Pandemic

It's been almost a year since the world first heard of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. When I first heard of it, I really thought it was nothing more than a minor headline that would pass into nothingness before long.

I grew up hearing about mad cow disease. MERS, the first SARS, West Nile virus, and the ebolavirus outbreak of a few years ago all happened since I became a nurse. I worked through H1N1 and learned about Zika. I knew epidemiologists have been been warning about a global pandemic for - well, forever. But none of them had developed into that. This was probably the same kind of thing.

I did not believe it would turn into a thing I needed to worry about.

I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

Within a week, public schools closed along with restaurants and the more "frivolous" retail services closed. People started wearing masks and stocking up on toilet paper. There was no hand sanitizer to be found any where. Concerts were canceled for the next month, and then for the next year.

I became mortally afraid for my grandparents and parents. Afraid for myself and my household, though a little less so, since we're all relatively young and pretty healthy.

And then I started hearing about relatively young and pretty healthy people becoming deathly ill. ICU stays and residual side effects. Mounting hospital debt and the long haulers.

I listened to podcasts wherein people described the loss and pain COVID-19 had brought into their lives. I cried on the way to work. I cried at work and at home. I cried and I cried about everything.

Facing the mortality of the human race heightened every emotion I could experience, both good and bad. So I cried over everything

I feel both closer to and more distant from the whole of humanity.

We are all experiencing the same thing right now. Some of us believe it's a hoax or blown out of proportion. Others are taking it seriously and believing science is doing its level best with the hand we've been dealt. No matter where one stands on that spectrum, it is what we are dealing with now.

So, while we stay in our homes and miss concerts and street festivals and museums, we can relate to one another in a way we might not have before.

I meant to keep up a journal about this thing. But this thing became so disheartening and so heavy that I stopped journaling about it. It all became too much to think about and I moved into more of a keep-your-head-down-and-put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-and-just-keep-moving mode. So I have no journal and no real documentation of what's happened.

I do have many thoughts about what's happened and continues to happen. Those will come out here as they come to my mind and as I have time to sit down and put them into my keyboard.