Latest news with #TheExecutioner'sSong
Wales Online
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Netflix You finale ending explained and what happens to Joe Goldberg
Netflix You finale ending explained and what happens to Joe Goldberg It's been another rollercoaster ride for one of Netflix's controversial characters, Joe Goldberg, the lead character of You The ending has arguably been a long time coming for the series' main character Joe Goldberg (Image: 2023 Netflix, Inc. ) Netflix's You finale dropped with the final twist for Joe Goldberg, who is the central character and serial killer who drives the plot. Under his new London alias 'Jonathan Moore,' we finally see him come to terms with what he has done after a decade of murders and mayhem which has captured a fascinated audience who have found themselves conflicted over the years. The psychological thriller follows Joe, whose obsessive quest for love drives him to stalk, manipulate and sometimes murder the women he becomes infatuated with, all while repeatedly reinventing himself under new identities. This ending has been a long time coming and has confirmed what lots of fans believed would be the inevitable as he finally faces justice. In the closing moments, we watch Joe attempt to flee to Canada with his new love interest, only to discover that she is not just another fling but Louise by another name, and is a famous character from season one's friend, set on ensuring he never hurts anyone again. For the latest TV and showbiz gossip sign up to our newsletter Article continues below Viewers will remember this character (Beck) who was Joe's first obsession in the series, an aspiring writer who was killed by Joe, setting the story into motion at the very beginning. Bronte, who is really Louise in disguise, is Beck's old college friend who also appeared in season one. Their cat-and-mouse game reaches its peak with Bronte, who has been resisting Joe's manipulations from the very start, and shoots him. As the police storm the scene, handcuffs finally click around Joe's wrists, marking the first time he's lost control of the narrative. Joe is later convicted and sent to be behind bars, instead of hiding behind bookstores and cafés he once obsessed over. In prison, he is shown stripped of his usual comforts and left to think about his crimes rather than crafting elaborate justifications for them. One of the most chilling visuals is Joe quietly reading Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, which may be a subtle nod to both his fate and our society's fascination with true crime. Joe also accuses the audience itself of complicity in a voiceover, suggesting that the real monster might just be the collective obsession with romanticised killers. It's a fitting send-off for a character who's spent four seasons convincing us that he's the unlikely hero of his own story, only to have the façade finally ripped away. Kate also reappears - Kate is a London art dealer who was first introduced on the series in season four. And her survival alongside characters like Bronte seem to serve as a stark contrast to Joe's downfall and underlines the show's shift towards true female agency. Gone are the days when Joe could manipulate and eliminate anyone who got in his way as here, he is forced to confront the very real damage he has inflicted, framed by bars instead of book stacks. Showrunners Michael Foley and Justin W. Lo have explained that this ending was always meant to challenge viewers to stop glorifying Joe and start recognising the humanity of his victims. Article continues below The finale also ties back to Beck's tragic storyline by introducing Bronte as a reminder that Joe's past sins would eventually catch up with him. While fans of the series have long debated whether Joe could ever redeem himself, the final episode makes it clear that some wounds can never be healed with love letters or confessions.
