covid 19 quotes for essay

11 Literary Quotes That Speak to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Lily Dunn is an avid reader and an intrepid explorer, and she has never met a cheese she didn't like. She lives with her husband in Hong Kong where she works a literacy teacher and goes hiking almost every weekend. You can read her musings on books, mental health, faith, and what it means to live wholeheartedly at lilyellyn.com or follow her travels and expat adventures at keeproamingon.com.

View All posts by Lily Dunn

If there is a motto for the current situation, it must be “We are living in uncertain times.” The media constantly bombards us with how unprecedented each new development is.

This kind of language tempts us to think of ourselves as unique—in our personal experiences and in our moment in history. If there is one thing literature can do for us, it is to remind us that we are not unique, and therefore we are not alone.

Literature is powerful because it speaks to the human condition. It reflects our circumstances and gives meaning to them.The details might be new, but the experiences of fear, isolation, boredom, anxiety, and longing for safety are not.

Here are some literary quotes for a pandemic that are surprisingly apt, even in these “unprecedented” times.

“’I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’” —J.R.R. Tolkein

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” —Maya Angelou

“The living can’t quit living because the world has turned terrible and people they love and need are killed. They can’t because they don’t. The light that shines into darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into the great room. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, into whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones.” —Wendell Berry

“The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself.” —Lao Tzu

“When ‘I’ replaced with ‘We’ even illness becomes wellness.” —Malcolm X

“We’re all under the same sky and walk the same earth; we’re alive together during the same moment.” —Maxine Hong Kingston

“We were together. I forget the rest.” —Walt Whitman

“‘Where are we going, Pooh?’ ‘Home, Piglet. We’re going home because that’s the best thing to do right now.'” —A.A. Milne

“Home is the nicest word there is.” —Laura Ingalls Wilder

“There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.” —Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

“One situation—maybe one alone—could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.” —Patricia Highsmith

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35 Quarantine Quotes to Help You Articulate Your Social Distancing Feelings

Some will make you smile and others will ground you — a few make for great social captions, too.

You've probably spent the majority of the last few months finding ways to get by: Maybe you've whipped up new recipes , redecorated or reorganized , hosted virtual happy hours , and played plenty of games with friends . It's okay if you're starting to feel the hopelessness creep in, though. The first step to dealing with anxiety, stress, or other feelings around COVID-19 is to acknowledge them.

Why not heed words of advice from those who have overcome all the issues we're experiencing now? Take stock of the moment to remind yourself that the pandemic will come to an end one day, and find motivation to empower yourself to get through the situation as best as you can. Below, we're sharing the most inspiring (and funny!) quotes from leaders, authors, and celebrities alike.

15 Inspiring Quotes to Get You Through Quarantine:

• “I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”– Oscar Wilde
• "Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” – Pablo Picasso
• "You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” – Wayne Dyer
• "Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured... Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to." — Susan Cain
• “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”– Orson Welles
• “The ingredients of health and long life are great temperance, open-air, easy labor, and little care.” — Philip Sydney
• "To lose patience is to lose the battle.” — Mahatma Gandhi
• “One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.” — Chinese Proverb
• “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you'll ever know.” — A.A. Milne
• "If plan A doesn't work, the alphabet has 25 more letters — 204 if you're in Japan." — Claire Cook
• "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." — Maya Angelou
• “Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” — Marie Curie
• "Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough." — Oprah Winfrey
• "Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of." — Angelina Jolie
• "No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind." — Taylor Swift

10 Humorous Quotes to Put Quarantines Into Context:

• “Please kindly go away, I’m introverting.” — Beth Buelow , Author
• "Near, far, wherever you are... make sure you’re practicing social distancing!" — Celine Dion
• "Life is a menu, so remember whatever you order for your life is what’s gonna be delivered to your table." — Tyrese Gibson
• "Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit." — Molière, Playwright
• "Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats." — Voltaire
• "People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day." — A.A. Milne
• "People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily." — Zig Ziglar, Author
• "Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia." — Charles Schulz, Illustrator
• "Optimist: Someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it’s more like a cha-cha ." — Robert Brault , Author
• "Change is not a four letter word… but often your reaction to it is!" - Jeffrey Gitomer, Author
• "Try to be like the turtle – at ease in your own shell." — Bill Copeland, Poet
• "There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want." - Bill Waterson , Cartoonist

10 Best Social Media Captions About Quarantine and Social Distancing:

• "I'm an introvert... I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky." — Audrey Hepburn
• "Life imposes things on you that you can’t control, but you still have the choice of how you’re going to live through this." — Celine Dion
• "Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment." — Oprah Winfrey
• "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger." — Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." — Theodore Roosevelt
• "When it rains, look for rainbows; when it's dark, look for stars." — Oscar Wilde
• "Life keeps throwing me stones. And I keep finding the diamonds." — Ana Claudia Antunes
• "Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one." — Dr. Seuss
• "Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of chaos, and sometimes in the middle of chaos, you find yourself." — Boonaa Mohammed
• “Nothing is impossible: The word itself says “I’m possible!” — Audrey Hepburn

Zee Krstic is a content strategy manager for Hearst Magazines, focusing on SEO optimization and other editorial strategies for four brands, including Country Living, House Beautiful, ELLE Decor and VERANDA. He previously served as Health Editor for Good Housekeeping between 2019 and 2023, covering health news, diet and fitness trends as well as executing wellness product reviews in conjunction with the Good Housekeeping Institute. Prior to joining Hearst, Zee fostered a strong background in women's lifestyle media with eight plus years of editorial experience, including as a site-wide editor at Martha Stewart Living after developing a nutrition background as an assistant editor at Cooking Light . Zee produces service-based health coverage, as well as design and travel content, for Hearst brands on a contributor basis; he has written about food and dining for Time, among other publications.

