Tainted Norms: 5 Years Later—How COVID Reshaped Raleigh 

March marks five years since COVID crept in and changed our lives as we know it. But—resilience or ruin? 

It’s March 12. As Billie Eilish belted her last ballads to a packed house at PNC, an ominous threat crept across the globe. Flights were grounded. Events and activities were canceled. And in an unprecedented move, even the NCAA men’s and women’s hoops championship games were halted
mid-dribble. Warnings to seek shelter and stay inside lit up phones and televisions. Except it wasn’t the menacing makings of a late winter snowstorm looming on the weather models. It was an invisible potentially apocalyptic assailant wreaking havoc on every aspect of life as we knew it.

In a Wuhan market across the world, a virus jumps from a (believed) bat and makes its way to a human host—and suddenly we are living out the dark reality of Contagion. What follows is the perfect makings of a horror movie, as a virus spreads rapidly across Asia, into Europe, the Middle East, and, before long, jumps the pond to the U.S.—initially detected in Washington, followed shortly by the first U.S. COVID fatality in the same state. 

As travel screeched to a halt and offices, schools, restaurants and so on shuttered to the public, Raleighites—and everyone around the world—locked ourselves inside. Before March 2020, the only Corona we knew was a cold brew in our hand with our toes in the sand— and, now, in a blink, the “coronavirus” was everywhere, both literally and figuratively. Epidemic, pandemic, COVID-19, quarantine, lockdown, isolation, “6 feet apart,” flattening the curve, doomscrolling and masks became buzzwords—dismal descriptors evoking the new normal.

Suddenly, “gather” had become a bad word, and the only way believed to truly protect yourself was to be by yourself—or at least in a bubble with otherwise uninfected family/peers. No commutes. No restaurants. No sports. No shopping. No in-person school or work. No hangouts. Even, for many, no—or at least interrupted—income. And, save a quarantine crew (if you were lucky enough to have one), no hugging; no touching—essentially no human contact. Utter isolation.

Meanwhile, as unemployment and sabbaticals soared locally and nationally—second only to the 1930s Great Depression and draft, etc.—essential workers were maxed out and stretched thin across health care, grocery, e-commerce and utility sectors and the like. “We worked 80-hour weeks most weeks,” recalls local grocery retail worker Anthony Husband. “I would experience COVID firsthand and miss over two weeks of work… almost three weeks of extraordinary weakness and loss of taste. It’s definitely something I’ll never forget.”

Peak unemployment topped out at ~13% in NC & 14.8% nationally
—U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Frontline workers suited up daily in the face of an invisible existential threat. “When I was in [the Gulf] War, I was in an aircraft carrier and it was actually stressful in the same way,” remembers a bus driver somberly. “This was an enemy we really didn’t have a full understanding of.”

Filled to the brim and facing a crisis supply shortage, hospitals were relegated to war zones—“a medical war zone,” described an ER physician at the time. “What I see on a daily basis is pain, despair, suffering and health care disparities.” … But instead of mass hysteria, at least initially, the world was mostly quiet, an eerie silence interrupted in big cities only by window cheers at hospital shift changes—all echoing T.S. Eliot’s famed foreboding poem “The Hollow Men”: “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” 

LIVES LOST

While the world didn’t end, the ripple effects would infect our reality forever. The virus would go on to take nearly 8 million lives* the world over according to the World Health Organization, with over 1.2 million of those in the U.S. alone per the CDC, and some ~29K here in NC. 

In early 2020, nary a single living human had experienced a deadly pandemic of COVID’s caliber—the last being a century before with the 1918 Spanish flu that claimed upward of 50 million, with ~675K of those in the U.S. Across the next century, a handful comparably less hard-hitting other viruses were declared pandemics: the 1957 Asian and 1968 Hong Kong flus (each claiming ~1 mill lives globally, and ~100K U.S.), HIV/AIDS (1980s–current, ~42 million globally, nearly 800K in U.S.), and swine flu, pronounced a pandemic in 2009 before compromising nearly 300K lives the world over, with roughly ~12K in the U.S. As of press time, the bird flu has emerged with one death and 67 reported cases in the U.S.—with no human cases yet found in NC.

THE GREAT ISOLATION

The pandemic had a profound impact on the way we socialize and interact—period. A little like The Truman Show-meets-Her, life was lived almost chronically online. From Zooms to social media to online dating and virtual gatherings (even weddings), socializing through screens became the default. 

Zoom surged upward from 10 million daily users in 2019 to 300 million by April 2020.
—Zoom

From that digital pivot, deeper questions of solidarity emerged. “How could we continue to sustain community when we could not gather?” Dr. Jeff Roberts, senior pastor at Trinity Baptist Church, posed to RM at the one-year mark. “How could we continue to serve our community when our human resources were limited?” 

