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A Pandemic Retrospective
It has been a long two plus years.
While others huddled at home, terrified of a virus, I huddled at home, terrified of the people terrified of the virus.
I cared for everyone else during the pandemic. When I say everyone else, I mean everyone else. My floor was a Covid-restricted floor. What does this mean? This means that the other tower of the hospital had Covid patients. However, since we had maternity in our tower, they attempted to keep us away from the unknown.
Because of this, we took in patients of all varieties. Renal failure. Heart failure. Heart attacks. Cellulitis. Psychotic episodes. Drug overdoses. Gallbladder surgeries. Diabetic ketoacidosis (look it up). We’re normally a neuro floor with elective and emergent spine/brain surgeries. Not during Covid. During Covid we took everything else. Anyone who required a heart monitor and needed to be away from respiratory illness.
In the beginning, all surgeries were canceled. Elective and urgent, both canceled. Unless death were imminent, there was no surgery to be had. Pain would be endured at home.
We were called off frequently. Patient census dropped steeply. People were far too afraid to go to the hospital. Routine check ups were canceled. Patients delayed care. Appointments were ignored. Offices closed. Life stopped.
…
But it didn’t.
Life went on.
In November 2019, I blissfully married the best man I’ve ever known in a forest of Sequoias. We had our closest family with us and celebrated modestly with the plan to celebrate with friends and family across the country later. We didn’t want to impose upon anyone to insist upon expensive travel. Instead, we planned two casual events later to celebrate the marriage.
By February 2020, a virus was on the horizon. The first patient in California was at my hospital.
By March 15th, the date of our party, we canceled. It wasn’t just the planned rain that was going to shut down the lawn games and taco party, it was the rumors of possible government shut down due to the Coronavirus. Those who had tickets (our blessed friends here) came anyway and we drank and sang and socialized. All the while, we hoped that the planes would still be available to bring them home two days from then.
By Monday, all of society pretended that life stopped.
Two weeks was all they asked.
And nearly three years later, I look at all the life that happened while the governments pretended that time was merely a human construct. Three years later, I am older. Three years later, my only child graduated high school. Three years later, my mother is dying.
Life went on without the government’s permission.
It turns out that biology is beholden to no man.
And so, we are three years older.
I have been married for nearly three years. My husband and I have barely celebrated. Our friends and family wait to give gifts and celebrate when it is finally “time”. Instead, we have burrowed into our isolation. We have learned that we can only rely upon one another. As the rest of the world hid from us, we relied upon each other. While the world denied the passing of time, we gazed at one another over fluffy blankets and pandemic puppies. We watched life come and go. We watched family and friends die in a pandemic. Alone. Not from the feared virus.
But from time. From age.
From loneliness and disconnection.
While my grandparents grew older and older, it wasn’t just their passing from one another that hastened death. It was their passing from society. I knew the pandemic was beyond fear and beyond respect when my father, ever the logical man, decided to lie his way into his father’s facility in order to visit during the isolation.
I knew the pandemic was beyond reason when people started making pins to advertise their immunization status.
I knew the pandemic was beyond fundamental logic when the CDC advised that I get a version of the vaccine that was proven to cause more blood clots because I could not go without a vaccine booster; despite the fact that the mRNA vaccine I did receive caused a blood clot.
It has been almost three years and despite all assurances to the contrary, life continued on.
My child grew older. Traumatized, but older. Devastated, emotionally raw, and unable to face the challenges presented given the total lack of care during the last few years…and older.
I was a newlywed. Told to enjoy this special time of closeness and adventure, told to spend romantic time together, to enjoy time in one another’s presence… but unable to do so due to travel restrictions and this idea that time should somehow stop. But it didn’t.
Three years older.
Yet to celebrate.
Yet to have our honeymoon.
Yet to enjoy our togetherness after three years of illness, death, overwork, injury, madness, and outright despair.
And older.
Always older.