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Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Compiled by Gareth Jones; Editing by Mike Collett-White

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

by Alissa Wilkinson

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

• The Vox guide to navigating the coronavirus crisis

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

• A syllabus for the end of the world

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

• What day is it today?

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

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In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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On 3/11/20, WHO declared a pandemic. These quotes and photos recall that historic time

Three years ago, the novel coronavirus swept the world. Here are 24 quotes and 13 photos that sum up the reaction in the weeks before the World Health Organization's declaration of a global pandemic.

Three years ago, on March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was officially designated a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The novel coronavirus had fanned out across the globe, and the world had lost its ability to contain it. Countries reacted to the emerging disease with a mix of denial, incredulity and fear. Here's what global health officials and political leaders were saying in the weeks leading up to that WHO declaration.

Jan. 5, 2020 : WHO issued an announcement that not quite a week prior, their China Country Office had learned of "cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. As of 3 January 2020, a total of 44 patients with pneumonia of unknown etiology have been reported to WHO by the national authorities in China."

January 9, 2020 : WHO continued to share what they knew of events in China. "Chinese authorities have made a preliminary determination of a novel (or new) coronavirus, identified in a hospitalized person with pneumonia in Wuhan ... WHO continues to monitor the situation closely."

Jan. 14, 2020 : In the early days, public health officials had little idea that this novel coronavirus would spread across the globe. Maria Van Kerkhove, the acting head of WHO's emerging diseases unit, told Reuters , "From the information that we have, it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families, but it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission."

January 22, 2020 : When CNBC asked President Donald Trump about any concern of an impending pandemic, he didn't hesitate: "No. Not at all ... We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine."

Jan. 23, 2020 : Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said in a statement that the coronavirus outbreak was not yet a public health emergency of international concern. He added, "Make no mistake. This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one."

Meanwhile, Wuhan was shutting down. The Chinese newspaper People's Daily tweeted : "No people in #Wuhan... will be allowed to leave the city starting 10 a.m. of Jan. 23. Train stations and airport will shut down; the city bus, subway, ferry and long-distance shuttle bus will also be temporarily closed."

Jan. 29, 2020 : Warnings from global health officials were becoming increasingly dire. In Geneva, Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said , "The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any cases that come from the epicenter or other epicenter that becomes established."

Jan. 30, 2020 : "Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed the emergence of a previously unknown pathogen, which has escalated into an unprecedented outbreak," Tedros said. He went on to declare "a public health emergency of international concern over the global outbreak of novel coronavirus. The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China, but because of what is happening in other countries."

On the same day, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, remarked , "Given what we've seen in China and other countries with the novel coronavirus, CDC experts have expected some person-to-person spread in the U.S. We understand that this may be concerning, but based on what we know now, we still believe the immediate risk to the American public is low."

Feb. 3, 2020 : Claiming early action around the novel coronavirus, Chinese President Xi Jinping, said , "I explicitly demanded Hubei province [where Wuhan is located] implement comprehensive and strict controls on the outflow of personnel on January 22."

Also on that day, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a speech in Greenwich, England. Partway through, he commented, "when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs ... some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other."

Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S.'s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was alarmed. He told CNBC : "It's escalating. The number of cases that increase from one day to another is clearly going up in a very steep slope."

Feb. 7, 2020 : Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist in Wuhan, died after contracting the novel coronavirus nearly a month earlier. He had gained attention by first sounding the alarm over the new virus and then being reprimanded by Chinese authorities. Li was forced to sign a statement saying he'd propagated a rumor, but in an interview with The New York Times a week before his death, he said, "I felt I was being wronged, but I had to accept it. Obviously I had been acting out of good will. I felt very sad seeing so many people losing their loved ones." He added, "If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier, I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency." Li was survived by his son and his wife, who was pregnant with their second child at the time.

Feb. 11, 2020 : At a WHO briefing , Tedros officially christened the novel coronavirus. "We now have a name for the disease," he said. "COVID-19. I'll spell it: C-O-V-I-D hyphen one nine – COVID-19." The "19" refers to the year when the virus first surfaced — 2019. "Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing," Tedros continued, alluding to the use of nomenclature such as "Wuhan virus" and "China virus." He added, "It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks."

He used the same briefing to press world leaders to focus on containing the virus. "To be honest," he said, "a virus is more powerful in creating political, economic and social upheaval than any terrorist attack ... A virus can have more powerful consequences than any terrorist action .... If the world doesn't want to wake up and consider this enemy virus as public enemy number one, I don't think we will learn our lessons."

Feb. 22, 2020 : "The increasing signs of transmission outside China show that the window of opportunity we have for containing this virus is narrowing," Tedros warned .

Feb. 23, 2020 : In a speech , President Xi admitted, "This is both a crisis and a big test for us."

Feb. 25, 2020 : CDC's Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the incident manager for the COVID-19 response, described in a telebriefing the likely possibility of canceling large gatherings and closing schools and workplaces. "I understand this whole situation may seem overwhelming," she acknowledged, "and that disruption to everyday life may be severe."

Feb. 28, 2020 : On this day, WHO raised the global risk of the coronavirus from "high" to "very high." In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health stated that, "The first case of COVID-19 is now confirmed in New Zealand in a person in their 60s recently returned from Iran." New Zealand, under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, would go on to have one of the most effective early responses to the coronavirus, keeping the illness at bay by closing its borders and shuttering swaths of its economy.

March 3, 2020 : Prime Minister Johnson said , "I was at a hospital the other night where I think ... there were actually coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you'll be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands." Just over a month later, Johnson would return to the hospital and require " liters and liters of oxygen " — 10 days after testing positive for COVID-19.

March 9, 2020 : "In my understanding," said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, "the destructive power of this virus is overestimated. Maybe it's even being promoted for economic reasons." At this point, Brazil had only registered 25 cases of COVID-19 and no deaths. Today, Brazil has had nearly 700,000 deaths due to the virus.