Business Insider
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
Here's what happens to every major character in the 'You' season 5 finale
After evading real consequences for five seasons, Joe Goldberg is finally imprisoned for life. In a full-circle moment for the series, Joe ends up in a different kind of cage: a prison cell. During a violent confrontation in the woods with Bronte, who had been deceiving him all season long, Joe is captured by the police and is forced to take accountability for his wrongdoings in a messy trial. He's convicted of the murders of Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). Joe is also charged with first-degree murder and is sentenced to life without parole for the murders of season one characters Benji Ashby (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Peach Salinger (Shay Mitchell). "One thing's clear, Joe Goldberg will never be free again," Bronte says. The last scene of the series finale shows Joe behind bars, wearing an orange jumpsuit with his hair buzzed. Of course, his literature choice is on-the-nose: Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Executioner's Song." "So, in the end, my punishment is even worse than I imagined," Joe says in the narration. "The loneliness. Oh, my God. The loneliness. No hope of being held. Knowing this is forever." But even in jail, Joe is still deluded and refuses to take responsibility, saying that it's unfair to place all the blame on him. It also doesn't help that he gets validation from creepy fan letters written by people who believe him and want to act out their sexual fantasies with him. "Why am I in a cage when these crazies write me all the depraved things they want me to do to them?" Joe wonders as he lays back on his prison cot and reads his latest unsettling fan mail. "Maybe we have a problem as a society," Joe concludes. "Maybe we should fix what's broken in us. Maybe the problem isn't me. Maybe… it's you." Bronte, Joe's season five love interest, is instrumental in getting him behind bars. Bronte initially seems like a naive, unassuming woman who falls for Joe's charming persona. But as the season progresses, it's revealed that Bronte has been playing Joe the entire time. Her real name is Louise Flannery, and she's a dental hygienist from Ohio. But more importantly, Beck was her college teaching assistant. After learning about Beck's death and searching online for closure, Bronte found that lots of people had questions about her murder and suspected that her then-boyfriend, Joe, was the killer. Along with some internet friends, Bronte devised a plan to return to New York, get close to Joe, and catfish him by acting like a woman who needed to be saved. Her plan encounters some hiccups, but Bronte is ultimately successful in duping Joe. After Bronte rescues Joe from a fire at Mooney's bookstore in episode nine, he proposes to her, and she says yes. In the finale, they leave the city for a remote cottage. Joe is delighted to start their new chapter together, unaware that Bronte is still intent on taking him down. Joe and Bronte end up physically fighting inside the cottage, and it escalates into the woods as Bronte tries to call 911 for help. The police catch up to the pair, seconds after Bronte shoots Joe in the groin, and Joe is arrested. Bronte also gets justice for Beck. Joe's contributions are pulled from Beck's posthumous book, and a new, redacted version is released. In a voiceover near the end of the finale, Bronte says that in Beck's honor, she's going to make the most of her life and won't let her existence be defined by Joe. Although Bronte isn't sure who she wants to be in the world, she's eager to figure it out without the weight of Joe looming over her. Kate Lockwood survives a near-death experience and rediscovers her love of art. Kate spends much of season five trying to do good through her position as the CEO of Lockwood Corporation and make amends for her past actions. Unfortunately, Bob Cain (Michael Dempsey), Kate's chief operating officer and father figure, leaks sensitive information to a reporter about the pipeline that she helped get approved years ago. He planned to initiate a no-confidence vote and get Kate booted from the company. Bob also dug into Kate's time in London, knew that she helped cover up the murder of Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers), and threatened to release that information to ruin her reputation further. With Kate's green light, Joe murders Bob. But killing Bob reawakens Joe's lethal side, and he and Kate fail to see eye-to-eye. While Joe relishes murder and feels no remorse, Kate is haunted by what happened to Bob. She also learns new things about Joe's time in Madre Linda and discovers his present-day affair with Bronte. Kate teams up with season four character Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman) and Joe's season three love interest Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle) in the hopes that they can take Joe down once and for all by killing him in his own cage at Mooney's. But Joe, already steps ahead, digs a spare cage key out of his arm and frees himself. Kate and Joe tussle in the basement while Kate's sister Maddie Lockwood (Anna Camp) sets Mooney's on fire. Joe shoots Kate in the stomach, and she knocks him out by hitting him with a mallet. While Kate and Joe are both on the floor, injured and exhausted, he admits that his first wife, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), didn't die in a fire — he poisoned her and started the fire to get rid of the evidence. Kate, relieved, reveals that she secretly took an audio recording of Joe's confession to hand over to the police. In response, Joe tells Kate that she can die happy now. She closes her eyes and seemingly