The Four Seasons Of Covid

Less-than-pleasant memories

A second season episode of Netflix’s The Four Seasons is set over Thanksgiving in 2020, during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. The six years can almost feel like 60. The main characters wear masks and greet each other in ways that reflect their own unique response to the pandemic — there are outright hugs but also tentative hand shakes and even elbow touching (which I miss). Their gathering starts outside but everyone soon abandons most social distancing measures and ventures inside. Eventually, everyone has contracted Covid and later enjoys an unmasked Thanksgiving dinner that doesn’t end with an ambulance taking everyone to the emergency room.

There is significant survivor’s bias surrounding Covid in 2020. Anyone fortunate to have avoided the illness pre-vaccine and to not have loved ones who died tends to define the period by its inconveniences. Yet, while Republicans persecute Dr. Anthony Fauci and shamelessly revise recent history, it’s concerning to see Covid stories on screen that depict the illness as just a bad cold. There’s a lot of “bad cold” acting in The Four Seasons Covid episode — stuffy noses and hoarse voices, plus complaints about everything tasting “metallic.” Yet, no one is so ill that they’re struggling to breathe

If you didn’t live through 2020, you could watch the episode and think, “What’s the big deal?” Yes, it’s annoying for everyone to get sick in Thanksgiving but it’s nothing to freak out about. More critically, a “bad cold” doesn’t justify the government restricting people’s activities, banning large public gatherings, shutting down businesses. Covid as a “bad cold” fits a prevailing and highly dangerous right-wing narrative that most mitigation efforts were an entirely neurotic and even malicious overreaction. It’s revealing that The Four Seasons character who’s the most stringent about protocols is the neurotic Jack (Will Forte), and he’s the one who ends up getting everyone sick — the comedic version where no one fears for their life. (After testing positive, Colman Domingo’s visibly ill Danny leaves the house in search of his missing dog.)

The episode’s plot requires that everyone starts showing symptoms within a few hours of exposure. I watch Marvel movies so I obviously appreciate suspension of disbelief, but this is a little different from web swinging through Manhattan. In 2020, Covid’s mean incubation period was five days and symptoms could appear anywhere from two to 14 days after exposure. Thus, an asymptomatic could’ve infected everyone at the gathering and they wouldn’t have shown symptoms themselves until after Thanksgiving. This is why quarantine was so critical. (A possible alternative plot could’ve involved everyone going stir crazy while in quarantine after discovering they’d been exposed.)

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It’s somewhat unclear, but based on their stated professions (Steve Carrell’s Nick is a hedge fund manager) and general contempt for “flyover country,” the characters probably live in New York, where Covid had a death toll of 45,194. At its peak, there were almost 1,000 deaths per day. I have friends who recall seeing neighbors regularly carried out in stretchers from their building.

Most people died from Covid during 2020 didn’t get the sick at a fun holiday gathering with friends. Many were essential workers in labor, service, medical and retail jobs. They didn’t have a bad cold. There are far too many stories of people who caught Covid and were soon unable to climb a flight of stairs and eventually breathe unassissted. They often died on a ventilator in a room separated from their loved ones, who couldn’t physically comfort them prior to their death. People who wanted to avoid this fate weren’t simply high-strung.

Despite what the more Darwininian-inclined might suggest, Covid killed more than those with pre-existing health conditions. The New York Times reported in October 2020, “As elderly people sheltered inside and took precautions to avoid infection, however, more of the hospitalized patients were younger adults, who were generally healthier and more resilient. By the end of August, the average patient was under 40.

Author Tyler King described this awful period in a Bluesky post: “Refrigerator trucks full of bodies. Mass graves. Family members dying alone in hospital corridors and unable to have proper funerals for fear of deceased spreading disease to funeral home workers. Our social media-induced attention spans are memory holing history at an increasingly alarming rate.”

Survivor’s bias can tempt you into recalling 2020 as a time when you worked from home in your pajamas and watched nature documentaries with your family. You might recall mandatory mask wearing and social distancing as an annoying interruption in a life that fortunately still continues. We don’t necessarily remember the very real fears. The media actively enables this convenient amnesia.

For example, on the Sex and the City sequel, And Just Like That, Mr. Big (Chris Noth) dies from a bad Peloton bike product placement. He doesn’t die from Covid, even though his established heart disease would have put him at significant risk. The show doesn’t even mention Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big spending 2020 in a country house, far away from New York City where cases where rising. Instead, the city’s necessary Covid lockdown is presented as an at-home bonding opportunity, a pleasant time-out from normal stresses. Carrie and Big spent 2020 hanging out together in their fancy apartment and listening to Todd Rundgren records. (Watch below.)

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Of course, most Covid depictions in media — aside from medical dramas like Grey’s Anatomy and surprisingly the TV sitcom Superstore — tend to focus on the experiences of people who were well-off and for whom Covid wasn’t a looming life-threatening threat but an ongoing inconvenience. It’s a period of collective boredom and bad home haircuts.

The Four Seasons Covid episode also ignores the larger political climate at the time, particularly Donald Trump’s presidential defeat that month and his unprecedented refusal to accept his loss. Of course, most Americans were in denial over this, just as they were over Covid itself. However, this isn’t simply an issue of deliberately avoiding politics in a lighthearted comedy of manners. Trump contracted Covid in October 2020 and became so ill he was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where doctors treated him with different drugs, reportedly throwing “the kitchen sink at him.” Trump regrettably survived, as he has a habit of clinging to life with what Barnabas Collins would call a “leech-like persistence.” That’s the president of the United States, who has access to the best doctors and treatment options. The Four Seasons characters would have every reason to fear their Covid symptoms wouldn’t simply plateau at “bad cold,” but there’s no room for fear or reality in how most Americans think about Covid, either in 2020 or toay.