An early and widening outbreak in Italy led Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to lock down the country's north. It was an unpopular move. Conte remarked to La Repubblica newspaper that this was Italy's "darkest hour." He added, "It is not easy to change life habits from one day to the next and accept personal sacrifices in view of a collective good. [But] if we all respect the rules, the country will soon be able to raise its head again."

March 10, 2020 : Despite outbreaks in Brazil, Italy and over 100 other countries — and clear evidence that the coronavirus was spreading within Washington state, after a meeting with Republican senators, President Trump announced , "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

March 11, 2020 : In January, WHO had called COVID-19 a virus of concern. Now, in an announcement , Tedros upgraded it: WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock, and we are deeply concerned by alarming levels of severity and inaction. We have made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic."

COVID-19 went on to be responsible for the first pandemic ever caused by a coronavirus. More than three years in, there have been 759 million cases and almost 7 million deaths worldwide.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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• Student life

Coronavirus expert quotes and analysis

Coronavirus - expert quotes .

"The WHO and government's around the world have created policy to respond to outbreaks...,like coronavirus, based on the tenets of prevent, detect and respond - all rooted in epidemiological practice and very well evidence based. 

But what they fail to take into account with this focus on this type of response is the direct and indirect impacts these outbreaks have on women." - Dr Clare Wenham (listen to podcast here) " The key point that needs to be emphasised here is that human to human transmission is not rare with these types of viruses." - Dr Stephen L. Roberts

"We are seeing the mechanisms of global health security spring into action to respond to the Coronavirus; the problem is that after years of underinvestment we, as a global community, are still not prepared for a “big one”. Even strong heath systems may struggle, and where does that leave weak health systems across the global south?" - Dr Clare Wenham

"I think the critical thing to remember here in relation to the SARS episode in 2002-2003, with what we've recently been witnessing with the Chinese government and several cities involved in the outbreak in China, is that many years have passed, we've had many advancements in surveillance and manay global advancements in information sharing have been made since then." - Dr Stephen L. Roberts

"Unprecedented quarantines like we’ve seen in China need greater investigation. Firstly we saw many Wuhan citizens leave before it was in place, thereby not limiting infection. Secondly, such methods can be regressive, penalising the most marginalised; through limited access to transport, food and healthcare." - Dr Clare Wenham

"With this outbreak, China has demonstrated itself to be more forthcoming with providing information regarding the outbreak of this new growth virus and in it's co-operation with global health authorities. But the larger question of whether China has handled this outbreak well, I think ultimately is a question we can only start to answer once the outbreak has been brought under control..." - Dr Stephen L. Roberts

"We also need to remember this is not the only global health emergency occurring now - Ebola continues across DRC, as does a significant Measles outbreak in that country." - Dr Clare Wenham "The screening processes that are being used - this obviously depends on what diagnostic method we are referring to. There is a lot of focus, for example, on screening that's being done in airports around the world, there's been a lot of discussion and analysis of how this particular method of screening can be circumvented, for example by taking medications that lower fevers..." - Dr Stephen L. Roberts

Protectionist policies designed to seal off a country from infection; by prohibiting travel, repatriating nationals or airport screening will only have limited effects. Due to global communication routes those who need to travel will find a route. Instead we need to invest in systems and front line healthcare workers to identify and treat cases if and when they emerge, using the range of infection control protocols we have at our disposal. - Dr Clare Wenham

Coronavirus FAQS Information for students and staff concerned about coronavirus

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

What Are We Grateful for During COVID-19?

In many places around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic means perpetually living under the gun. When we walk out of our doors, we can’t let our guard down. Even grocery shopping can feel fraught with danger. Moreover, many people fear for their jobs and futures. This has also been a period of intense political conflict in the United States and of fires up and down the West Coast. Seeing threats everywhere triggers stress and anxiety.

At the same time, the pandemic has profoundly limited the scope of many lives. It’s cut many of us off from variety. It means our home-cooking, day after day, instead of restaurants or potlucks. It means being alone in our apartments—or seeing the same people every day, in the same house, and not meeting new ones in other places. There might be a lot of good in our homes, but at a certain point, through sheer repetition, we might stop seeing how others enhance our daily lives. Humans already tend to take the good things for granted—a psychological phenomenon called “ hedonic adaptation ”—and the groundhog-day nature of lockdown only exacerbates that tendency.

Threatening or just mundane, pandemic conditions do not make fertile ground for thankfulness. But gratitude is one of the tools we can use in both of these circumstances. When we give thanks for everyday things, we make them visible again. When we’re able to do that, numerous studies suggest , we give our happiness a little boost and train our brains to see the good , even amid so much bad .

Gratitude is a tool that many people are using right now on Thnx4.org , the Greater Good Science Center’s online journal. There, people can sign up for a gratitude challenge that prompts them to document and share “thanks” on a regular basis. They can also record times when they were thanked by someone else, and how that made them feel. We survey participants about their well-being before they start the Challenge, and again after it’s complete, in order to understand the impact of Thnx4.

When we analyzed data from the past six months, a couple of patterns stood out. We found that journaling your gratitude during the pandemic on Thnx4 is beneficial—after a challenge, people tend to be more resilient, more satisfied with life, and less lonely. However, these same effects were greater in the period before the lockdown began.

In other words, people aren’t doing as well as they were before the pandemic—but even at that lower baseline, giving thanks still helps. The data also suggest that the people using Thnx4 have been on an emotional rollercoaster: They were sadder, but felt more affection and less anger than they did before the pandemic. We also saw a significant increase in people hearing gratitude from others, which we take to be a very good sign—it suggests that we’re taking care of each other. In reviewing public gratitudes during the pandemic period, we discovered a vivid progression from shock to acceptance—and a growing appreciation for the good things we get from other beings, including our pets, and from nature and society. A journey through expressions of gratitude during the pandemic reveals how we’re helping each other through it. And so, here, we thought we’d share examples of gratitude during COVID-19, grouped by major categories.