Because no matter what they said, time moved onward. Time moved, though we stunted our own growth and hid from the light. Day turned into night. Days to weeks. Weeks to months. Months to the years we’ve lived as shadows of ourselves.
Our family circumstances are different than others; we still wait to celebrate, balancing our wants with our family’s many needs. But there is no reason for everyone else to continue the farce that life can be stopped and started like some cosmic DVR. There is no pause. Life continues on whether we choose to participate or not.
With luck, we will all wake up, stretch, look around and realize that while we were sleeping life continued on. With luck, we will decide to take the reins and be inspired by this, motivated to do something for ourselves and others. With luck, we will remember this next time the government promises that we can just put our lives on pause for two weeks for the good of the many.
Next time, we will remember that time is beholden to no human authority.
Next time, we will cherish life as it is lived instead of hoping for a future that fades into the horizon the closer we think we are.
Published in General
Amen.
No, we won’t.
Well, you and I might.
But our fellow citizens grow more dependent and fearful year by year. Next time will be worse.
I recently learned the term “negative effectiveness”. I did not know that vaccines were distributed with negative effectiveness, but Covid changed a lot of things.
My brothers and I were planning to fly up to Michigan in April 2020 to celebrate my mom’s 90th birthday with her. It got cancelled due to covid. We decided to do it next year. We did all go up in March 2021, but not for her birthday. We went to say goodbye. She died the day after we all arrived. Due to covid we never did get a chance to celebrate her birthday.
You should get out and celebrate now!
Yes. I have a feeling that this was just a trial run to see just to how much arbitrary rule-making from the government elite Americans will submit. It is not an encouraging event.
I was usually happy-go-lucky, but these years have made me bitter and angry. Angry at the government. Angry at my fellow Americans for not standing up to them. Angry at my friends and neighbors for not valuing freedom and personal autonomy, for so easily giving in to an authority that treated us like children, not owed explanations. “Because We said so!”
When I see someone wearing a mask I am disgusted. I know this is not fair, and I know I must get over this attitude, this deep hatred that this was so easily done to us. I know that it is wasting my time, and damaging my soul. I need to lay this down and find some pity and compassion or it will turn my last 20 years sour.
It is hard to face the hard truth that America, and what an American is and proudly believes in, what makes America the exception that Rush always talked about, is in my imagination.
I need to get over myself. Maybe it’s time to find Jesus.
I am so sorry @seawriter. My wife and I arrived back in the USA on March 2, 2020. The rumors about this devastating virus were just germinating. There was talk of flights being shut down and people getting stranded. As shutdowns started becoming the lay of the land, my MIL was in an assisted living facility. She was on the second floor and had a nice balcony. Her kids and grandkids could go around the building and stand under her balcony to visit. Later she was hospitalized–not with COVID–but the protocols were still in place. She was allowed a single visitor per day. We scheduled the visits so everyone could see her. Unlike some situations where dying people were kept in total isolation, she had her children every day. She and we were blessed.
I was also disgusted with people in masks. Even now as I walk the neighborhood I have people move from the sidewalk to the street instead of passing by on the sidewalk and then move back to the sidewalk. If these people would just be wearing a mask I could understand. I wouldn’t also have such animosity towards them. They’re afraid for their lives. I only pity them now. When I had my stroke in 2020 my wife was not even allowed to enter the hospital, let alone my room. The world has become a bunch of hysterical little girls. I don’t worry about my living in this world, but I do fear for what my grandchildren will grow up in.
Not directly on-topic, but I thought this would be appreciated:
It’s a bit trickier than that. When your mother keeps being admitted to the hospital with sepsis and very high fevers, it’s difficult to go away on a honeymoon; for one, because I have zero time off from work (having taken it for illnesses, hospitalizations, family illnesses, etc) and for another, because being out of reach or distant causes immediate problems when you need to go to the hospital to protect staff from a delirious patient.