As isolation became its own pandemic, the crave for community intensified. And with it came a level of solidarity, reflection, innovation and growth like none of us have seen or experienced in our lifetimes. Over that Twilight Zone-ish blip of total shutdown that simultaneously felt more like three—or three hundred—years than three months (not to mention eons of social distancing and altered norms), social priorities drastically shifted. Feed fiends traded doomscrolling for virtual (and later in-person) meetups and/or going outside and touching grass as a way to detox from social media—though, clearly, based on the recent TikTok tantrums, app addicts are so back.

That said, even today’s TikTok trotters are balancing digital and analog via uberpopular run clubs, dinner clubs, paddle sports (esp pickleball)—even mahjong—that continue to remain all the rage even at the five-year mark. And, after dating apps became a lifeline and Tinder soared to an all-time high in popularity, online dating, too, has jumped the shark, with singles craving in-real-life meetings more and more.

LOCKDOWN’S SILENT STRUGGLE

While the city—and world—continue to recover from COVID shifts (read: burnout, physical distancing, major life changes, loss), mental health ramifications remain rampant. The fallout from the struggle of juggling teaching your kids new math while taking Zoom calls, dealing with Instacart orders, meeting deadlines and having dinner on the table, all the while coping with very real economic, health and existential dread, living in utter loneliness or even financial ruin—even in some cases, serving as caregiver—continues to perpetuate feelings of despair, anxiety, burnout and exhaustion. Never mind
what years of homeschooling, stalled social growth, missed milestones and benchmarks from birthdays to bar mitzvahs and beyond will do to an entire young generation—altogether altering the way we cope, connect and heal.

In the years that have lapsed since we first heard the word “coronavirus,” mental health has gone from public health crisis to full-on epidemic—one touching every age group and demographic. According to the NC Department of Health and Human Services’ most recent stats, while state rates are slightly lower than the U.S., suicide takes the lives of four North Carolinians per day—accounting for nearly 60% of violent deaths. These rates are far higher among males, spiking exponentially at age 85 and older, while female incidents peak for ages 45–54. 

Topping the list of mental health concerns today, anxiety has been named as a major contributor to the escalation of these deaths, and in 2024, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy deemed “loneliness, isolation and lack of connection in our country” a U.S. epidemic that has reached “crisis levels,” reporting a heartbreaking ~1 in 2 adults in America experience loneliness.

In the pandemic aftermath, the conversation surrounding mental health is mounting. While the outlook appears dire, in the very least, a shared experience has begun to destigmatize discussions around anxiety, depression and mental health while also normalizing therapy and making it more accessible via virtual options. Companies too—from corporate to small business to service industry and even health care—continue to invest in their people’s well-being, like with the implementation of Raleigh Police Department’s mental health crisis unit, ACORNS (Addressing Crises through Outreach, Referrals, Networking and Service). “We put some things in place so they know they’re supported within the police department,” then-Chief Estella Patterson tells RM.

REMOTE REVOLUTION

Besides maybe women joining the workforce, there isn’t one single human event in modern history—or really ever—that has arguably similarly impacted the way we work. Key word: human—aka notwithstanding computers and the advent of the internet, though all clearly magnanimous in their own right.

The Great Resignation (aka the Big Quit) was very real—and a very big deal. At its height, a whopping 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs each month. The seismic shift in where and how we work had widespread consequences on the commercial development sector, relegating many Central Business Districts—including Raleigh’s—to relative ghost towns. As priorities shifted, so too did the labor market, which, for Raleigh, led to a hypercompetitive job market as businesses adapted to attract and retain talent. A research and tech tour de force, Raleigh was serendipitously served opportunities that all but cemented the city as a global tech hub. The local innovation sector continued to thrive and expand as demand for skilled sect workers (think software development, cybersecurity and IT) skyrocketed, earning Raleigh a rank as best performing city in the nation this January and best place to start a business in 2025.

Even as vacancy rates surged, Raleigh has been—and remains—miles ahead of other large metropolises via brilliant business minds implementing strategies and spaces that promise to bring workers back to a new age of collaboration and efficiency. Prepandemic, the literal “bottom line” focus was typically on just that—the bottom line. But post-COVID, companies have a renewed focus on people—and smart spaces that prove it.

“Developers can go build these beautiful buildings and all these nice amenities, but you have to have leadership who are helping bring their teams along to see the bigger picture of how, when they come into the office and are moving around within the community and spending dollars, that is impacting making this a thriving, vibrant community everyone wants to be in.” 
— Kimarie Ankenbrand, Raleigh/Durham lead and managing director, JLL

Now, as hybrid and remote life have become “business as usual,” we sit at the brink of perhaps another shift, as federal workers have been ordered to return to the office full-time—and culture rifts continue to divide over the practicality of work-from-home life, four-day workweeks, quiet quitting, workplace burnout and beyond.

