consequences, immeasurable damage to lives around the globe. But it is more of a “frog in gradually boiling water” situation, and also I know that the virus doesn’t “hate” anybody, there is no intelligence behind it willing harm upon anyone.
Yeah. This is hard to articulate, but I also believe, as much as people right now are all squabbling and hating each other for Doing The Pandemic Wrong, there’s a pretty good chance when the whole story is written, the takeaway will be “the whole world pulled together and developed a vaccine in record time,” and people are going to forget all the petty stuff and remember it as a massive shared touchstone. Whereas 9/11 was fundamentally an Us vs. Them event, and I feel like it made us worse people – more xenophobic, less tolerant – in ways that still echo today.