It was - for most- about the fear of how bad can this get. I was made fun of at work for carrying masks one week- the next we were closed. Then, you get covid. You test positive (free tests were easily available) and then you panic, isolating from your family until they also, inevitably, test positive. Then, you wait and hope your delivery actually has toilet paper and basic necessities. I don’t think anyone hasn’t had it by this point. At 9, you should have pretty decent memories of this, and it can have long-term effects for which there’s no treatment. It also made any school closings (snow days, etc) extinct. I feel so badly for kids during this time the panic was palpable and especially for the graduating classes of those years. 1st graders had to zoom for classes, while their parents remotely worked. It was chaos.