dies, but in the finale, viewers learn that Kate survived the fire. Kate leaves the C-suite life behind and returns to her love of art, championing Marienne's work. She also becomes a full-time parent to Joe and Love's son, Henry (Frankie DeMaio). Teddy Lockwood, Kate's half-brother, becomes the CEO of the TR Lockwood Corporation and turns it into a nonprofit. For most of his life, Teddy has been an outsider in the Lockwood family because he's the product of Tom Lockwood's (Greg Kinnear) affair. Teddy became loyal to Kate because she hired him as her chief of staff and gave him a voice. The finale shows Teddy and Kate celebrating, toasting him for transforming the family company into a nonprofit. Reagan Lockwood-Jacobs is killed by her twin sister, Maddie. Reagan (Anna Camp) is Kate's snarky half-sister and Lockwood Corporation's CFO. She's jealous of Kate's position at the company and accuses Kate of being a killer, citing Bob's "convenient" death. She also threatens to dig into Kate's life and figure out what dirt Bob had on her. Joe, wanting to protect his family, takes matters into his own hands and plots to kidnap Reagan, interrogate her in his cage in the basement of Mooney's, and kill her. But his plan hits a major snag when he kidnaps the wrong twin in episode two. Then, in episode four, Reagan tells Kate that she knows Joe killed Rhys in London and that Kate framed Nadia Fareedi (Amy-Leigh Hickman) for his murder. Joe arrives at the conclusion that blackmail isn't enough to stop Reagan, so she needs to be killed. He abducts Reagan, puts her in the cage with Maddie. Joe tells Maddie to kill Reagan with her insulin pen, because it's the only way he can be assured that she won't go to the authorities and snitch on him. If she doesn't comply, he'll just kill both twins. Maddie is reluctant to murder Reagan, but after her sister repeatedly taunts and disrespects her, she does the deed. In the finale, after Joe is caught by the authorities and put on trial, it's revealed that Maddie gave Reagan a $2 million Viking funeral in the Long Island Sound. Maddie Lockwood avoids serving jail time and lives happily ever after. Madison "Maddie" Lockwood is Reagan's more timid twin sister. She works in PR, has a reputation as a party girl, and is a three-time divorcée. Oh, and she's been secretly hooking up with Harrison Jacobs (Pete Ploszek), Reagan's husband. Years prior, Reagan also bullied Maddie into being her surrogate because she didn't want to deal with the physical changes associated with having a baby. After Joe kidnaps Reagan, he manipulates Maddie into impersonating her sister, promising that she'll be with Harrison forever if she complies. But Joe turns on Maddie in episode nine, framing her and Harrison for Reagan's murder. Furious that he betrayed her trust, Maddie sets Mooney's on fire, with Joe locked in the basement. In the finale, Harrison's charges for the murder of Reagan are dropped. Maddie was tried for arson and conspiracy to commit murder, but didn't serve jail time because of the circumstances. Instead, she went to rehab for her pill addiction. Maddie gets the happy ending she was promised with Harrison and Gretchen, Reagan's daughter whom she gave birth to. Maddie and Harrison are also expecting twins. Clayton, Bronte's "ex," is killed by Joe. Clayton (Tom Francis) is presented as Bronte's ex, until it's later revealed that he's the son of therapist Dr. Nicky Angevine (John Stamos), who was framed for the murder of Beck. Clayton listened to the recordings from Beck's sessions with Dr. Nicky and suspected that Joe killed her. He also figured out that Joe was seeing Dr. Nicky as a patient under a false identity. Clayton, Bronte, and their internet friends Dominique (Natasha Behnam) and Phoenix (b) spent years combing the internet trying to find evidence to expose Joe for being a killer. Their initial plan was to get close to Joe to monitor him. Once Bronte met Joe and realized that he was a romantic with a white knight complex, she came up with the idea to get Joe to fall in love with her. Clayton played the part of the toxic guy that Joe could rescue her from. As time wore on, Clayton started losing perspective and became solely focused on getting vindication, regardless of Bronte putting her life in danger. Clayton was convinced that Joe had a pattern of killing all the women he fell in love with, so he wanted to use Bronte as bait. His plan was for Joe to think that Bronte got back with her toxic ex, and get so angry that he'd track Bronte down at a beach house and be ready to kill her. He intended to have the moment captured on camera. But once he arrives, his confrontation with Bronte turns violent, and he shoves her to the ground. Joe fights Clayton and slams his head against the floor, killing him. Seconds later, Bronte and Clayton's friends, Dominque and Phoenix, enter the house, livestreaming Joe in a compromising position. Their viral livestream has a snowball effect, leading the public to turn against Joe. Although Clayton doesn't make it out of the season alive, his dad's conviction is vacated. Dominique and Phoenix vow to use their platform and resources to take down more people like Joe. Dominique and Phoenix are Bronte and Clayton's friends who met through the internet. Throughout the season, they work with Bronte and Clayton to ensnare Joe. Dominique and Phoenix also use TikTok to reveal the findings of their yearslong investigation into Joe, publicly accusing him of the murders of Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers), Benji, and Beck. In the finale, they're seen participating in a podcast interview and teasing what's next. "We didn't do it alone," Phoenix says, thanking Bronte, Joe's survivors, and the internet sleuths. "And we're not done."
