Reflections on the Plague Year From an Anti-Ageism Activist The pandemic didn't make ageism worse, it exposed what's been there all along By Credit: Getty Something awful has happened. I remember that being my first, groggy, early-morning thought several times in my life (not counting after tragic breakups): after JFK was shot; when 9/11 happened; and during the spring of 2020, as a novel coronavirus spread across the Earth. Well into last summer, waking up felt like echo-locating, the way bats do, in an unfamiliar space. Professionally, it felt like being picked up by the scruff of the neck and compelled to think bigger and be braver.