Today I listened to a discussion around Covid-19 and lockdowns as a preventative measure. The recorded video was from eight months ago. The moderator and an epidemiologist challenged models proposed around prevention and spread. They spoke somewhat objectively about how lockdowns were a bad decision without a strategic exit plan. The conversation was startling. They spoke of closing schools, restaurants, gyms and then re-opening them whilst using the Scientific Method and peer review. Basically the concept around locking places down was a novice one with no real insight on how to re-open prospective countries back up. The dilemma then was that they couldn’t risk coming out of a lockdown because they didn’t exactly know how to. So they chose to stay the course of these unplanned plans and now look where we are. On several occasions they mentioned how it would all be over in three months. They spoke of mutated strains that would come but would be immediately eliminated because there would be a vaccine. They encouraged governments to lockdown to the best of their abilities because there was no other option. I like to think the wiser of the two may not even be here to see the outcome of their talk. Suffice to say we all know now lockdowns really do not work. They suppress people which temporarily stops spread. However, lockdowns, quarantines and curfews do not pause death. All they do is increase it in multiple ways than exposure and infection. All these practices do is toy with the human condition that is already toiling with the virus and its consequences.
I myself was an early adopter to fear around this virus. I wanted so badly to protect myself and my family from it. I spent many sleepless nights reading and searching for things that could keep us safe. But every day there was a news article or broadcast that said it was drawing near and there was nothing that could be done about it. I witnessed the spread all over the planet. I saw how it began to affect our lives even when we were far removed from it. The death just sort of became apart of the daily conversation over dinner. How many people died today? How many people were infected today? I began to notice how the recovered weren’t spoke of anymore. They also stopped talking about the lack of space in morgues or how there weren’t enough body bags. We rarely see images of the inside of those hospital rooms or the crowds just outside of the ER doors. The depictions became more of the unforeseen casualties of the virus. The businesses that shuttered. The renters getting evicted. The families standing in line for handouts of food. The world was going into various lockdowns that regarded some places and spaces as unsafe. One day something was deemed essential and the next it was taken away from us. I had library books I wasn’t allowed to return. The movie posters showed films that were never released to the theaters. The school bus came but only dropped off meals and not children. The mail decreased. The shelves in the grocery store went empty. The world just shut.
The idea was if we lock it all down in phases, sectors, colors etc. that the virus would have nowhere to go. The country did one thing, our states another, then came the mayors and the people. If the country said we didn’t have to wear a mask to protect ourselves and the mayor merely suggested it, the people wore nothing at all. We made the choice to protect ourselves. We also made the choice to live in fear. I strongly believe the fear is what kept us inside for as long as we did adhere. And the fear is ultimately what made us stop succumbing and go back outside. We felt as if the world was crumbling around us and we were watching it on the TV. We weren’t living our lives as they were. It was safer for our sanity to try to be like we used to be. So I left the states and returned to Europe and back to my marriage. I had wound up stuck in the U.S. after visiting home. When I left, mother began working in her business again. We embraced being apart. We used the new tools to communicate and stayed in touch. We Zoom and FaceTime. We send cards and packages. We try to take care of each others needs as best as we can without interacting with others. We protect ourselves as we are suggested to instead of being forced to. We know it is futile. We know this may never end if someone doesn’t demand everyone does what we have chosen to do. It goes beyond wearing a mask. It is beyond having the groceries delivered. It is taking on an entirely new way of life to stay in the game called life. It is adapting to this new normal that is far from the word. It is learning of death and saying I do not want that for me and mine. It is trying to find purpose and self worth in the day in and day out loss — loss of time, loss of livelihood and loss of life. We have all created routines around this nothingness. We have all created a method of survival. And we all await a clear plan out of this which seems nowhere and no time soon. Even with a vaccine in deployment, everything seems surreal and a mess of theory instead of hard facts.
We are being asked to stay inside or only leave when appropriate with a proper mask. However, those infected are being treated with oxygen, turned in their beds and it is all about letting their airways breathe. Is it ironic? Sure. Downright paradoxical if you think too long about it. We are also being told to stop worrying about surfaces and transfer through objects. Then when I go to a local grocery store I am being encouraged to disinfect my own shopping cart. I used to wear one glove so I could have a free hand to do things like touch my phone or wallet. Now I just enter a store in winter gloves therefore nothing touches my clean hands at any point. I then return to the car or enter my house like a surgeon where I scrub out per se. Finger lickers and face scratchers are pushing my grocery down the belt so I feel compelled to clean my items anyways. I like to think I have avoided this thing by doing so. Occasionally, someone is in the news saying they haven’t been outside for months but their groceries are delivered by whatever random person. They don’t engage with the person delivering so it must be surfaces right? It has to be the licking of the envelopes, the knock at the door or the hand that carried that bag of apples and placed them at the doormat. If that is the case why are they lying to us? And if that is the case why can’t I just go get my things and not use a cart at all? I am told if I don’t use a cart they do not know how many people are in the store. And then I go down an aisle to face two people stocking. There are two people more on every aisle and more at checkout just taking up occupancy too.