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Yahoo
US carries out first firing squad execution since 2010
A South Carolina man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat was put to death by firing squad on Friday in the first such execution in the United States in 15 years. Brad Sigmon, 67, was executed by a three-person firing squad at the Broad River Correctional Institution in the state capital Columbia, South Carolina prison spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said. Shain said the fatal shots were fired at 6:05 pm (2305 GMT) and Sigmon was pronounced dead by a physician at 6:08 pm (2308 GMT). Journalists who witnessed the execution from behind bulletproof glass said Sigmon was wearing a black jumpsuit and was strapped into a chair in the death chamber with a small red bullseye made of paper or cloth over his heart. In a final statement read out by his attorney, Gerald "Bo" King, Sigmon said he wanted to send a message of "love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty." A hood was then placed over Sigmon's head and about two minutes later shots were fired by the firing squad made up of volunteers from the South Carolina Department of Corrections through a slit in a wall about 15 feet (five meters away). Anna Dobbins of WYFF News 4 TV station said the shots "were all fired at once" like it was "just one sound." "His arms flexed," Dobbins said. "There was something in his midsection that moved -- I'm not necessarily going to call them breaths, I don't really know -- but there was some movement that went on there for two or three seconds." "It was very fast," she said. "I did see a splash of blood when the bullets entered his body. It was not a huge amount, but there was a splash." Sigmon, who confessed to the 2001 murders of David and Gladys Larke and admitted his guilt at trial, had asked the Supreme Court for a last-minute stay of execution but it was denied. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster also rejected his appeal for clemency. - 'Impossible' position - Sigmon had a choice between lethal injection, the firing squad or the electric chair. King, his lawyer, said Sigmon had chosen the firing squad after being placed in an "impossible" position, forced to decide how he would die. The electric chair "would burn and cook him alive," he said, but the alternative was "just as monstrous." "If he chose lethal injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men South Carolina has executed since September," King said. The last firing squad execution in the United States was in Utah in 2010, which also carried out two others, one in 1996 and one in 1977. The 1977 execution of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was the basis for the 1979 book "The Executioner's Song" by Norman Mailer. The vast majority of US executions have been done by lethal injection since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Alabama has carried out four executions recently using nitrogen gas, which has been denounced by UN experts as cruel and inhumane. The execution is performed by pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate. Three other states -- Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma -- have joined South Carolina and Utah in authorizing the use of firing squads. There have been six executions in the United States so far this year following 25 last year. The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others -- California, Oregon and Pennsylvania -- have moratoriums in place. President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use "for the vilest crimes." cl/acb
Washington Post
07-03-2025
- General
- Washington Post
‘I worry that people have forgotten': 6 writers on covid's anniversary
The pandemic approaches five years. We have returned to normal, but are we the same? The fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring covid-19 a pandemic is March 11. We asked six Opinions staffers to reflect on the pandemic and how their lives changed. Shadi Hamid Missing the solitude of covid Like with many things in life, I realized I had it only when it was too late. During the pandemic, few of us were truly locked down. In D.C., restaurants reopened for outdoor service in May 2020, about two months after we were told to stay at home. But those two months of forced isolation are something we'll likely never experience again — and I mean that in a (partly) good way. I look back at that brief era with longing, a reminder of the kind of person I wished I could become but never did. We didn't have choices, or to put it differently, the choices were taken from us. In his book 'The Paradox of Choice,' the psychologist Barry Schwartz popularized the idea that too many choices produce paralysis and then often discontent. Here, instead of choice, we had constraint. And in constraint I discovered a new kind of freedom. It was a natural experiment. How do we live when we have few, if any, social engagements? How do we live when we're given an excuse to keep to ourselves, when there's no risk of missing out because no one's out in the first place? Apparently, quite differently. I looked at my phone a lot less because I didn't have plans to make, confirm or cancel. I read constantly, as if possessed. And it was like bliss, like I had been granted powers of attention and concentration I never knew I had. I could turn the pages for hours without interruption. It was one of the last times I fully got into a book, in this case Norman Mailer's 1,056-page masterwork 'The Executioner's Song,' so immersed that I forgot that there was a pandemic in the first place. