Covid-19 broke the charts.

Decades from now, the pandemic will be visible in the historical data of nearly anything measurable today: an unmistakable spike, dip or jolt that officially began for Americans five years ago this week.

Here’s an incomplete collection of charts that capture that break — across the economy, health care, education, work, family life and more.

Three million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the first week, then six million the next, one of the earliest shockwaves to ripple through the economy.

Those who still had a job often stayed put. Only later did tens of millions of people quit their jobs for better ones, in the “great resignation.”

Overnight, Americans started stockpiling groceries and stopped ordering from restaurants. (The two have traded places since.)

Cars stayed off the roads. Demand for oil cratered. On one day in April, the value of oil fell below $0, a sign of a world turned upside down.

Americans drove less and gave up flying almost completely. It took years for flying to return to prepandemic levels.

At home, our lives changed, but not necessarily for the better.

The pandemic gave many people more time at home and a chance to rethink their relationship to work.

But it also left them more alone, detached and disconnected — changes that have lingered.

Americans hunkered down and bought a lot of alcohol — a billion dollars more.

We started spending an extra hour and a half at home each day, on average. At first it was out of necessity, but later, perhaps, out of habit…

… but we weren’t hosting more dinner parties. We were just more alone.

One thing the revolution in remote and hybrid work enabled: Mothers of the youngest children flooded into the work force, adding to a record number of American women with paying jobs.

And more people chose to work for themselves, submitting far more business applications than before the pandemic.

For a while, things were weird.

For many, the start of the pandemic was like going through the looking glass. We had to learn to live a little differently — to do things for ourselves, and sometimes just to fill the time.

It was a time of contradictions, and of trends that seemed to signal bigger and more permanent changes than actually happened.

We chopped off our own locks…

… and brought home new friends.

Businesses that catered to Americans’ new lives at home soared in value, then fell back to earth.