Romantic partners

Family, children, and pets

Friends and neighbors

Cooperation, help, and solidarity from strangers

Technology that enables connection

Jobs and coworkers

Frontline workers

Exercise and fresh air

The opportunity to help others

Thnx4 also allows users to share times when they were thanked by someone.

Time with yourself

About the Authors

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D. , is the science director of the Greater Good Science Center, where she directs the GGSC’s research fellowship program and serves as a co-instructor of its Science of Happiness and Science of Happiness at Work online courses.

Jeremy Adam Smith

Uc berkeley.

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the GGSC’s online magazine, Greater Good . He is also the author or coeditor of five books, including The Daddy Shift , Are We Born Racist? , and (most recently) The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good . Before joining the GGSC, Jeremy was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

You May Also Enjoy

Eight Acts of Goodness Amid the COVID-19 Outbreak

How I’m Finding Purpose and Connection in a Pandemic

Six Habits of Highly Grateful People

How Can We Cooperate When the Pandemic Is Driving Us Apart?

How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times

How Does COVID-19 Affect Trust in Government?

• How to Order

Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

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Are you looking to write a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic?

Writing a compelling and informative essay about this global crisis can be challenging. It requires researching the latest information, understanding the facts, and presenting your argument persuasively.

But don’t worry! with some guidance from experts, you’ll be able to write an effective and persuasive essay about Covid-19.

In this blog post, we’ll outline the basics of writing a persuasive essay . We’ll provide clear examples, helpful tips, and essential information for crafting your own persuasive piece on Covid-19.

Read on to get started on your essay.

• 1. Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19
• 2. Examples of Persuasive Essay About COVID-19
• 3. Examples of Persuasive Essay About COVID-19 Vaccine
• 4. Examples of Persuasive Essay About COVID-19 Integration
• 5. Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19
• 6. Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19
• 7. Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19
• 8. Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19 

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

• COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
• Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
• Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

• Introduction
• Background Information
• Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
• Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences , evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About COVID-19

When writing a persuasive essay about the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Here is another example explaining How COVID-19 has changed our lives essay:

Let’s look at another sample essay:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

If you're in search of a compelling persuasive essay on business, don't miss out on our “ persuasive essay about business ” blog!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About COVID-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the COVID-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

Interested in thought-provoking discussions on abortion? Read our persuasive essay about abortion blog to eplore arguments!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About COVID-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get an idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

Looking for a persuasive take on the topic of smoking? You'll find it all related arguments in out Persuasive Essay About Smoking blog!

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively. 

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

• Choose a Specific Angle: Narrow your focus to a specific aspect of COVID-19, like vaccination or public health measures.
• Provide Credible Sources: Support your arguments with reliable sources like scientific studies and government reports.
• Use Persuasive Language: Employ ethos, pathos, and logos , and use vivid examples to make your points relatable.
• Organize Your Essay: Create a solid persuasive essay outline and ensure a logical flow, with each paragraph focusing on a single point.
• Emphasize Benefits: Highlight how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being.
• Use Visuals: Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics to reinforce your arguments.
• Call to Action: End your essay conclusion with a strong call to action, encouraging readers to take a specific step.
• Revise and Edit: Proofread for grammar, spelling, and clarity, ensuring smooth writing flow.
• Seek Feedback: Have someone else review your essay for valuable insights and improvements.

Tough Essay Due? Hire Tough Writers!

Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19 

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

• The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
• Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
• The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
• The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
• Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
• The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
• The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
• The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
• Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
• The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

MyPerfectWords.com is a professional persuasive essay writing service that can help you craft an excellent persuasive essay on Covid-19. Our experienced essay writer will create a well-structured, insightful paper in no time!

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good title for a covid-19 essay.

A good title for a COVID-19 essay should be clear, engaging, and reflective of the essay's content. Examples include:

• "The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Health"
• "How COVID-19 Has Transformed Our Daily Lives"
• "COVID-19: Lessons Learned and Future Implications"

How do I write an informative essay about COVID-19?

To write an informative essay about COVID-19, follow these steps:

• Choose a specific focus: Select a particular aspect of COVID-19, such as its transmission, symptoms, or vaccines.
• Research thoroughly: Gather information from credible sources like scientific journals and official health organizations.
• Organize your content: Structure your essay with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• Present facts clearly: Use clear, concise language to convey information accurately.
• Include visuals: Use charts or graphs to illustrate data and make your essay more engaging.

How do I write an expository essay about COVID-19?

To write an expository essay about COVID-19, follow these steps:

• Select a clear topic: Focus on a specific question or issue related to COVID-19.
• Conduct thorough research: Use reliable sources to gather information.
• Create an outline: Organize your essay with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• Explain the topic: Use facts and examples to explain the chosen aspect of COVID-19 in detail.
• Maintain objectivity: Present information in a neutral and unbiased manner.
• Edit and revise: Proofread your essay for clarity, coherence, and accuracy.

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Paper Due? Why Suffer? That’s our Job!

Keep reading

I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

More from TIME

Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

More Must-Reads from TIME

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• The 7 States That Will Decide the Election
• Why China Won’t Allow Single Women to Freeze Their Eggs
• Is the U.S. Ready for Psychedelics?
• The Rise of a New Kind of Parenting Guru
• The 50 Best Romance Novels to Read Right Now
• Can Food Really Change Your Hormones?

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12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

A dozen writing projects — including journals, poems, comics and more — for students to try at home.

By Natalie Proulx

The coronavirus has transformed life as we know it. Schools are closed, we’re confined to our homes and the future feels very uncertain. Why write at a time like this?

