With all due respect my friend I feel like you're take on pass fail is pretty bogus. I know many people who have spoken to adcoms from Georgetown and UCI, and they said although they prefer grades, they're really not in a position to discriminate pass fail under any circumstances because, you know, when you a take a step back, and realize that the only thing between you and an entire grade is a faulty wifi, you're not really considering how so many people were affected by this situation. Effectively every single admissions committee officer has said they don't view P's as C's, both in a public and private setting, and both pre-covid and post-covid, no, they don't have a reason to lie to you, and no, it doesn't look good, but it's not a C, it's viewed for what it is, a P, which carries with it it's own problems and connotations, just like a W. This place is an echo chamber, and only represents a very small portion of pre-meds, albeit the most successful, so your perception that NOBODY took some or all their classes pass fail this semester is pretty narrow-sighted. Additionally you're not considering how some schools that did not do mandatory P/F also may have had unique grading systems for this semester that might throw a wrench into this entire process, maybe some individual classes went pass fail and others did not, it's a very messy situation, and the perception that med school is this all-knowing giant that can figure out every minute detail of every decision every student made in college is pretty absurd.
I'm open to conflicting evidence from any adcomms you may have spoken to, but if all your info is just coming from neurotic pre-med group chats then I think you should take a step back. Again, I can accept being totally incorrect in this assessment and I respect your opinion, I'm in no way saying P grades are seen positively on transcripts in general, as you should obviously avoid them at all costs, I just think that, if you think a sane human being is going to look at a solid fourth to third of all the transcripts for spring 2020 that have some or all P grades, mandatory or not, conveniently during a once-in-a-century level of social upheaval similar to the mid-20th century, that is so unique that if it had happened any decade earlier, education itself would have just shut down for a number of years, and think that all people just got stupider and got a bunch of C's, then maybe you should rethink your opinion.
I could've said all of this and not get into a single med school, not a single interview or secondary, but that's the vibe I'm getting from people who ACTUALLY make the decision of people getting into med school, if you have conflicting primary evidence, I actually want to hear it, no sarcasm, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But if anecdotal evidence means anything, I had a friend who's applying right now, took P/F (all grades) for the last semester, was taking Physics II, and she's gotten almost all her secondaries so far, she had a 3.59. I'm just gonna move on at this point, this is just dumb.
My point was that it's not going to be a "major nuisance" because adcoms are going to know precisely why people are using it, so they are not going to have a difficult time incorporating it into a decision process. This is totally separate from people accepting a school's invitation to provide context through an essay. That said, I totally agree with your point.