Most of time after one of these zoonotic outbreaks a team goes to trace its origin. They claim China is blocking those efforts. There are independent studies though which tell us all sorts of things about transmission, incubation and symptoms. I imagine no one knows anything because all of this stuff has conflicting outcomes. The teenager who simply walked in a restaurant for five minutes without eating or staying contracted it. The quarantining times after exposure and or travel have changed from fourteen days to ten and now five. The vaccination seems like placebo as it is only being given to people with direct exposure versus everyone in all environments to see if it actually works. I mean why give it to a health professional who has lasted all this time in PPE. Aren’t they immune due to antibodies and heard immunity anyways? A friend of mine, his mother, is in the hospital for an unrelated issue but due to Covid no one is allowed to visit and then leave. The hospital says one visitor can volunteer to stay but if they leave they cannot return and no one can take their place. The idea is contamination and risk of infection but that person came in once and isn’t that all it takes? Maybe the teenager was already infected when he came in that restaurant. Maybe everyone is negative until they take a test and wait in a queue with one infected person. Maybe when you get negative results and return home on a train you get infected. Best yet what if everyone just has the flu and going to a doctor exposes them to the virus which trumps their symptoms. My mom has a friend who claims that happened to his sister. Her brother swears she only had flu like systems after having a social gathering with her co-workers. He said after sitting in the ER waiting room she fell more ill and in days she was dead. The best story of all is there are concerts being held in the former epicenter of this virus. Life after lockdown does exist but only in China.
No one knows what to believe anymore. And trust me doing this voluntary quarantine is wearing on me. I do my utmost best to just stay home. When I arrived back in Europe one country was under fire and another was like paradise. Now the numbers here are getting out of hand all over even in places where things were under control. I have already seen this in the States. I understand this is the wave we avoided at first. So when people invite me to things, I loosely say I will come and last minute, I cancel. I keep hearing the one off stories of people who choose to take a small leap and die. I just do not want to take the chance for a few hours of freedom and camaraderie. I am not alone in my house. I have my husband, pets, plants and all this consumption of media. There is no reason for me to ever leave home. Sure, I’ve grown tired of doing the same thing every day to avoid the what ifs. I am slowly losing all the languages I used to speak. I feel like I have lost the social cues one requires to interact with other humans. Sometimes when I put on shoes or actual pants I feel like I forgot how to wear them. I have caught several trains and buses and forgot the procedure of buying a ticket. I have begun to hate the smell of the coffee my husband makes everyday that I seldom want to drink. The sound of the dog licking their feet might as well be thunder. I can only watch but so much television and the paywalls on the internet are endless. I have begun to download a lot of e-books and I actually prefer the look, feel and smell of real books. After fighting so hard to keep living, I have become exhausted by it.
I have to imagine there are so many people in my position but worse. They may be alone, broke, homeless and or sick. Once happy couples are separating and divorcing even celebrity ones. Women are carrying unwanted pregnancies to term or seeking abortions. Abuse of all kinds and crime is up. People are abusing substances. Many people have committed suicide. For some I am certain suicide includes going out without a mask and just taking anyone with them on the ride that is Covid. I know of people who watched someone die of it but continue to do all the wrong things so they too can die. I realize now these people are so lost in loss they embrace death. They no longer have fear because they have seen it first hand and they know it is an easy, uncomplicated way to die right now. I sometimes think about the abandoned cars parked at hospitals, unclaimed dry cleaning on racks, overflowing mailboxes and dead houseplants … once belonging to the lost ones. So many remain unaccounted for and their things are scattered all over the place. I haven’t lost anyone close to me but I have noticed people disappear. People from my collection of virtual friends no longer post. I see public figures aren’t responding to their fans questions or engaging anymore. It took months for someone to tell us MFDoom transitioned. I wonder are we just asleep and this is some long, awful dream we are soon to wake up from.
A new year should be hopeful but now is a somber time. Most of us are so busy trying to stay alive we do not have time to reflect or to think of resolutions. Classes placed on hold. Deals nullified. Home closings extended again and again. Wedding dates postponed and pushed. There is complete, involuntary failure to launch for so many people. My personal purpose is at a standstill. A lot of goals I had invested in or not are now put on permanent hold. And time doesn’t wait. The places I longed to go may not be there for me after all this. My old stomping grounds are disappearing left and right. Entire cities are turning into ghost towns as people escape or die. Just look at the elected politicians who didn’t make it to their new posts, actors who couldn’t complete future roles and incumbent students who didn’t respond to their acceptance letters. And then we have an unsupportive, out of touch government who swears democracy will suffer if they protect their own people with laws versus mandates. It is manic to think we exposed ourselves to vote for these people during a global pandemic and this is how they repay us — in expiring memorandums, watered down regulations and peasant worthy stimulus payments? We cannot even go outside to turn cars over and set things on fire in opposition. Everyone is too afraid.
No one is invincible not even dogs. People who had Covid can get it again. The poor mink in Denmark got it. There is a man who was vaccinated but tested positive days later. We also have people who want to watch the world burn. A man who blew himself up. A pharmacist who destroyed 500 viles of vaccine. The nurse who lied about side effects. A President playing golf as up to 3,000 people a day are dying from it. And to think some of us were upset we couldn’t go home for the holidays. There are people who have lost their homes in this fight. There are people who have been trapped on cruise ships since April. There are seniors and disabled folk whose families cannot see them even after they have passed away. The idea of not being able to pack a suitcase and get on a plane is a lost one for me. I am concerned about the morale of the world right now being shut up and shut in. There are consequences to this. I think existentially about the sky falling in on us or the birds going south and never coming back. I sometimes wish I had a bunker so I could just return when the coast is clear. I cannot begin to understand why a handful of people who cannot predict the unpredictable chose to lead us astray. How eight months later actually over a year after this virus began we know less than we ever did about it. How there is no end in sight for something that cannot be seen. How life is ending as it goes on and on. But everyone is sleeping more than thinking and mindlessly staying locked in their own heads. Even the movies are getting the projections right. We cannot even simulate an end. The curves and models are wrong and remain so. All we do is talk and nothing ever gets done. I used to say if we stopped talking maybe that would end this once and for all. If the entire world just wrote everything down or signed through there could be an end in a month. But even that too is just falling on deaf ears choked by mangled strings. They said it would be over in three months especially with a vaccine but without an exit plan …