For one, we are living through history. Future historians may look back on the journals, essays and art that ordinary people are creating now to tell the story of life during the coronavirus.

But writing can also be deeply therapeutic. It can be a way to express our fears, hopes and joys. It can help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

Plus, even though school buildings are shuttered, that doesn’t mean learning has stopped. Writing can help us reflect on what’s happening in our lives and form new ideas.

We want to help inspire your writing about the coronavirus while you learn from home. Below, we offer 12 projects for students, all based on pieces from The New York Times, including personal narrative essays, editorials, comic strips and podcasts. Each project features a Times text and prompts to inspire your writing, as well as related resources from The Learning Network to help you develop your craft. Some also offer opportunities to get your work published in The Times, on The Learning Network or elsewhere.

We know this list isn’t nearly complete. If you have ideas for other pandemic-related writing projects, please suggest them in the comments.

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• Get involved

COVID-19: A reminder of the power of hope and solidarity

May 5, 2020.

Ulrika Modéer

UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy, UNDP

Co-Founder, Heart17

The novel coronavirus pandemic can be the moment the world pushes back against fear and isolationism, and turns instead towards hope, solidarity and a shared sense of global community.

These are fearful times, to be sure. Some 3.55 million people have been infected by COVID-19 and nearly a quarter of a million have perished. Billions of people are on lockdown or in self isolation.

Yet this pandemic and the fear, dread, and anxiety that it has induced has not occurred in isolation. For years, we have existed under the constant and pervasive feeling that things are getting worse, that we are failing each other and that we are failing our planet. This isn’t helped by a daily news cycle that reads like an ever-escalating drumbeat of anxiety. Climate change, war and conflict, isolationism and trade wars; our world, at times, feels dark and lonely, and this despite the many, many positive news stories that exist but that rarely get attention.

Global togetherness

No one doubts that COVID-19 is one of the most dire threats the world has ever faced. And yet, amidst the confusion and anxiety, there are ever stronger signs of hope and solidarity, a sense of, and desire for, togetherness.

It is this spirit of global togetherness that gives us hope. In this time of crisis, we are all neighbours in the world, and success will only be achieved when all people, in all countries, are protected.

Thankfully, this shared sense of responsibility has seen a world come together in ways that we have not seen for some time, and the examples are everywhere.

In the U.K., an army of volunteers has come forth to support their neighbors. As stated in the New York Times , “When the government appealed recently for 250,000 people to help the National Health Service, more than 750,000 signed up. It was forced to temporarily stop taking applicants so it could process the flood.”

In Somalia, where health infrastructure and traditional media have suffered under decades of strife, local storytellers are being equipped with the skills and tools to reach remote communities and educate them on best practices against COVID-19. The initiative is a collaboration between UNDP Somalia ’s  Accelerator Lab  and experts from Australia’s Queensland University and  Digital Storytellers .

And, as pointed out by Jayathma Wickramanayake, the UN Youth Envoy, young people from Syria to Peru to South Sudan are helping to tackle misinformation, raise community awareness and support the elderly.

Such examples are spreading like wildfire as people seek out a light at the end of the tunnel and work to show, to each other, that we all stand together. We see this in the towns and cities around the globe where citizens are painting hearts on windows, where crowds cheer for healthcare workers, and where everyday people perform songs on social media to help lift spirits.

Leaning into hope

Without ignoring the realities we face, it is clear that the world is reaching for a positive message. These words were echoed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to world leaders, as he emphasized the need for solidarity and global cooperation .

His call has resonated. Long sought-after partnerships with private sector companies are suddenly coming to fruition as everyone steps up to pitch in. UNDP has recently partnered with Variety on a global ad campaign. And UNDP’s new partnership with Heart17, a global initiative using creativity and innovation to accelerate the SDGs and light a spark of hope among the young generation, has brought together major players within fashion and popular culture, such as H&M Group and Spotify, to share their media space for messages around health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Certainly there will be many lessons learned once COVID-19 has passed, and UNDP’s Accelerator Labs has assessed some of the post-COVID-19 trends they see emerging. A key takeaway is this: COVID-19 has been a sort of reset across societies, across sectors. From telecommuting for work or school, to supply chain management, to support for health systems, and small and medium enterprises, to mental health support across borders or simply across the street, COVID-19 has forced us to look at how we work as a species on this planet.

Amidst the pain that we continue to endure, we should find comfort in the stories of hope and solidarity, and continue to see the value in the positive, encouraging lessons that are emerging for our post-COVID world.

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COVID-19 photo essay: We’re all in this together

About the author, department of global communications.

The United Nations Department of Global Communications (DGC) promotes global awareness and understanding of the work of the United Nations.

23 June 2020 – The COVID-19 pandemic has  demonstrated the interconnected nature of our world – and that no one is safe until everyone is safe.  Only by acting in solidarity can communities save lives and overcome the devastating socio-economic impacts of the virus.  In partnership with the United Nations, people around the world are showing acts of humanity, inspiring hope for a better future. 

