He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

Revelation 21:4

This is a thought dump/rant on life during the Coronavirus pandemic. Feel free to read, or not. I feel like I just needed to get some thoughts down so I can move on and adapt. We live in a time where things are very hyper-focused on the pandemic situation 24/7; for some people it may be a better idea to just skip over it entirely.

When it all started

It was 3 January 2020. Being the microbiology and infectious disease nerd I am, I was browsing r/ID_news where an article titled, “China pneumonia outbreak: Mystery virus probed in Wuhan” was posted. At the time, it was an extremely localized event, with only 44 cases reported at the time. Someone commented on it theorizing that it was the start of bioterrorism against the people of Hong Kong, where a lot of mass protests were happening. Others (as well as the article) mentioned the SARS outbreak from 18 years ago. I still remember reading it and being like, “huh, that’s interesting” and moving on. I feel like I read about it super early on, then didn’t hear about it for a couple months until it became a widespread concern. It’s a bit surreal looking back at what the huge impact this “mystery virus” would present to the world in just a few months time. And also at the same time, how it was so far removed from my immediate personal life I didn’t really care about it.

When it started picking up

I definitely spent a lot of time monitoring the CDC website, watching it as it spread to most of East Asia and then Europe, and then the West Coast, until it ended up in my city. It was fascinating on a public health standpoint for a while, then it really started hitting home when things were getting cancelled. In the Chinese and Taiwanese-American community, big events and celebrations started getting cancelled quite early, even before the first cases popped up in the region. Our church’s Chinese New Year celebration at the end of January got cancelled out of an abundance of caution. Then the city-wide celebration at the beginning of February got cancelled. I was surprisingly bummed by it, but looking back I guess hindsight is 20/20. It was the right call.

When it got crazy

Then probably… around end of February, early March, things were starting to get serious. “Normal life” became not so normal anymore. Big things started getting cancelled. Most events were getting cancelled. Travel restrictions going into place. At work, we stopped seeing normal appointments. Clinics were closed. Students sent home. We reduced our on-site staff. Mask policy in place. Locking doors and dedicated entry/exit doors. No clients on campus, only hospital staff. Then the panic buying. No toilet paper anywhere! Nobody knew what was going on. Things changed every hour. New policies and changes, long memos and emails that took a while to sort through. It was a whirlwind of a time and I can’t believe it was only months ago we were caught up in all that.

When things settled down

Living life in the pandemic has become the new normal. It’s become the normal backdrop of my dreams nowadays, where I would get nervous when I find myself in a place filled with maskless crowds. I wondered when that would happen.

When I call my friends overseas now it seems like there really isn’t much to talk about except the pandemic and how our lives have been impacted by it. A lot less updates nowadays. A lot of life is just go to work, go home. I don’t really see many people, and see my fellowship a lot less. It’s been lonelier than before. For now, I’m just making do with what I have. I’m grateful that I have my guild and the world of Tyrians where the pandemic has yet to reach; the developers are still working hard at home to help us have some semblance of normalcy in one bubble of our lives. At least somewhere I can still gather with people and do stuff together. Same goes for my island on Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’m able to connect with some people and actually do things instead of staring at people’s faces on screen; that’s been really wonderful.

Life now

Since the veterinary medical field is considered essential (not just for companion animal healthcare, but also with food animal health and ensuring at least some part of the food supply), I’ve been still going to work. My parents, who both are computer scientists, have been working from home since March. Any semblance of life outside is kind of gone. We spend a lot of time watching Netflix since my brother and I decided to purchase a subscription for the family. We’re currently watching BBC’s Sherlock (quite good!) and just started the third season. My parents have also watched a few Chinese drama series and I’ve watched the entirety of FMA: Brotherhood (still just as good as it always has been).

At work, there was a couple weeks where we had such low caseload it didn’t make sense for all of us to be at work, so there was days here and there where I could work from home, mostly on busywork and small tasks like updating procedures and the like. Now we’re in the “reopening” phase with the fall 2020 semester beginning for the university so more people are coming back to campus. I don’t know what’s the right thing to do. You have to shut things down to prevent spread, but also … life has to go on, some way, some how. Schools reopening have already shut down due to the spread of the virus. The United States surpassed 5 million cases today. Million. Five thousand-thousands. It now makes up a quarter of the global cases (nearing 20 million at time of writing).

I continue to be gobsmacked by how lacking the United States’ response has been during the whole thing. Surprised, but also… sadly not really that surprised given our history and current policy. Despite having so many cases, plenty of people out there think it’s right to be defiant and selfish. No compassion, no empathy. Privileged. It breaks my heart to see how this is. When I get on the phone and have to explain to my overseas friends how it could be that a nation as developed and powerful as the United States has managed to allow this situation to get so completely out of control, it often feels like I’m simply making excuses for the history of our country. The systematic dismantling of education, marginalization of various populations, the narcissistic and twisted “American Dream” of entitlement.

I find it ironic that one of the United States’ most iconic figures, the Statue of Liberty, has a poem on it that ends with the following:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

We don’t care about the tired and poor and oppressed and those the world deems worthless and the homeless and the tempest-tossed. We don’t welcome them. We just care about ourselves and those that immediately affect us. How can we change this?

For a country that says, “In God We Trust,” it definitely doesn’t feel like we put our strength in the Lord anymore. A lot of days I find myself lamenting the state of the world. I don’t really get angry, just sad. A place and a people who seek the gospel but reject it anyway.

Jasmin