Why We Must Quarantine (Written at the Beginning)
When you open your phone and scroll through TikTok, how many jokes do you see about COVID-19? How many times have you heard your friends call our school closures “Corona break” or “Corona-cation?” How many times have you heard someone say “It’s Corona time?” How many times have you thought to yourself, “I can see my friends during our time off as long as we stay 6 feet apart.”
At the beginning of all of the COVID-19 madness, it was difficult to grasp the concept of this virus and understand its severity. I remember when the news first broke about the growing cases in Wuhan, China, my mom was already telling me to wash my hands and be extra careful. I have Crohn’s Disease which is an autoimmune disease that affects my digestive tract. Since I have a chronic illness, I take medications that are classified as immunosuppressants. These medications can be especially dangerous since they weaken my immune system, making it much easier for me to catch viruses and significantly more difficult for me to fight them off once contracted. Two other members of my family, my mom, and my younger brother, also have autoimmune diseases. Of course, knowing all of this, I understood where my mom was coming from, but if I am being honest, I never paid too much attention to it all. It wasn’t until the school closures began when I truly started to pay closer attention.
I live one town over from New York’s epicenter of COVID-19, but the first week of our school closure was before this was established. I was taken aback by the phone call announcing our two-week closure. The experience was exhilarating, it seemed as if we were out of school for no reason at all. It seemed as if the virus could never come to us. Soon enough, the inevitable came true. The virus crept closer and closer into the bubble of our town. Before we knew it, COVID-19 had traveled from China to the United States, to New York, to Westchester. My feelings of relaxation and excitement quickly changed to fear. The truth finally settled in that if I or anybody else in my family got this virus, we would be in serious, serious trouble.
I am finding it quite difficult to find people who are as worried about this as I am. It confuses and angers me that people still take this virus as a joke even when they are aware of how close it is to us. It is incredibly naive to believe that “young people are safe” and that “it doesn’t matter to us,” because in reality, we are the ones contributing to the spread. The arrogance of the teens my age is concerning who think it is safe to continue to hang out with their friends from “6 feet apart,” go on walks and sit in cars with their friends, and who see this as an opportunity to catch up on social activities. When you do not practice social distancing, you are not only putting yourself at risk (considering you could even have the virus and not know) but putting the elderly and immunocompromised at greater risk which is incredibly inconsiderate and frightening.
We need to understand how many people are dying every single day from this virus. As of Friday, March 27th, 2020, there are over 44,000 confirmed cases in New York State and over 500 deaths in the state according to the New Yorker Magazine. This does not account for the number of unconfirmed cases and deaths not accounted for yet. The reality is that hospitals look like war zones with beds filled with dying patients scattered everywhere and health officials running around in hazmat suits. Families are forced to choose whether or not their loved one should keep breathing with assistance from machines. Patients are forced to die with the lack of ventilators in hospitals and people, like me, who are at higher risk are denied testing from scarce materials. The only way to stop this virus is by staying home and spreading awareness. Please practice social distancing. Please practice good hygiene. Please stop making jokes. The longer we continue to push this aside, the longer we will be forced to put or lives on hold. If everyone else can do it, you can too. We are all in this together.