SMALL BUSINESSES STRUGGLES

For small businesses, the lockdown landscape often felt more like thrown hand grenades than fuel for growth, especially given Raleigh’s unique encounter with boarded businesses in the wake of Downtown riots. “The hardest thing I had to do was let my business go,” says now-defunct Art of Style owner Kendra Leonard, whose business was damaged in the riots. “I was on the brink of building my empire.”

Some, though, were able to pivot and survive, thanks in large part to a dose of inventiveness, necessity and Raleigh’s vast greenspace. “Trying to keep a business going during COVID is something my team and I will never forget,” says YoBa Studio founder and owner Sam Stillwell. “Trying to teach group fitness in masks, not being able to work out indoors—we rented a parking lot for a year and ended up buying a 42-foot RV… to host multiple classes every day. We are thankful to still be in business and starting to thrive again!”

Between 2019–21, the number of people working from home in Raleigh tripled—ranking among the highest of any U.S. large metro area
—U.S. Census Bureau

EMPTY SEATS ERA

Perhaps nowhere was a pandemic pivot more obvious than the service industry. No in-person service for months (and for bars—a cataclysmic year) left Raleigh restaurants forced to let workers go or reduce hours (an epidemic of its own still putting immense pressure on the industry as dining demand returned to find a very real labor shortage) or shutter for good.

45 Triangle restaurants closed their doors in 2020.
—The News & Observer

Without question, where you go—or can’t go—today is at the pride or peril of the pandemic. Mass closures quickly included classics and new faves alike, from Top Chef’s Katsuji Tanabe’s nationally acclaimed High Horse to DTR retro dance den Coglin’s—to name but a few. And the collateral damage continued for years, seeing establishments that fought the good fight hang up their aprons and shakers—including favorites like The Rockford, Clouds Brewing and Plates Neighborhood Kitchen.

But difficulty ignites inspiration, spurring such innovations as the takeout transformation and ghost kitchen era, Plexiglas dividers, flexible business models, creative event offerings (e.g. virtual cooking or cocktail classes), parklets, and QR codes. As part of the great bounce back, buzzy businesses aplenty were born: Raleigh’s most regal slice of restaurant real estate to date La Terrazza, 2023 Best New Bar Tap Yard Raleigh, 2024 Best Overall Bar Gussie’s, cafe craze The Optimist, Tanabe’s newest mutual endeavor Flour & Barrel, Trophy’s The Bend and second State of Beer, and on and on. 

Now, restos and bars are as popular as ever—even surpassing prepandemic spending. According to Downtown Raleigh Alliance’s just-released State of Downtown report, food and beverage sales surged ~16% year over year and ~30% over 2019, with 27 newly opened storefront spaces in Q4 2024 alone, and 22 more to bow soon.

It’s a prophecy by David Meeker unfolding before our eyes: “I’m looking forward to DTR’s comeback story,” the Trophy Brewing, Elm Partners and Carpenter Development partner told RM at the one-year anniversary of the pandemic. “[2020] has been a hard year for Downtown with very few folks coming to work, no conventions and no weddings. The comeback story is going to be a good one.” 

SURVIVAL STAGE

COVID, of course, doesn’t exist in a vacuum and has had an undeniably profound effect, from loss and lessons to lifeforce. But as far as survival stories go, Raleigh is serving a masterclass. Heralded as a region with remarkable economic, labor and social resilience, the Cap City has capitalized on its ideal position to survive and thrive in a postpandemic world. 

Hugely attractive, Raleigh’s economic boon, jobs and comparably cheaper housing collectively catapulted it to one of the fastest-growing in the country. Add to that the city’s commitment to public health, small business support and a Downtown rebound, and Raleigh is looking to cling to its title as one of the most attractive metropolises bar none.

All told, as we reflect at the five-year mark, we’re reminded not just of our pain, frustration and loss—but how far we’ve come, realizing RM’s “Surviving the Year From Hell” 2021 manifestation: “Social distancing will come to an end. We will sit on bar stools again and dine indoors without inhibition. We will sway to live music. We will complain about all the people at fests and the NC State Fair. We will tailgate and fill the stands at Carter-Finley and PNC. And we will hug and high-five again.” And, as you told us, most importantly, “we will live with a level of gratitude and abandon we could have never discovered if not for this pandemic.” As far as what’s next, it’s perhaps best captured in Natasha Beddingfield’s viral lyric, “the rest is still unwritten.” 

*As of the last available data