Everyone can do something    

Rauf Salem, a volunteer, instructs children on the right way to wash their hands, in Sana'a, Yemen.  Simple measures, such as maintaining physical distance, washing hands frequently and wearing a mask are imperative if the fight against COVID-19 is to be won.  Photo: UNICEF/UNI341697

Creating hope

Venezuelan refugee Juan Batista Ramos, 69, plays guitar in front of a mural he painted at the Tancredo Neves temporary shelter in Boa Vista, Brazil to help lift COVID-19 quarantine blues.  “Now, everywhere you look you will see a landscape to remind us that there is beauty in the world,” he says.  Ramos is among the many artists around the world using the power of culture to inspire hope and solidarity during the pandemic.  Photo: UNHCR/Allana Ferreira

Inclusive solutions

Wendy Schellemans, an education assistant at the Royal Woluwe Institute in Brussels, models a transparent face mask designed to help the hard of hearing.  The United Nations and partners are working to ensure that responses to COVID-19 leave no one behind.  Photo courtesy of Royal Woluwe Institute

Humanity at its best

Maryna, a community worker at the Arts Centre for Children and Youth in Chasiv Yar village, Ukraine, makes face masks on a sewing machine donated by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and civil society partner, Proliska.  She is among the many people around the world who are voluntarily addressing the shortage of masks on the market. Photo: UNHCR/Artem Hetman

Keep future leaders learning

A mother helps her daughter Ange, 8, take classes on television at home in Man, Côte d'Ivoire.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, caregivers and educators have responded in stride and have been instrumental in finding ways to keep children learning.  In Côte d'Ivoire, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) partnered with the Ministry of Education on a ‘school at home’ initiative, which includes taping lessons to be aired on national TV and radio.  Ange says: “I like to study at home.  My mum is a teacher and helps me a lot.  Of course, I miss my friends, but I can sleep a bit longer in the morning.  Later I want to become a lawyer or judge."  Photo: UNICEF/UNI320749

Global solidarity

People in Nigeria’s Lagos State simulate sneezing into their elbows during a coronavirus prevention campaign.  Many African countries do not have strong health care systems.  “Global solidarity with Africa is an imperative – now and for recovering better,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.  “Ending the pandemic in Africa is essential for ending it across the world.” Photo: UNICEF Nigeria/2020/Ojo

A new way of working

Henri Abued Manzano, a tour guide at the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Vienna, speaks from his apartment.  COVID-19 upended the way people work, but they can be creative while in quarantine.  “We quickly decided that if visitors can’t come to us, we will have to come to them,” says Johanna Kleinert, Chief of the UNIS Visitors Service in Vienna.  Photo courtesy of Kevin Kühn

Life goes on

Hundreds of millions of babies are expected to be born during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Fionn, son of Chloe O'Doherty and her husband Patrick, is among them.  The couple says: “It's all over.  We did it.  Brought life into the world at a time when everything is so uncertain.  The relief and love are palpable.  Nothing else matters.”  Photo: UNICEF/UNI321984/Bopape

Putting meals on the table

Sudanese refugee Halima, in Tripoli, Libya, says food assistance is making her life better.  COVID-19 is exacerbating the existing hunger crisis.  Globally, 6 million more people could be pushed into extreme poverty unless the international community acts now.  United Nations aid agencies are appealing for more funding to reach vulnerable populations.  Photo: UNHCR

Supporting the frontlines

The United Nations Air Service, run by the World Food Programme (WFP), distributes protective gear donated by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Group, in Somalia. The United Nations is using its supply chain capacity to rapidly move badly needed personal protective equipment, such as medical masks, gloves, gowns and face-shields to the frontline of the battle against COVID-19. Photo: WFP/Jama Hassan  

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Dr. David Nabarro has dedicated his life to global health. After a long career that’s taken him from the horrors of war torn Iraq, to the devastating aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, he is still spurred to action by the tremendous inequalities in global access to medical care.

“The thing that keeps me awake most at night is the rampant inequities in our world…We see an awful lot of needless suffering.”

:: David Nabarro interviewed by Melissa Fleming

Brazilian ballet pirouettes during pandemic

Ballet Manguinhos, named for its favela in Rio de Janeiro, returns to the stage after a long absence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It counts 250 children and teenagers from the favela as its performers. The ballet group provides social support in a community where poverty, hunger and teen pregnancy are constant issues.

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Essay On Covid-19: 100, 200 and 300 Words

• Updated on  
• Apr 30, 2024

COVID-19, also known as the Coronavirus, is a global pandemic that has affected people all around the world. It first emerged in a lab in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and quickly spread to countries around the world. This virus was reportedly caused by SARS-CoV-2. Since then, it has spread rapidly to many countries, causing widespread illness and impacting our lives in numerous ways. This blog talks about the details of this virus and also drafts an essay on COVID-19 in 100, 200 and 300 words for students and professionals. 

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words
• 2 Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words
• 3 Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words
• 4 Short Essay on Covid-19

Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a global pandemic. It started in late 2019 and has affected people all around the world. The virus spreads very quickly through someone’s sneeze and respiratory issues.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our lives, with lockdowns, travel restrictions, and changes in daily routines. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we should wear masks, practice social distancing, and wash our hands frequently. 

People should follow social distancing and other safety guidelines and also learn the tricks to be safe stay healthy and work the whole challenging time. 

Also Read: National Safe Motherhood Day 2023

Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words

COVID-19 also known as coronavirus, became a global health crisis in early 2020 and impacted mankind around the world. This virus is said to have originated in Wuhan, China in late 2019. It belongs to the coronavirus family and causes flu-like symptoms. It impacted the healthcare systems, economies and the daily lives of people all over the world. 

The most crucial aspect of COVID-19 is its highly spreadable nature. It is a communicable disease that spreads through various means such as coughs from infected persons, sneezes and communication. Due to its easy transmission leading to its outbreaks, there were many measures taken by the government from all over the world such as Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and wearing masks. 

There are many changes throughout the economic systems, and also in daily routines. Other measures such as schools opting for Online schooling, Remote work options available and restrictions on travel throughout the country and internationally. Subsequently, to cure and top its outbreak, the government started its vaccine campaigns, and other preventive measures. 

In conclusion, COVID-19 tested the patience and resilience of the mankind. This pandemic has taught people the importance of patience, effort and humbleness. 

Also Read : Essay on My Best Friend

Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a serious and contagious disease that has affected people worldwide. It was first discovered in late 2019 in Cina and then got spread in the whole world. It had a major impact on people’s life, their school, work and daily lives. 

