Six years ago this week, COVID-19 dominated daily life. Schools closed, headlines tracked cases, and Ohio reported its first deaths and postponed a primary election.

Why it matters: Today, the pandemic that killed over 1 million Americans and reshaped society has largely faded from public conversation.

• That silence isn't unusual — but it could have real consequences, an Ohio State University public health historian says.

Driving the news: Associate professor Marian Moser Jones and other researchers have interviewed over 120 local and state health officials across the U.S. to document how they navigated the pandemic.

• They hope to create a historical record before memories fade and society moves on.
• "There's almost been a consensus — in a time when we don't have consensus about a lot — that we're going to move on and not talk about this anymore," Moser Jones tells Axios.

What they've found: Many health care workers witnessed traumatic scenes, including patients dying alone, and endured months of fear and uncertainty before vaccines and treatments existed.

• And officials, once praised as heroes, became targets of anger and blame.
• The urge to suppress painful experiences is deeply human, Moser Jones tells Axios.

Flashback: There was a similar desire to move on after the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed about 675,000 Americans and intertwined with World War I.

• It was also a tense, politicized time full of unrest, misinformation and, yes, mask resistance.
• Ohio-born President Warren G. Harding won in 1920 on a "return to normalcy" campaign, and society shifted focus into the Roaring Twenties.

Case in point: The library's Dispatch archives show references to "Spanish flu" or "Spanish influenza" — the virus' original misleading name — waned by the 1930s and then mostly disappeared for decades.

• In 1964, the newspaper's magazine published a four-page retrospective.

Between the lines: A politicized pandemic is hard to collectively mourn, Moser Jones says. Unlike wars or other tragedies, there are no remembrance days or memorials.

• And by its nature, an endemic virus has no true "end."

Yes, but: Putting the pandemic behind us too quickly makes it hard to assess what worked and what didn't — and whether public health officials are equipped for the next crisis.

The bottom line: "People are going to want to know what happened," Moser Jones says.

• "Pandemics are going to come back, whether we repress our memories or not."

Six years later, COVID is already becoming history — but how schools teach it is still evolving.

The big picture: Early research suggests K-12 textbooks are presenting the pandemic in fragmented ways, avoiding deeper questions about its causes and consequences.

• Meanwhile, kids who lived through it are now the teens in high school history classrooms, bringing their own lived, nuanced experiences into lessons.

Between the lines: The 1918 flu pandemic isn't specifically mentioned in Ohio's social studies learning standards or model curriculum, though "pandemic diseases" are listed among the "social and political challenges of a globalized world."

• That means how COVID is taught can vary significantly from district to district, Ohio Council for the Social Studies board member Elijah Fenwick-Sanders tells Axios.

Zoom in: Fenwick-Sanders, a Cincinnati-area history teacher, says he doesn't treat COVID as a finished chapter. Instead, it's a reference point.

• He begins the school year discussing recent events, to anchor students in the present, before visiting earlier periods of U.S. history.
• That lens helps students draw parallels — and in some ways, make sense of their "collective trauma," he says.

What he's saying: "The answers weren't clear in their time, just like they may not be clear in ours," Fenwick-Sanders says. "We're still in the first draft of history."

Though the pandemic isn't a part of everyday conversation anymore, it changed people's lives in ways that still linger.

Tell us what you remember most, six years later.

• What did you learn?
• How did the experience change your life?
• Was it all bad, or did any good come of it?

📬 Reply to this newsletter with your story. We'd love to hear from you.

🔍 Ohio State's investigation into former president Ted Carter is "moving as quickly as possible" and government entities have not started any separate investigations. (Dispatch)

• The podcaster at the heart of the investigation had a $93,716 contract to record 50 episodes of her show at WOSU's headquarters. (WOSU)

☄️ The "boom" heard in Northeast Ohio yesterday morning was likely a shock wave created by a meteor. (Axios Cleveland)

✍️ Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a bill banning ranked choice voting. (Dayton Daily News)

🎮 A new bill would regulate minors' access to online gaming. (Statehouse News Bureau)

• Sen. Michele Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester) says the bill is a response to an Indiana teenager's death earlier this year.

The good old days are closer than you might think.

The intrigue: Retro "Pizza Hut Classic" locations are still around, the New York Times reports, and a few are even within a quick road trip of Central Ohio.

• "Retrologist" Rolando Pujol has assembled a list of about 80 locations.
• With eight, Ohio has among the most in the nation.

🗺️ The closest trips:

• Mount Gilead, less than an hour north.
• Loudonville, about 90 minutes northeast.
• Hillsboro, about 90 minutes southwest.

Yes, but: Pizza Hut parent company Yum Brands "does not promote or even acknowledge their existence," per The Times.

💭 Pujol tells The Times: "I did feel like I was giving people a passport to find a piece of their personal history that they had lost track of."

• "I am doing a public service."