Covid Support Thread
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There is so much despair in the last few pages. I’m so sorry everyone is feeling that way. Here, in Colorado, i’m not feeling that much despair in the air, not yet anyway. Though, I’m not in Denver so IDK how it feels there. I am worried about the fall. The college I work at is opening though I can work from home, thankfully. I saw a picture today from a coworker where they are trying to put up plexiglass barriers at certain desks. My desk is huge and in the middle of the 2nd floor and they put a tiny plexiglass barrier on one side of the desk. I mean, thanks for trying I guess? But that is not protection. Plus there are study tables behind my desk so…why even bother with that?
Funny, I never wanted to survive a nuclear apocalypse. And now I wonder if surviving this will truly be any better. Every business I ever loved will soon be gone.
America is simply too fucked up to even be worth saving. Only the rich will come out of this okay…
My overwhelming thought about anything lately is…EH, WHY BOTHER.
@Helen, as a Canadian, I would say our overwhelming public perception is the #1 thing the US can do to improve things is to vote the GOP out. Like Cleopatra, I live in British Columbia, where our public health officer is a beloved hero. We never had a lockdown, she merely explained respectfully and fully WHY we needed to stay home to protect ourselves and others. Her motto of Be Calm, Be Kind, Be Safe was drummed into us. And we got down to 2 new cases a day in our province, with like 5 people in ICU. Now, things are mostly open and we have about 25 cases a day. Just south of us Washington State has 1,200. The difference isn’t so much a big difference between us and Washingtonians as a population. It’s all government. Our Premier (Governor) does whatever Dr Henry says we should do. The opposition representatives work collaboratively together for the common good. They thank each other for their work etc. modelling good, respectful behaviour. Federally, our gov’t has done all it can to make sure no one is out of a home due to COVID job losses and everyone has access to medical care and mental health support as needed. We share supplies across provincial lines so no one runs short. We are in this together. But that’s because of our government, not because we as individuals are any nicer or smarter than those south of the 49th. That said, Trump is a wack-job who has turned the US into dumpster fire in so, so many ways. We look at the throngs of usually white, seemingly less-educated people who are impervious to facts and wonder why they want the US to be a third world country where the flag represents not freedom but ignorance and bigotry. That’s the first thing I think when I see people wave your flag now. We have faith in our American friends though. You’ll rise above and move past this awful time.
@CanadaGoose, I want to have faith that the US will rise above this current political climate but it just feels so hopeless. We are still holding out hope that a medical position in New Zealand may come through, although if I was them I wouldn’t want to bring anyone from the US over! I have been trying to get my husband to emigrate for years and just in the last six months, he has become more amenable.
My husband seems to feel that Biden will get elected and things will start to calm down – but I am just not so sure. Trump is erratic, at best, and his base is too. I am related to a lot of his base and they still think the Pandemic is a hoax and that we can easily open up schools like Denmark, Germany, and New Zealand. I don’t even engage and in fact, I’ve decided I don’t need to interact with these people, if I ever get to travel to my hometown again. I know this reaction is not helpful to the situation but I can’t forgive these people for being one-issue voters (abortion and guns) and their unwillingness to just sit and listen. I totally get where some of Trump’s base is coming from but the fact that they still hang onto him, even when his actions have hurt them – I can’t with them anymore.
My biggest fear is the election results in November – whatever way it goes. Fingers crossed there isn’t any violence, but lately, I’ve been feeling there will be.
@Bethany I am so sorry to hear all that you and so many others are going through. The idea of an election result in the US prompting violence is still hard for me to wrap my head around but nothing much about the US surprises me anymore. What’s happening in Portland boggles my mind. Portland is for destination book-shopping at Powell’s, Voodoo Donuts and cute boutique hotels. I just can’t grasp it. On the COVID front, we all depend on others for our health on this one. Where I am, the 20-30 year olds are meeting en masse without distancing in the sunny weather and the resulting cases could send us in the same direction as you. Still, I get it. They are tired of being cooped up in apartments and are desperate to see their friends. I have been grateful for this forum as an opportunity to reassure myself that all Americans aren’t like the loons we see and hear about on the news. All of us as a global community have to try and be kind and put ourselves in others’ shoes so we don’t devolve into vitriol. It’s just so easy to become an us and them. I hope your family sees the light at some point. My mother used to think Trump ‘told it like it was’ but now she refers to him as “the idiot who is killing his own people.” I hope you get to go to New Zealand if you wish to. It looks like a wonderful place and their PM rocks!