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement I mostly ignored dating apps, which are as awful as they are necessary because everyone else is on them. But now, for a moment, there was no real shame in being alone. For the first time, I didn't feel guilty about feeling lonely. Instead of dating or going to parties or trying to figure out which restaurant had enough seating for six friends on a Friday night, I prayed more and meditated. I thought more deeply about my life, and how I wanted to live. But I also did things I always said I wanted to do but — short of a natural disaster — knew I never would. Like watch the films of the Swedish existentialist director Ingmar Bergman, which are notoriously challenging and require considerable patience. As it turns out, they're also incredible. Yes, it was a bit masochistic, but watching 12 of his films in rapid succession ended up being an unusual highlight of an unusual year. I also live-tweeted the experience, perhaps as a way to make a solitary adventure less so. (Corbis/Getty Images) Five years later, that time in my life seems singular. It's also a bit blurry. Did it really happen? I remember thinking — incorrectly — that our lives would be forever altered by this rare collective experience of trauma. In having so much taken away from us and the people we loved, life was 'distilled' to its essence, as the writer Tara Isabella Burton noted in an evocative essay on lockdown nostalgia. We could more easily distinguish between what truly mattered and what didn't. But it didn't last. We returned to normal. Much of the country memory-holed the pandemic. Today, except the odd mask here or there, there are few if any noticeable vestiges of the worst plague in a century. All we have is our memories. And some of them are good. Eugene Robinson A room with a view On the day when the country shut down because of covid-19, those of us in the news business — who get paid to know what's going on — were just as clueless as everybody else. Newsrooms had always been busy places, day and night. The clatter of typewriters had long since given way to the hush of the modern keyboard, but the teeming bustle of in-person collaboration remained. Suddenly, overnight, that had to end. Smart people somehow instantly invented a way to publish The Post with almost everyone working remotely. This had little affect on me; I already filed my column from home quite often, so that was something I knew how to do. The far bigger impact, as far as my working life was concerned, came in my role as a talking head on MSNBC. That week, I was scheduled to go to New York to do commentary for the network at its 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters. I called and confirmed my assumption that the trip had been canceled. Then I heard nothing for the next few days — MSNBC was absorbed in its own process of reinvention — before finally receiving an urgent instruction: 'Set yourself up for Zoom or Skype or something as soon as possible.' Uh, okay. I had only the vaguest idea how to do this, and I knew that nobody had the time to teach me. So this would be interesting. I signed up for a Skype account. I chose a corner of my study that I thought would make a suitable 'bookcase' backdrop, which was something I saw other commentators were doing, and experimented until I found the ideal placement for my laptop. When I was asked to do my first television hit from home, I was all set. I recorded it, but only to see if I needed to do any fine-tuning. It looked and sounded like a hostage tape. A particularly grim one. There was no mystery about what I needed to change: everything. The image and sound were awful, so I ordered a webcam and a set of the newest AirPods, to be delivered the following day. The lighting was ghastly, so I called a friend who happens to be a professional photographer and asked him to find some suitable lights, but not the little ring kind that reflects weirdly off your glasses. I found a much better background that included not just the bookcase but also a corner of one of the great paintings by my wife, Avis. And to position the laptop and the webcam just right, I ordered a cheap, little, Chinese-made, two-tiered table off the internet. At year's end, Avis and I were honored for creating 2020's 'best room/art' by the viral Room Rater Twitter account. My jury-rigged home television studio served me well — and serves me still. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Aaditi Lele The 18-month spring break It began with an ominous email from my history teacher on the eve of spring break during my junior year in high school. The remainder of Ohio's in-person 2020 Mock Trial competition had been indefinitely postponed, our travels to Columbus canceled because of covid-19. I was initially disappointed. (For the first time in three years, my team had qualified for the final round.) But the prospect of an extended spring break, at least, could bring any student a glimmer of consolation. Or so I thought. The universe contorted my hopes. An extra week, maybe two, could have been a fun reprieve. Eighteen months gets to be a tad excessive. Soon enough, it became apparent that lockdowns were not easing and adjustments would be necessary. Virtual school meant entire days spent at my desk. So the first order of business was rearranging my bedroom. The desk moved to the front of my window — an attempt to maintain connection with the outside world. Then came new habits. For months, I attended each online class with crochet projects in my lap — fiddling with yarn kept my hands busy, helping me concentrate on the screen for hours on end. (I later graduated with not just my diploma but multiple new blankets.) I traded gossip by the lockers for FaceTime chats between classes, lunchroom conversation for silent meals at my dining-room table. The coda to my high school education arrived via a little red 'leave call' button on my screen. It became difficult to distinguish the 'school day' from the remainder. If I wanted structure, I had to build it. I adopted bullet journaling, color-coded time blocks for each aspect of life. Everything was scheduled: Weekend park picnics with friends. Daily walks with my sister. Family movie night. Zoom calls. College applications. The self-imposed rigidity was essential for my sanity, but I quickly learned that no amount of scheduled social time can replace the serendipitous: running into someone in a hallway, sharing laughs on the bus ride home, feeling the buzz of our school newspaper office. There is something inherently irreclaimable about being 17. I never attended an in-person high school class again. So I lived through the latter half of high school without experiencing it, grew older without growing up. Lacking milestones to anchor that period — no prom, no senior trip, no college tours — it all blurs together. Those two years fast-forwarded life — the days so similar that, in memory, they compress into one. Five years later, my abridged bridge into adulthood leaves little to be nostalgic for. The writer is an assistant editor for Opinions. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Chloe Coleman Bonding through a love of horses My husband and I had an unconventional first year of marriage. Our wedding, planned for May 2020, had to be quickly reimagined due to the covid-19 pandemic. My dream nuptials transformed into a self-officiated ceremony in a local park with two socially distanced friends. Ultimately, though, our bonds strengthened that first year of covid. We were intensely cautious with our health back then, in the first months when there were so many unknowns about the virus and my husband's job required venturing into the fray. He is a photojournalist and faced infection risks each day in the field. I was an international news photo editor, glued to world events as I worked long hours from our one-bedroom apartment to manage photographers on assignment. We largely kept to ourselves in 2020 other than precious social-distanced outdoor visits with friends. In spring 2021, we looked for activities we could do together that posed minimal health risks. After a year of being limited to the borders of D.C., we wanted to find a hobby out in the countryside. My husband, knowing my lifelong passion for horses, suggested we book some trail rides. I eagerly researched nearby options. Soon, he was ready to go beyond the cruise-control nature of trail-ride horses. He began wondering how we could 'go faster.' I was adamant that attaining speed with safety requires skill. That led us to a barn in Northern Virginia, where we took riding lessons as a pair, despite our differences in experience level and preferred riding style (he the cowboy and I the dressage equestrian). Our weekly lessons became a ritual we depended on — not only the fresh-air physical exercise, which requires awareness of your entire body, but the extended community we found with our instructors and the emotional healing power of horses. Chloe Coleman's 2022 vow renewal ceremony in Ohio. (Photo by William Snyder) My husband calls horses 'trauma vacuums.' The horses we rode over our first months of lessons had their own traumas — many had been rescued, were seniors with chronic pain or were retired racehorses trying to find second chances. But they always honored us with patience. Whatever we experienced during the week could be washed away not only by riding, but by the simple acts of getting our horses from the pastures, grooming them and laughing at their antics. By the time we renewed our vows in 2022, with a ceremony closer to the original wedding we had planned, my husband had the skills to ride a horse down the aisle at my family's farm. Last year, I returned to horse ownership for the first time since I was a teenager. Though we might have missed a lot that first year of our marriage, the experiences we eventually gained gave me the most unexpected gift — a husband who has become as wild for horses as I am. The writer is a photo editor for Opinions. Megan McArdle We need a covid reckoning In the pandemic's early days, a wise friend pointed out that there is little literature of the 1918 flu pandemic. The 1918 pandemic killed more people than World War I, and as in war, those people were disproportionately young. Yet in postwar literature, the war is the starring player, while the pandemic has, at most, a bit part. The same is true of books, television and movies of the covid-19 era: Depictions are curiously sparse, relative to the magnitude of what we endured. He suggested that this was because the pandemic offered no opportunities for valor, only suffering. And, I'd