Living in a time of a COVID Pandemic – Reflection

By Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi

It is been over a year now since the first COVID-19 case emerged in China, Hubei province (Jeanna Bryner, 2020). Nobody knew this back then of course. I was trying to think back what I was doing last November around that time. I finished writing a book and I been looking for a job. I went to the store when I wanted, I met with my friends and family freely. I had no second thoughts on how many times I was going to the store or a restaurant. I was preparing for my children to come home in January. There was no thought of a pandemic. Life was just going on as usual. Day to day living. Getting together with family was just as easy to pick up a phone or text and set a meeting time and place. Seems so far away now. This past year felt very long. It has been much longer than any other years before. I know this is true with every trauma in our lives. This situation that the pandemic created is very different. The trauma from the pandemic and its effects hit close to too many to count. Closer connections cannot happen now except with family members who we live with and people at work. At least we can see them through social media platforms and outlets. I believe that the pandemic has been taking a huge toll and trauma on a lot of people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing.

 Nothing to this scale had been here to change the way we live in our lifetime before. While in war and certain diseases where we know that casualties happen the deaths and sickness during the current pandemic are on an unimaginable scale and the numbers are still keep growing. It is good to know that there are a lot of people out there who are working hard to stop the pandemic. A vaccine is been produced, and that brings hope to many. Multiple companies, organizations and individuals been working very hard to come up with solutions to help save more people. I sincerely thank you. A vaccine will unfortunately not reach everyone in time. Now people still get sick, now people still die every day. Our current numbers are not looking very promising. Coronavirus cases today reached 66,823,450 people with the death toll of 1,533,662 people and recovery of 46,214,372 people worldwide (Worldometer, 2020). Cases are still increasing. Lot of people are still sick at home or in the hospitals. Many hospitals are working too close to capacity.

In Oregon, Washington, and California there are new travel advisories recommending for people not to travel outside of the state unless it is related to people’s job and if someone travel to any of these states self-quarantine for 14 days is recommended to help cutting down the spread of COVID -19 (OHA, 2020). I know many other states and countries also have similar recommendations. The CDC alerts people on the increasing cases and recommends not to travel if possible, stay 6 feet apart, wear a mask, stay away from crowds, and wash your hands frequently (CDC, 2020). Nothing new, nothing we all have not heard before. It gets strenuous. It is tiring of just sitting at home and not being able to resume normal daily activity. Based on other pandemics before this one they do take a while before things can be normal again. While there were pandemics before that lasted about a year like plague of Justinian, yet it killed over 30-50 million people, the Asian flu H2 N2, H1 N1 and the Hong Kong flu were other examples, some of them lasted at least 2 years or more (Medical News Today, 2020 & History, 2020). The black death for example lasted four years between 1346-1350 caused the loss of 200 million lives and the sixth cholera pandemic lasted 24 years between 1899 -1923 (Medical News Today, 2020 & History, 2020). They did not have the technology we have today to help save people. Hopefully, we are about at least halfway in this pandemic depending on vaccine effectiveness and distribution to the public. Some of the diseases before like the flu today kept coming back and did not fully disappear for along time. The great plague of London for example kept coming back every 10 years killing about 20% of the population between 1348-1645 (History, 2020).

What can we do to stop the spread? We can learn from previous diseases when they did the same thing we are doing now. Staying away, quarantine and lockdowns. Vaccinations like in smallpox. We can follow exactly what is recommended by the CDC and local health authorities. It is not easy. Especially for people who feel well. It is still important to keep in touch with people even if it is just through phone calls and screens. Many people are getting creative how to stay connected. When looking at history 1.5 million people and their death might not seem that much. Those examples were from many hundreds of years ago. I have hope that with technology, quick vaccine development and precautions we can stop this pandemic.  One COVID swab, one vaccine and one quarantine at a time. In the meantime, I live my modified life just like everyone else. Mine entails working as a nurse, coming home after work, and maybe going to the grocery store.

Stay safe out there. Six feet away.

www.gabriellakorosi.org

References/Resources:

CDC (2020) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

History (2020) retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/pandemics-end-plague-cholera-black-death-smallpox

Jeanna Bryner (2020) Retrieved from live science on 12/5/2020: https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.html

Medical news today (2020) Retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/148945#history

Oregon Health Authority (2020) retrieved from https://govstatus.egov.com/OR-OHA-COVID-19

Worldometer (2020) retrieved on 12/5/2020 from: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/