So, I know there is nothing anyone can really do to help and everyone is dealing with a lot, but I thought I might share something here.
My brother and his wife were expecting their first child, a baby girl, sometime in mid September. Well, the baby was born early and she has to be in the NICU for awhile. Both mom and baby seem to be making progress, but the hospital is taking absolutely every precaution to protect my niece from Covid and other germs because she is still so fragile. My brother and sister-in-law can’t even be in the NICU to see her at the same time and have to rotate in once a day, an hour a day visits and they need to scrub down and go through a whole process before being allowed into the IC NICU.
I work down the street from the hospital she is at so on the day she was born I was able to meet my brother outside in the courtyard, standing 6 feet apart as we tried to speak loud enough over our masks. When I was leaving to go home I stopped at a convience market across the corner from the hospital for a bottle of water to drink in the car. A woman came in pushing a jogging stroller and not wearing a mask even though there are signs everywhere saying that you have to wear one when entering the store. The cashier told her she needed to leave and come back in when she had her mask on. They even offered her a disposable surgical mask the hospital had supplied the store with. So she still refused and started cursing people out and yelling, getting her nasty spit everywhere, until security made her leave.
This sounds stupid but I am still just… appalled over that whole interaction. I keep thinking about it. I haven’t met a troll like that in the outside, not one like that. To be able to stand across from a hospital ICU, walk into a store mostly patronized by hospital staff and people who have someone they care about inside, wanting to start trouble. She obviously knew what would happen, right? I keep thinking about what if her germs that came from her uncovered screaming mouth somehow spread to my brother when he went into the courtyard to see me the next time I went to meet him to bring him something( certain approved items are allowed to be taken in from the outside) or just to say hi? We don’t know when my niece will be allowed home. I don’t know when her grandparents will get to hold their first grandbaby. I realized that there is no way out of this until enough people like that woman yelling in the store get on board and they don’t want to listen or do something small enough like putting on a mask while inside a building. It won’t be entirely safe for my niece to be in the world she is fighting to stay alive in until people stop being so selfish. I’m sorry if this sounds overly dramatic and I am not trying to use a personal family issue as some sort of guilt tactic, but I am really angry and scared right now. I can’t stop seeing these people now. They fight on local newspapers comment sections and one person in a local FB community group said that ” making people wear a mask is the same thing as Nazis tattooing people’s arms before sending them into the camps”… Like, that person really really believed that. They really feel that way and in their mind that is a rational comparison. And then someone commented below with ” very well said. You hit the nail on the head with that. ” And that person wasn’t being sarcastic. I was scared before but now it’s just a heightened sense of anxeity.@originalusername, you are not being dramatic or overreacting in any way. Your reaction to that woman’s (and others’) stupidity is exactly what mine and any sane person’s would have been: outrage, horror, and disgust that the selfishness and idiocy of ~40% of the population will keep the rest of us from being able to responsibly live our lives or safely see our friends and loved ones for many, many months. I live across the country from all of my family and I don’t know when I’ll see them again. I probably won’t see my mom or my brother for all of this calendar year, at least. Situations like your family’s SHOULD be front of mind for us all, and tug at the heart strings of any sentient person. Sadly, there are so so many uncaring, unfeeling, heartless, soulless people being allowed to spread a plague and endanger all the rest of us.
I don’t know what to do. I feel like hitting my head against a wall everytime I see one of them post underneath an article about how numbers are going up again. It is such a stupid, simple thing to ask to prevent more mass death and devestation: wear a piece of cloth over your mouth when you go out ( they even come in fun designs!) wash your hands and avoid large gatherings. It’s just driving me insane and I don’t know why I am surprised at how selfish and ignorant people can be, but ever since that encounter in the store it’s like a hyperfocused awareness I can’t turn off. I don’t want my niece to get sick and die and I don’t want my parents who are in the at-risk age group to get sick and die while waiting for the day they can meet their granddaughter. It’s so unbelievably frustrating and depressing.
@OUG.. yeah. I feel ya. 100%. I had to warn my folks that come late November, when this next grandchild is born… to start seriously thinking about the flu shot and reducing their risks if they wanna see the baby and be helpful at all. It’s not them i’m worried about. its the baby. Not. f*cking. fair. to these babies.
The non-profit I work for shares a building with a women’s health and abortion clinic. Everyday there is a small crowd of the same old protestors gathered around out front. I have never seen any of them wearing a mask and they all huddle together around a sign that says ” protect each precious life”… It’s a shame they are too dumb to realize the bitter irony in that.
