Chapter 9
We were tested for COVID every day for three years.
During our administration, I contracted the virus four times.
Once, as the result of an infection while on the road, I was stuck on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, for two weeks, which sounds like a lot more fun than it was.
Every time I got sick, I gave thanks that it wasn’t worse and that I was able to stay out of the hospital, where doctors and nurses were overwhelmed, their resources strained to the breaking point.
One of the first orders of business in the administration was to simultaneously take the virus seriously and do everything possible to get life back to normal.
The expression of gratitude I heard perhaps more than any other was to thank Joe for a “return to sanity” after so much chaos.
That, and that people seemed to appreciate the way Joe showed respect for the nation’s grief, and urged us to come together around it, rather than letting it divide us.
We believed it was important to pay tribute to the unbearably high and still-growing death toll, and to the more than one hundred thousand people who were hospitalized.
On day two in office, Joe signed ten pandemic-related executive orders.
One called for the opening of a hundred new vaccination sites, which had begun giving shots to seniors in January.
“We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and it is going to take months to get it turned around,” he said.
His goal was to get one hundred million shots done in a hundred days.
He warned that we would likely soon reach the death toll of five hundred thousand Americans lost to COVID, a number Joe and I would mourn alongside Kamala and Doug at a candlelight vigil and moment of silence the following month on the South Portico of the White House.
That was a time of so much darkness and so much pain, and it galvanized Joe to act decisively.
As part of the vaccination effort, Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and I hit the road together and traveled all over the country.
By this point, I was so grateful to be connecting with people in person after so much time apart.
Tony was easy to travel with. We had our routine down.
I would talk about vaccination from a mother’s point of view.
He would speak from a medical point of view.
We’d explain why vaccines made sense, and we’d encourage people who were being vaccinated.
I’d have the patients squeeze my hand if they needed some support.
Personally, I’m terrified of needles, but I went to one vaccination clinic after another to get the word out.
At a Harlem church, Dr. Fauci and I witnessed shots going into the arms of New Yorkers, from teens to ninety-year-olds.
When Dr. Fauci and I went on Live with Kelly and Ryan, Kelly Ripa honored the work of teachers, which, of course, is always a shortcut to my heart.
She said, “One of the silver linings of the pandemic was that parents really understood how tough the job of teaching is, because on the other side of the computer is a hapless parent trying to just log their child on.”
For our first Valentine’s Day in the White House, I wanted to do something cheerful to celebrate the holiday while people were still being kept apart by the pandemic.
I drew conversation hearts on a piece of paper and showed the carpentry office.
They said they loved the idea and painted late into the night.
The next morning, February 12, I told Joe to look out the window.
Overnight, giant cutout hearts with phrases like “Unity,” “Courage,” “Healing,” “Kindness,” and “Compassion” had appeared on the lawn. The display was signed “Love, Jill.”
Joe wanted to go down to look at the hearts close-up, so we took our coffee out on the lawn, where he chatted with reporters.
When asked what he would say to Americans who were feeling discouraged almost a year into COVID, he said, “There’s hope.
You just have to stay strong.” He spoke about those who had lost loved ones: “The only thing I can say to them is that they’re still in your heart…
I can tell you from experience, they’re in your heart. ”
Early March 2021 was a liminal time. The vaccine was available, though not yet for everyone, and most people in the country hadn’t had their two shots.
Masks and capacity limits were still enforced in many places.
Facing a third wave, countries in Europe were back on lockdown.
Like so many people, Joe and I had cabin fever.
And so, one night, with DC traffic stilled by closures and travel bans, I ordered takeout from Le Diplomate and invited Joe to meet me for dinner on the White House grounds, in the tennis pavilion.
It was one of those rare moments when we realized that it was really just the two of us on this journey.
The vaccine tours were challenging, but they made me feel like at least there was finally something to do that might help end the devastation of COVID.
In Texas, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and I went to an Astros game to call attention to a pop-up vaccination clinic at the stadium.
With country star Brad Paisley, I visited a clinic that had been set up at a bar.
When we had little kids getting shots, we brought in US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, because he was very good with parents.
In that first year, I went to thirty-five states and fifty cities to promote vaccination efforts.
A pandemic should not be politicized. The virus did not care who you voted for.
Fewer lives could have been lost if more people had gotten the vaccine—a miracle of modern science that resulted from a bipartisan effort.
Some leaders made things worse by spreading fear of the vaccine and discouraging mask-wearing.
I tried to remind myself that every one of us shared the same goal: for there to come a day when COVID would become just another annoying flu.
The administration had been pushing for a Summer of Freedom, hoping to get back to some semblance of normalcy by the Fourth of July.
At last, we hoped, we could all take off our masks and gather with friends and family to celebrate the country and how we’d made it through the worst days of the pandemic.
Well, best-laid plans—the Delta variant showed up with a vengeance and foiled the push for normalcy.
The Summer Olympics in Japan had been rescheduled from the previous year due to COVID.
I was invited to lead the US delegation to the games.
It was decided that I should go to Japan alone, without the fuller delegation that is customary.
That was my first solo foreign trip as First Lady.
Because of COVID, the stadiums were nearly empty, lending an eerie quality to the games.
I sat twenty feet from French President Emmanuel Macron to watch the US play France in three-on-three basketball.
(We won.) How terrible for the athletes to have worked so hard to get there and then not to have their families in the stands.
They were resilient, though, or they wouldn’t have been Olympians.
On that trip, I dined with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and his wife, Mariko.
We talked about COVID and our families while enjoying a dinner of tempura shrimp, scallops, vegetables, two soups, and fruit.
Our conversation was comfortable, if somewhat challenging with three interpreters and a plexiglass shield between us.
In Tokyo, we weren’t allowed to walk the streets because of the increasing pandemic numbers.
I would have loved to have seen the city in some way other than from a car window.
Lockdowns had so many of us feeling claustrophobic.
I kept tearing down the paper they’d put up to cover the windows of my room at the embassy.
I was told it was for my safety, but I wanted to see the sunshine and gardens outside. I wanted those memories of Japan.
I’m grateful that COVID is now nowhere near as lethal as it was.
In the US, COVID has indeed become more or less like the flu, with its mortality down from roughly 367,000 deaths in 2020 to around 47,000 in 2024.
I give thanks for the clarity and steadfastness Joe brought to that confusing and terrifying time, and to the doctors and scientists who developed a vaccine, and to all those across the country who did their part to get us here.