She had been looking a lot better and I was starting to think we could do a fall reception/party. But it’s looking worse again and so now, I’m not sure what we’re going to do.
I’m going to raise three wee drams of whisky tonight in honor of your nearly three years of marriage. Perhaps someday we can do that together with your family and friends.
Slàinte Mòr – Slàinte Mhòr (Good Health-Great Health)
A toast in the ancient hill-tongue of my people:
“Drink it afore the revenuers git here.”
Shouldn’t that be revenooers?
That would be correct in the Appalachians south of the Ohio.
To quote Elvis Costello: “… Oh, I used to be disgusted
And now I try to be amused.”
The Couf has broken people’s brains. My MiL is deathly afraid of getting long COVID. Yet, she’s super inconsistent with her behavior. Wears her mask OUTSIDE with no one around, alone in her car, etc. Mask off at the restaurant. She’s current with all her shots, is not in a risk group for the long variety, yet she persists.
It got so bad at her retirement place that management had to give her a “lighten up, Francis” because she was getting too militant on masking. She’d berate other residents even though they were following current policy, but not her desires. She’s forgoing activities she really likes due to her phobia.
A 40 year old woman I know, wealthy, with small children kept sanitizing groceries.
I told her that she needed to get some therapy. Immediately. That kind of anxiety messes people up.
She told me I was a covid denier, etc etc.
My own very informal observation has been that much of the strongest reactions have been from people (particularly “college educated” women) in their 30s and 40s (including at times my own mid 30s daughter, notwithstanding her math and statistics profession), despite plenty of early evidence that this age group (and everyone younger, including their own children) was at minimal risk from Covid. The identifiable group that displayed this irrationality most publicly was school teachers, a profession dominated by relatively young women. Yet many of those young women (or their union representatives) insisted that going into a school building would be a death sentence for them.
I suppose another of those effects of us baby boomers screwing up our children’s age cohort.
Many of my peers (people in our 60s and 70s took some precautions, but then relatively quickly acknowledged that we know our time on earth is limited, something is going to do us in at sometime, and we can’t wait indefinitely to resume living. I did notice more fear (then and continuing today) among women than among men. I remember when the Covid vaccines were first rolled out and the public health officials assured us that once vaccinated we could not catch the disease nor transmit it, there were a number of media articles about how the older people who first got the vaccine were living life up while their children in their 30s, 40s, and 50s remained terrified.
What’s funny with my mother-in-law is that she should know better. She owes her nice retirement to her early participation in a company involved in endocrine sciences. She did pain research with lab rats and published a paper. She understands how the scientific process works. However, a constant doom diet from TV, her advanced age and this phobia have taken over her ability to assess risk. An ability she has demonstrated in the past.
Another case of even married women being more married to the government, which tells them to be afraid, rather than married to men who just might demonstrate some courage.
Awwwwww, that’s too bad. I hope your mom gets better . . .
I wonder if she suffers from an anxiety disorder, which may have gotten worse with age, especially if she has hypertension too.
And yet it did not have to be this way.
No one should have had to give up a planned belated wedding reception.
No one should have had to become so isolated and alone that they hastened their own death by not eating anything.
Suicide numbers should not have been recorded at 300% the number of fatalities due to COVID. (As was recorded in Placer county Calif, Mar 2020 to mid Aug 2020.).
No one should have had to forgo a necessary surgery.
Why do I know that none of this was necessary?
Because there were alternate remedies that had been used to combat COVID before Fauci decided how he and the government health agency officials were the last word on these remedies. The first tactic waged against HCQ plus zinc had to do with slandering the item via a study so badly conceived and written that The Lancet later retracted it. But despite the retraction the remedy was still banned from use.
There was even a law on the books as far as keeping the public safe from a fraudulently tested, clinical trial-failing “vaccine” program – and which had no research showing that the risk vs benefits ratio showed it had benefits.
Here is that law: