Healthcare has become such an essential role in this time, as hospitals get overwhelmed with patients needing testing as well as the usual patients needing urgent care. It’s also become a dangerous place because of the overflow and influx of patients. What I mean is, you could walk in with minor symptoms thinking you have covid-19, paranoid and just want to be tested to be certain, but because tests take some time, you won’t know until a day or two or even a week later, but in that time, you could pick it up during that hospital visit since you’re exposing yourself to a lot when you step in that emergency room waiting to be seen. And then when you get your test results, it can tell you you’re negative for it when you’re really positive because you picked it up after. And because you feel safe, you’ll be less cautious before it’s too late. Imagine everyone doing this and boggling down the hospitals with admissions and testing and now the regular patients with heart problems, strokes, broken bones, car accident traumas, etc, are being delayed care because of this. Think of how long you have to wait in a doctor’s office when you need to be seen for a regular check-up because your doctor is backed up with several patients needing to be seen for various other medical issues. Now imagine that 10X worse because of all this. Please remember to be patient with your doctors, nurses, aides, pharmacists, technicians, physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners, etc. Everyone is working overtime currently to save someone’s life, even if in small ways.
I would never in my life imagine such a mass shutdown such as this. It’s also scary because it shows how much of the government controls our lives. Through mass hysteria and panic, freedom has been limited overnight through the guise of for the greater good. It’s scary because we’re living in 2020 but it feels like the setting of a dystopian novel. I honestly think we’re finally paying for all the warnings we’ve ignored about climate change, the lack of basic human rights, not understanding the importance of access to healthcare to all, how paid sick time helps everyone and not just the sick person, the problems with anti-vaxxers, the list goes on.
But from this, it hasn’t been all bad things. China rushed to build an entire hospital dedicated to coronavirus in 10 days. And while it is slowly recovering from this tragedy and yet, it is still willing to help out other countries. China just stepped in and flew medical supplies and a team of medical staff to help Italy, which became the worst affected nation in the world right after China, seemingly overnight as the contagion came to light there around Feb 21. The US government is slowly trying to figure out how to deal with the current state of things as they change daily, scrambling to make up for lost time, racing to find a vaccine and a plan to stop and contain this rapidly spreading disease.
Despite the looming dangers that threaten our life and survival on a daily basis, I still have hope. I want to believe that we will get through this. That we as humans will stop fighting each other and find some common ground to help fight a common enemy. The scary part is this has never happened before on such a global scale. We really need to work together, do our part and combine superpowers to make it through. I know that we are definitely living in an monumental and important piece of history that hopefully we learn from when all this is over, as life will definitely not be the same when it IS over. But my hope is that, in a few months this will be behind us and in December when I reflect upon 2020, this will feel like a distant nightmare that we barely remember happened. But we will move forward, hopefully with a smarter head on our shoulders regarding the future when it comes to dealing with global threats like this. We need Earth to assemble our own team of Avengers currently to make it out alive, in the form of our world leaders working to combat Covid-19 together and eradicate it.
May the odds be ever in your favor as it sure feels like the Hunger Games, given the current state of things. Let’s hope most of us make it out of here alive. Until then, this begins the Quarantine time of 2020.