COVID-19 is primarily transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets produced and through sneezes, and coughs of an infected person. It can spread to thousands of people because of its highly contagious nature. To cure the widespread of this virus, there are thousands of steps taken by the people and the government. 

Wearing masks is one of the essential precautions to prevent the virus from spreading. Social distancing is another vital practice, which involves maintaining a safe distance from others to minimize close contact.

Very frequent handwashing is also very important to stop the spread of this virus. Proper hand hygiene can help remove any potential virus particles from our hands, reducing the risk of infection. 

In conclusion, the Coronavirus has changed people’s perspective on living. It has also changed people’s way of interacting and how to live. To deal with this virus, it is very important to follow the important guidelines such as masks, social distancing and techniques to wash your hands. Getting vaccinated is also very important to go back to normal life and cure this virus completely.

Also Read: Essay on Abortion in English in 650 Words

Short Essay on Covid-19

Please find below a sample of a short essay on Covid-19 for school students:

Also Read: Essay on Women’s Day in 200 and 500 words

to write an essay on COVID-19, understand your word limit and make sure to cover all the stages and symptoms of this disease. You need to highlight all the challenges and impacts of COVID-19. Do not forget to conclude your essay with positive precautionary measures.

Writing an essay on COVID-19 in 200 words requires you to cover all the challenges, impacts and precautions of this disease. You don’t need to describe all of these factors in brief, but make sure to add as many options as your word limit allows.

The full form for COVID-19 is Corona Virus Disease of 2019.

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Hence, we hope that this blog has assisted you in comprehending with an essay on COVID-19. For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu.

Simran Popli

An avid writer and a creative person. With an experience of 1.5 years content writing, Simran has worked with different areas. From medical to working in a marketing agency with different clients to Ed-tech company, the journey has been diverse. Creative, vivacious and patient are the words that describe her personality.

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The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld senior research scientist - nwea jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea karyn lewis , and karyn lewis director, center for school and student progress - nwea emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea.

March 3, 2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns, academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents. In addition to surging COVID-19 cases at the end of 2021, schools have faced severe staff shortages , high rates of absenteeism and quarantines , and rolling school closures . Furthermore, students and educators continue to struggle with mental health challenges , higher rates of violence and misbehavior , and concerns about lost instructional time .

As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8. We focused on test scores from immediately before the pandemic (fall 2019), following the initial onset (fall 2020), and more than one year into pandemic disruptions (fall 2021).

Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina—math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees .

Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15% in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

These numbers are alarming and potentially demoralizing, especially given the heroic efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. From our perspective, these test-score drops in no way indicate that these students represent a “ lost generation ” or that we should give up hope. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic, and there is so much we don’t know about students’ capacity for resiliency in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are we suggesting that teachers are somehow at fault given the achievement drops that occurred between 2020 and 2021; rather, educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.

Clearly, however, there’s work to do. School districts and states are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to mitigate the learning declines during the last two years. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) investments from the American Rescue Plan provided nearly $200 billion to public schools to spend on COVID-19-related needs. Of that sum, $22 billion is dedicated specifically to addressing learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “ disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups. ” Reviews of district and state spending plans (see Future Ed , EduRecoveryHub , and RAND’s American School District Panel for more details) indicate that districts are spending their ESSER dollars designated for academic recovery on a wide variety of strategies, with summer learning, tutoring, after-school programs, and extended school-day and school-year initiatives rising to the top.

Comparing the negative impacts from learning disruptions to the positive impacts from interventions

To help contextualize the magnitude of the impacts of COVID-19, we situate test-score drops during the pandemic relative to the test-score gains associated with common interventions being employed by districts as part of pandemic recovery efforts. If we assume that such interventions will continue to be as successful in a COVID-19 school environment, can we expect that these strategies will be effective enough to help students catch up? To answer this question, we draw from recent reviews of research on high-dosage tutoring , summer learning programs , reductions in class size , and extending the school day (specifically for literacy instruction) . We report effect sizes for each intervention specific to a grade span and subject wherever possible (e.g., tutoring has been found to have larger effects in elementary math than in reading).

Figure 1 shows the standardized drops in math test scores between students testing in fall 2019 and fall 2021 (separately by elementary and middle school grades) relative to the average effect size of various educational interventions. The average effect size for math tutoring matches or exceeds the average COVID-19 score drop in math. Research on tutoring indicates that it often works best in younger grades, and when provided by a teacher rather than, say, a parent. Further, some of the tutoring programs that produce the biggest effects can be quite intensive (and likely expensive), including having full-time tutors supporting all students (not just those needing remediation) in one-on-one settings during the school day. Meanwhile, the average effect of reducing class size is negative but not significant, with high variability in the impact across different studies. Summer programs in math have been found to be effective (average effect size of .10 SDs), though these programs in isolation likely would not eliminate the COVID-19 test-score drops.

Figure 1: Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) Table 2; summer program results are pulled from Lynch et al (2021) Table 2; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span; Figles et al. and Lynch et al. report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. We were unable to find a rigorous study that reported effect sizes for extending the school day/year on math performance. Nictow et al. and Kraft & Falken (2021) also note large variations in tutoring effects depending on the type of tutor, with larger effects for teacher and paraprofessional tutoring programs than for nonprofessional and parent tutoring. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

Figure 2 displays a similar comparison using effect sizes from reading interventions. The average effect of tutoring programs on reading achievement is larger than the effects found for the other interventions, though summer reading programs and class size reduction both produced average effect sizes in the ballpark of the COVID-19 reading score drops.

