COVID and caring

I remember the build-up more than the moment itself.

I remember January 2020, hearing about a virus in China. February, watching numbers climb in many countries. The World Health Organization declaring it a pandemic on March 11. By the time everything locked down here in mid-March, we’d been watching it spread for weeks, this growing dread that it was coming for us too.

And then it arrived.

The deaths started mounting everywhere at once. Loved ones died alone in hospitals. Numbers climbed so fast we stopped being able to hold them as individual losses. Seniors homes were ravaged by a virus that moved through hallways and took lives before anyone understood how to stop it. Many had family members far away they couldn’t reach.

The world stopped in a way I’d never experienced. Borders closed. Flights were grounded. People isolated in their homes. Families were unable to gather at bedsides. Funerals were postponed, or held with friends and relatives standing metres apart in the cold.

For those no longer with us, those who died from COVID, those who died from other causes during that isolating time, those whose losses compounded in ways we couldn’t have imagined, may their memory live on in the hearts of those who loved them. May the good they brought to this world not be forgotten in the accounting of what was lost.

The grief of that time wasn’t just about death. It was about disconnection. Information kept changing. Some people believed the government was lying. Others thought neighbours weren’t taking it seriously enough. Some felt we weren’t told all the truth, or we were told conflicting truths, or the truth kept shifting because no one really knew yet. Trust fractured along with everything else. That not knowing what was true, or who we could trust, didn’t stay abstract; it filtered into everyday conversations.

And underneath all of it, many were struggling. People lost jobs. They ran out of money. They found themselves suddenly without the informal supports they’d relied on.

Needs began to surface. People came out of hospital with nothing at all at home. Or they left addiction treatment into empty apartments. Families fled bad situations with little kids and no diapers. Neighbours with barely any food in their cupboards.

And almost imperceptibly at first, something began to happen across the city. Networks of care formed, not through official channels or organized campaigns, but through conversations between friends and online groups, through people who couldn’t sit still with what they were seeing.

They started gathering food, clothing, hygiene items, and housewares to offer to people who needed them. Food distribution systems formed. Support groups and mutual aid initiatives became a lifeline to many, connecting those who had surplus with others in need, coordinating rides and deliveries across the city, making wellness-check calls.

In those years, so many kind and generous souls met each other in parts of the city they might not have visited otherwise. Care moved along unfamiliar routes, creating new connections, new understandings.

COVID eventually receded. The urgency lifted. Many volunteer efforts quieted. Most returned to their routines. The shared sense that we were all in this together gradually faded as vaccines arrived and restrictions eased.

But the work didn’t stop. The needs didn’t disappear. If anything, they deepened as emergency supports ended and attention moved elsewhere.

What became visible during COVID, what so many responded to with such generosity — those realities are still here. Many in our city still live with barely enough. Homelessness hasn’t decreased. Systems are still struggling to properly address the magnitude of the problem today.

And so some are still walking, still checking in, still collecting donations and matching needs with resources. Others are still organizing donation drives, participating in neighbourhood support efforts, or joining inner city outreach groups. The networks that formed so quickly when crisis made need visible haven’t entirely dissolved. But they’re smaller now, quieter, carrying on without the momentum that collective urgency creates.

What that time revealed, through countless individual acts of care, was that networks of kindness can form quickly when a crisis makes the need visible. That ordinary people have an extraordinary capacity for generosity. That showing up matters, even when — especially when — systems fail.

There were moments of witnessing both suffering and profound compassion that will stay with those who saw them. There were lessons learned about what’s possible when people pay attention.

This is what happened during a particular moment in history. Solidarity can create extraordinary systems of care when it matters most. Not perfect in the traditional sense. Not systematic or comprehensive. But perfect in a different way. Community for community. Neighbours showing up for neighbours. And that made all the difference.

Carina Blumgrund writes from Winnipeg.