As you all know, schools and jobs worldwide have been canceled and stopped in order to limit the spread of the coronavirus. A lot of workplaces that gather many people in one area have closed, and school districts like ours have also partook by canceling school.
As we are part of a community that is dealing with this crisis, we should also partake in resolving this issue. One way we can help is by practicing solidarity. Solidarity is the interdependence between individuals and across groups. This decreases the spread of the virus as well as keeping each other healthy. It "keeps us from hoarding medicine, toughing out a cold in the workplace or sending a sick child to school." Instead of hoarding 10 packages of toilet paper, consider about the other people around you who need toilet paper as well. Not to surprise anyone but having over 200 rolls of toilet paper will definitely last over a year, and purchasing an excessive amount is not necessary.
Additionally, we the lower-risk group can help our the higher-risk groups like the elderly survive through this pandemic. Instead of having them go out to buy their food and medicine, we should go and buy their supplies for them, reducing the risk of them contracting the virus. If you have any grandparents or elderly nearby, give them a helping hand and buy them their essentials.
Personally, I have prepared for this crisis by stocking up on food as well as medication for my father. Even though I detest the quarantine, I have been staying home and have been struggling to keep myself entertained.
1. What have you done to prepare for the coronavirus outbreak?
2. How has the coronavirus affected you and your family's lifestyle? Has anything changed?
Source 1
7 comments:
There isn't much to prepare other than to follow the shelter in place guidelines put forth by Governor Newsom. With grocery stores stocking less and less food on the shelves, my family has bought food that we know can last multiple weeks without going bad. We really only leave the house to exercise outside whether it be to go for a run or walk. I wouldn't say my family has gotten immensely closer throughout the time—although it has only been a month—but I will say that it has been strange to only see the same three people everyday for a week. I think for us, at our age, we always want to be out with our friends doing things, meaning that the shelter-in place goes against all our natural social tendency. I hope that this strategy is successful at flattening the curve and that we can reach a sense of normality by summer time, but all we can do right now is stay home and wait and see.
I completely agree with the practice of solidarity in order to contain the spread of the virus. I also understand why you would say we should go out to buy supplies for the elderly as they have a greater risk of contracting the virus. However, I feel that it’s not a great explanation for why the elderly should not go grocery shopping. Younger people like us can easily contract the virus, whether it affects us or not, and bring it to the elderly we are trying to “help.” To elaborate on that, the younger individuals may come into contact with the possibly ill and immediately pass it to the elderly when giving them their groceries. Thus, the idea of having younger people go grocery shopping instead of older people will not work as it does not decrease the risk of the elderly contracting the virus. For now, my family members have been in quarantine for a week and are planning to go on a walk sometime. Being quarantined honestly kills me but I would rather stay quarantined than running the risk of passing the virus to my parents.
I personally didn't do that much to prepare for the outbreak, but my parents bought a lot of long-lasting food for our home a few weeks before the shelter-in-place announcement. Solidarity sounds like a good idea as well, and of course it's ideal, but also maybe not completely achievable just because of different people's personalities. Many young people, kind of like how some don't care to vote, don't consider the virus a threat to them because they are a low-risk group with a close to zero chance of dying from it. Not that that isn't true, but even if they may not be in danger, it also kind of poses a problem if they go out and spread it to others that may be in the high-risk groups.
Despite the joyful idea of staying at home rather than going to school, I think the shelter-in-place spurred by the outbreak has actually had a more negative impact than I expected. The first announcement that school would be done from at home for two weeks was okay, but when it changed to more than that and now possibly not going back to school, it became rather disappointing. I've heard from others that their workload is actually more with long-distance learning than when we were in our classrooms. It's hard to adjust to doing school from at home when we're all used to our routine of going through a school day from the past four years. It's also kind of disappointing that we may not be able to experience the rest of our senior year normally. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do about that, but I just wanted to express those thoughts.
I think solidarity is an important idea now more than ever. It’s easy to fall into a mindset of constantly being afraid, worried, and angry about this situation, and it’s crucial for us to remember that we are all in the same boat and have each other’s backs. I’ve seen a lot of news stories about people really stepping up and doing things for their community like sewing masks for doctors, offering to share groceries, etc, which is really heartwarming. At the same time, however, solidarity is an ideal; in extreme situations like these, a lot of people develop an “everyone for themselves” style of thinking, as can be seen with the toilet paper hoarders. Personally, my family and I didn’t really start preparing until the lockdown was announced, and by then a lot of the grocery stores were pretty empty. I don’t think anyone is particularly enjoying being stuck at home, and on top of that, as seniors, it’s really disheartening to think that events like graduation that we’ve been looking forward to for so long may not even happen. However, hard as it is, we should be doing all that we can to prevent the spread of the virus and keep everyone safe.
Personally, my family didn't really prepare for the coronavirus outbreak until the shelter in place was put into effect. We had just begun to stock up on food items that we knew wouldn't go bad. Besides that we just try not to go out as much as possible to reduce the risk of catching the virus. Additionally, I agree with Savannah as our age group is as much at risk as the elderly or the ones with compromised immune systems are. Having the mindset that we won't contract the virus is really dangerous because even if it doesn't affect us as much we would easily be spreading it to the people we interact with at grocery stores and they would bring it back to their homes and to the rest of the customers that they might see and the virus will just continue to spread!
My family has also definitely been sleeping in more since a lot of us were already late night owls. It has worsened since the shelter in place and all the days have honestly just been merging together (kind of like how it feels during summer break). I have seen myself going on more walks outside (just to escape my family if only for an hour), but I guess it is nice to spend time with them especially since I’ll be leaving home soon for college. However, I’m worried that this might be affecting my college decisions a bit because the farther the school the better it’s been sounding to me lately...
My family really didn’t do much to prepare for the coronavirus outbreak. At first, when school first shut down, my parents weren’t freaking out and rushing to the stores to buy things to stock up on. We didn’t think we would get to the point of being forced into shelter-in-place to prevent the spread of the disease. But once that was set into motion, my parents began going to the store but they haven’t been buying stocking up on things. But, they have been taking extra cautious measures. When we get deliveries from Amazon or the mailman or UPS, they disinfect each package and its contents with disinfecting wipes. And when they come back from the grocery store, they wipe everything down too. In regards to question two, the coronavirus has definitely affected our lifestyle. We are inside most of the time, maybe going outside for an hour walk or going to the grocery store for 30 minutes but other than that, we are always inside. I personally hate it because I love being outside and I love being with my friends. I hate how I can’t be social and interact with people in real life. Digital isn’t the same. I hope this ends soon because I was really looking forward to graduation, prom, and other senior activities.
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