Figure 2: Reading COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; extended-school-day results are from Figlio et al. (2018) Table 2; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) ; summer program results are pulled from Kim & Quinn (2013) Table 3; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: While Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span, Figlio et al. and Kim & Quinn report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

There are some limitations of drawing on research conducted prior to the pandemic to understand our ability to address the COVID-19 test-score drops. First, these studies were conducted under conditions that are very different from what schools currently face, and it is an open question whether the effectiveness of these interventions during the pandemic will be as consistent as they were before the pandemic. Second, we have little evidence and guidance about the efficacy of these interventions at the unprecedented scale that they are now being considered. For example, many school districts are expanding summer learning programs, but school districts have struggled to find staff interested in teaching summer school to meet the increased demand. Finally, given the widening test-score gaps between low- and high-poverty schools, it’s uncertain whether these interventions can actually combat the range of new challenges educators are facing in order to narrow these gaps. That is, students could catch up overall, yet the pandemic might still have lasting, negative effects on educational equality in this country.

Given that the current initiatives are unlikely to be implemented consistently across (and sometimes within) districts, timely feedback on the effects of initiatives and any needed adjustments will be crucial to districts’ success. The Road to COVID Recovery project and the National Student Support Accelerator are two such large-scale evaluation studies that aim to produce this type of evidence while providing resources for districts to track and evaluate their own programming. Additionally, a growing number of resources have been produced with recommendations on how to best implement recovery programs, including scaling up tutoring , summer learning programs , and expanded learning time .

Ultimately, there is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators, and parents are considerable. But this may be a moment when decades of educational reform, intervention, and research pay off. Relying on what we have learned could show the way forward.

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'He was our strength': Family of firefighter killed at Trump rally speaks out

"He was everything to us and that is what got taken from this world.”

Helen Comperatore and her daughters are remembering Corey Comperatore, the volunteer fire chief who was killed when he died protecting his family during the gunfire at Donald Trump ’s political rally last month in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“He definitely was a hero. He saved his wife, he saved his child and he was just the best guy,” Helen Comperatore, Corey’s surviving wife, told ABC News’ Pittsburgh affiliate WTAE. “He was just the best.”

Corey’s daughter Allyson recalls the moment shots rang out, a memory which she says is still vivid and painful.

“I was the one that my dad threw down,” said Allyson. “That was when he was shot. He ended up falling onto me. I was, like, confused. And I went, “dad?” And when I turned is whenever he fell down.”

“That's when I started screaming,” Allyson continued. “I was instantly like, I was trying to keep him from bleeding. And somebody had thrown down a towel. So somebody behind us must have seen what was going on, and I was just, I was holding it there and just screaming for anybody to help.”

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Helen says she still struggles with what happened that day.

“I’m angry. You know, obviously, my husband took a bullet for [Donald Trump],” Helen said. “That, unfortunately, was the plan that day.”

Corey Comperatore’s family say that they want him to be remembered as more than the person killed in the assassination attempt of the former president.

“He isn’t just the guy that got shot at the rally,” said Corey’s other daughter, Kaylee. “He was a husband, a father, a son, an uncle. And he was the glue to our family. He was our strength. He was everything to us and that is what got taken from this world.”

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Post Shares Bogus Lara Trump Quote about Use of Celine Dion Song

By Alan Jaffe

Posted on August 16, 2024

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino .

The Trump campaign showed a video of Celine Dion singing the theme from “Titanic” at a rally in Montana, sparking a rebuke from Dion for unauthorized use of the video. A post on Threads then shared a fake quote from Lara Trump responding to Dion saying, “We don’t give a damn” and “I’ll sing the song myself.” The quote originated on a satirical X account.

Former President Donald Trump held a campaign rally on Aug. 9 to boost support for himself and Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy in Bozeman, Montana. During the rally, a video was shown of Canadian performer Celine Dion singing “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme of the film “Titanic.”

The next day, a post on Dion’s X account said: “Today, Celine Dion’s management team and her record label, Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., became aware of the unauthorized usage of the video, recording, musical performance, and likeness of Celine Dion singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ at a Donald Trump / JD Vance campaign rally in Montana. In no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use.” The post ended with a dig at the musical choice: “And really, THAT song?”

The Trump campaign did not respond to Dion, the BBC reported.

But an Aug. 10 post on Threads falsely claimed that Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, issued a reply to Dion’s statement. According to the post, “A defiant Laura Trump” said, “We don’t give a damn about a letter from Non-American Celine Dion. I’ll sing the song myself. No one can stop this Titanic.” The post shows images of Lara Trump at a campaign rally, with a sinking ship labeled “Trump” in the background.

An RNC spokesperson told USA Today that Lara Trump, who has released a couple of songs on Spotify and other music streaming platforms, did not say any of that. The quote originated on an X account called @NotHoodlum, which describes its content as “Commentary” and “Satirical Emeritus” and is often critical of Donald Trump. The Threads post that shared the content did not include a satire label.

The former president’s unauthorized use of songs at his rallies has upset some musicians. The Rolling Stones and R.E.M. , among other musicians or their estates, have threatened to sue Trump for using their songs at his 2016 or 2020 election campaign events. More recently, the family of Isaac Hayes demanded Trump pay $3 million in licensing fees for his use of the song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” which was co-written by Hayes, at his rallies and to stop playing the song at future events.

Alexandra Roberts , a professor of law and media at Northeastern University, explains in an article on the school’s news site that political campaigns are generally required to obtain the right to use specific songs at rallies. “They do need to pay for it; they do need to get those permissions,” according to Roberts. “Usually, the event organizers secure a license from the rights holders, and they have to make sure the license covers the songs that they want and that it doesn’t exclude political use.”

Musicians can claim unauthorized use of their music may imply a false endorsement under the Lanham Act, the federal trademark statute, Roberts explains.

“The idea is that the political use of a song is going to create the impression among consumers that the artist actually endorses that politician, is on board with that use, is a fan of that message,” Roberts says in the article. “If a politician is really tying a song to their image or to their message, like they use it as their walk-on music all the time … then I think false endorsement claims might be possible.”

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