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2020-02-24
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2020-02-24
The Extended Spring Break, or How COVID Made Senior Year a Let-Down
I remember talking about the virus beginning to pop up in America in my AP Research class with the rest of class. The nature of the class was an at-your-own-pace kind of deal as long as our research essay and presentation developed accordingly to segmented deadlines. Our teacher loved to talk about current events with us while we worked, and it'd often get a few of us side-tracked for half-an-hour, but this time our whole class was involved. Like many at the time we thought it'd just be a slightly worse flu, that it was something we'd make it through just like all the other flu-seasons from years prior. As it became a more severe problem throughout the nation, we all started to realize that Spring Break may last longer that initially thought. We figured we'd eventually come back with new guidelines in place, but at least for our school district, that was it. The senior-year-experience effectively died their for many of us. Prom got cancelled, Gradbash followed suit, and after holding out for so long, the promise of a graduation ceremony too. We still had the same schedule and school work, but now, many of the fun events and activities were cancelled. School from home still seemed relaxing at the time and had yet to devolve into the "this is like a personal prison" mentality, so there was some positivity that we could hold on to until Summer vacation. I couldn't look past everything falling apart for the year to make myself happy. I've been able to move on since, but seeing your senior year get reduced to ash in a few weeks really took a toll on me for a few months. Now in college, I feel some sense of socially-distanced normalcy has returned to the area I live in, as we don't have a noticeably high amount of cases here, but it still doesn't make me feel that much better of having lost an important year of my life. -
2020-02-24
My Coronavirus Experience
In the beginning of the pandemic, I immediately realized how a large portion of the public was not focused on the virus itself, but the racial controversy of the virus' origin. This was unnerving to the core, because it is a fact that COVID-19 came from China. While it was unacceptable to accept this as fact, MERS literally stands for Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. It is clear that there was a pro-CCP agenda being pushed in the background when propagating the "COVID Safety" spiel. As time went on, more and more inconsistencies began popping up. Beauty and barber shops closed, but Nancy Pelosi is more than welcome to get her hair done. Masks become required to enter any building or participate in society at all, but when the new President was sworn in, the spectators were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and masks were few and far between. What my story says about the pandemic is that while we may have had a real potential global crisis, I believe things were skewed, twisted, and flipped so that it is most convenient for those who hold the power, and not done in the best interest of the American people. An example of this in real life was how the Los Angeles Lakers, Ritz Carlton, and Bank of America (per store) were able to get PPP loans, drain the pool of PPP money, and leave small business owners fighting for crumbs. I have linked a Washington Post article below that expands on the PPP loan problem and how our government failed small business. The pandemic I fear will have long-lasting, Orwellian effects on our society in the sense that those in power will continue to use fear mongering to control the public through COVID. Even though a vast majority of the population has already had it and are building antibodies, Western European-style, 1940s era vaccination cards are beginning to circulate. I fear these cards will be the new "gold star" or "Scarlet Letter'', except those without it would be barred from society, rather than those with it. In my opinion, COVID today is what AIDS was in the eighties. Lots of unanswered questions, lots of fear, and government intervention so that free thinking is minimized. These three, and you have a perfect recipe for controlling the masses. Both diseases were politicized to death, and public opinion of the disease swung back and forth with politicization. If AIDS was blown up to the proportion that COVID was, I couldn't imagine the backlash the political and science communities would get from a certain demographic of people who are very vocal and have a statistically higher likelihood of contracting HIV. I hypothesize that pandemic would turn into pandemonium. With that, my experience during quarantine was as expected. Mental health suffered due to lack of human interaction and ability to go outside, and physical health suffered due to inability to go outside and lack of motivation which was connected to mental health. The main positive thing from the pandemic I can identify is the performance of my stock portfolio. Even though I lost my job due to COVID, I was still able to afford rent, food, and supplies to stay hunkered down in my new $900/month prison for my three month sentence. Another big positive from the quarantine was my savings. The pandemic helped me realize how much unnecessary or emotional spending I do. It helped me point out lots of bad habits I have so I can work on fixing them. Things like spending money when I'm sad, and identifying vices that hold me back in my day-to-day. While the pandemic brought a lot of negatives to me and the world around me, I believe there are some positive things to take away from it. Opening your mind to more than what the government feeds you, appreciating every moment you have, embracing new hobbies, and learning how to maneuver through change. These are all things the pandemic has taught me, but if I had the option, I wouldn't do it again. In terms of being a part of history, simply by living you are a part of history. I was at Sloan-Kettering in NYC with my family getting a life-extending cancer treatment for my father when 9/11 happened. He was one of three patients that day because while in surgery, the first plane hit the towers. The rest of the patients to be seen that day were canceled. I suppose the point I am trying to make is that history is subjective. 9/11 wasn’t 9/11 to me. 9/11 was the day I was blessed with enough time to make some foundational memories of my father before he passed. It can be argued that since I have been invested in GameStop since November, I was a part of history there too. I went to the Game 7 Cardinals vs. Red Sox World Series Game in Fenway Park. The game that broke the Bambino Curse. Again, it could be argued that I was a part of history there too, except my three year old self was asleep for the last two innings. History is subjective, and every day, everyday people like you and I make history. Historians and memoirists will use these events in the future to write articles, make movies and tv shows, write books, and extrapolate many other kinds of art from it. However, most often historical stories are told through a lens of subjectivity, and because of that, eventually all history becomes skewed to the point where it is indistinguishable from fable. -
2020-02-24
process of recovering of China
From middle of Jan to the end of Feb, China took around 1 month long recovering from the attack by cover-19. By doing lockdown policy on Wuhan and executing quarantine policy to other provinces, China rapidly control the growth of confirmed cases. Quaratine policy strongly help restricting the growth of cases in other provinces and the whole country gather all resources around(food and medical resources) to Wuhan to pull Wuhan out of the trap from cover-19. -
2020-02-24
Secretive Church Sect At The Center Of South Korea's Coronavirus Outbreak
In this article talks about how one person in South Korea is responsible for the original 833 cases. They were a member of a religious group called the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. This one gathering caused case numbers to grow exponentially over the course of several days leading the the spread of Covid-19 to every major city and province of South Korea. This cause South Korean authorities to raise the virus alert level to red, which had not been done since 2009. The article also expresses the concern of some people because the religious group is not revealing who originally had Covid-19 so there is no way for people in the surrounding community to know if they came into contact with said member. They also blame the chuch for not cooperating with health authorities.