add, for regret over mistakes that were made. The mistakes that we made. I can't be the only one who recalls furiously washing groceries before putting them away during those first panicked days. Or who followed strict hygiene and quarantine procedures when caring for my covid-positive father, long after — we now know — he had probably stopped being contagious. Then there were the much more consequential mistakes society made, such as padlocking playgrounds, shutting down beaches and keeping schools closed. Many of those mistakes were understandable in the face of a novel threat. Basically anything that happened between March and June 2020 should be written off to the challenge of making decisions with insufficient information. But other mistakes, such as the testing debacle at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reflected long-standing institutional problems. The worst mistakes involved insiders allowing their expert guidance to be influenced by their political priorities, from the CDC letting teacher's unions affect its recommendations on school closures, to public health officials abruptly pivoting from telling us to avoid crowds to endorsing the protests over the death of George Floyd. A children's playground is closed at Anthem Park on April 3, 2020, in Anthem, Arizona. () We haven't reckoned enough with any of it. Yes, there have been inspector general reports and retrospective articles, but we have not had a deep, society-wide conversation about what we got wrong and how to fix it before the next pandemic. Instead, we have divided into two warring camps, one that will probably refuse to do anything in the face of another pandemic, and the other that seems likely to repeat the same mistakes. Very well, I'll start. Alongside my personal mistakes, I made professional ones. I overestimated the effectiveness of lockdowns and underestimated their likely duration. I endorsed vaccine mandates, which turned out to sacrifice a lot of liberty for little benefit, because the vaccine wasn't effective enough to generate herd immunity against a mutating virus that sometimes produces no detectable symptoms. I also wrote about much of it more intemperately than I should have — venting, rather than persuading. I hope there won't be another major pandemic in my lifetime. If there is, I hope to avoid similar mistakes (though very likely, I will discover some new ones). Most importantly, I hope that if we have an honest reckoning, we can come to some measure of mutual understanding and perhaps even forgiveness for the lamentable but inevitable errors that fallible humans tend to make in times of unprecedented distress. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Leana S. Wen A new life, a dark time The first days of the pandemic were the final days of my pregnancy. My daughter Isabelle was born in April 2020. How I remember covid-19 will forever be intertwined with her infancy and toddlerhood. The day I went into labor, the hospital felt like a ghost town. Patients had canceled appointments for fear that they would contract the coronavirus. This wasn't an overreaction. When I checked in, I learned that several nurses and an OB/GYN had just become infected with covid-19. There wasn't enough staff in the postpartum ward, so I was discharged straight from the delivery room, hours after giving birth. Post columnist Leana Wen with her daughter Isabelle in April 2020. (Family photo) It wasn't safe for anyone to visit us. Our family, who lived out of the country, couldn't travel; it would be two years before Isabelle met her grandparents. To protect our newborn, we took every precaution. Our other child, then 2 years old, stopped preschool. When I went back to seeing patients as a doctor, I was so paranoid about infecting my family that I took off all my clothes in the garden and washed myself with a hose before going into our house and taking a second shower. We socialized with friends only outside, investing in a firepit so we could gather in freezing temperatures. As I advised my patients and the public on what we knew and didn't know about the coronavirus, I lived through the same uncertainty. The situation was constantly evolving. How we thought about risk changed as we learned that the virus was airborne, and it began to overwhelm hospitals. It changed again once vaccines and treatments became available. I counseled people on how they could evaluate trade-offs as I did the same for my family. Was it safe to send kids back to school? Could we return to the gym? When was the virus risk low enough and the burden of isolation high enough that we could reduce self-imposed precautions? Every decision was hard. I hoped there wouldn't be long-term consequences for the choices we made, initially to keep our children from socializing and then to return to school and resume playdates without masks. I prayed each time a member of our family tested positive for covid. Five years later, my concerns are different. I worry that many have not learned the right lessons from the pandemic's devastation. I worry that people have forgotten about the more than 1.1 million Americans who died and the many more millions wrestling with long covid. I worry that, as our public health infrastructure gets dismantled with indiscriminate government cuts, we are even less capable of managing future threats. And I worry that the frightening times of Isabelle's first days could return.
