PIXIE
U.S.A
As of 10/25/21
To be honest, the first time I had heard of COVID-19 was around January of 2020. My physics teacher gave us a few questions regarding the rise in cases in China. I wasn’t completely worried about it at the time. It was across the world after all! I remember my family was shopping when my parents started to discuss the virus. It was a few days after January 21st, which was when the first confirmed case was announced in the US. I remember the stores becoming pretty hectic where I lived.
My last day of school was 3/13/20. Funnily enough, it was Friday the 13th. I woke up the next day and went downstairs to find my mom watching the news. The governor of my state had issued for schools statewide to be closed for the next two weeks. I was ecstatic because I don’t enjoy school. A week or so later, the governor declared a state of emergency and closed schools for the rest of the year. I went to remote schooling around late April of 2020. That was an experience. After my physics class, my friends and I would just talk for hours on end. We were given an assignment for the week by our teachers and we had to attend one meeting a day for a different class. This continued until the summer of 2020, where the summer was pretty uneventful. I watched the Hamilton musical on tv. We started to have some people over again. Then the school year started once again. Students were given the choice of either staying remote or going two days a week to school. I decided to stay home. I got my cat that year. I broke my personal computer. But, most importantly, I was inside. It was an odd experience to be sure.
Remote students had a choice to come back to school around April of 2021. I decided to go so I could be prepared for the next school year. A week after going to school, I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling very sick. My head hurt, I had the chills, I had a 102 degree fever. That day was absolutely awful. I got a Covid test the next day and it came back positive. I had to be isolated in my room for two whole weeks. My parents would slip food into my room and I was not allowed to leave unless absolutely necessary (and I had to wear a mask). Luckily, I wasn’t sick for long, but I did lose my taste for a bit. That entire experience was the definition of cabin fever. I was bored out of my mind most times. Plus, I still had school.
However, I was able to get my Covid vaccine soon after that. The first dose made me a bit sick, but nothing large. The next vaccine made me feel absolutely awful. Now I’m fully vaccinated and waiting for the third booster shot to be approved.
School has gone fully in person. It’s…. An experience. I want to scream at the top of my lungs for people to put on their masks correctly. Everyone just hangs the masks on top of their mouths and not covering their noses. It’s so infuriating. However, I do have a bright outlook on the future. I do think things will become ‘normal’ again soon, whatever that may mean. People are getting their vaccines, there are less severe cases, and people are taking care of themselves. The future looks bright.
AMLAN Odisha , India (as of 20/10/2021) My life was always fast. Has always been fast. Wake up, have food , do work , Go to multiple coaching classes , school and come back home completely exhausted. Time was fast ain't gonna stop for me. And then March of 2020 came We had read the papers and the news for weeks at that point. China had been going through it. Thousands of people sick. The govt building makeshift hospitals for thousands of people. It seemed really scary, but at that point we thought it was just a big exaggeration. Cuz we had Ebola scares and Swine Flu scares, but nothing bad had ever spread. On the 16th of March , We got our first 2 cases in the state. And as a precaution, the govt closed all the schools/colleges and I went back to my house. And then the cases started. 2 cases, 4 cases, 10 cases, 20 cases. 240 cases..... Lockdown . Stuck inside my house. With my parents . No classes. No friends . JUST. ME . AND. MY .THOUGHTS And that's when it struck me . We had no idea how long we had to stay inside our houses . We had no idea what we needed to cure it . We had no vaccine . Everyday at 4PM , the state govt would host an informative broadcast. They brought in the best Doctors, administrators, Scientists and all they said everyday was “--- people got admitted , --- people died” , "please wear masks" and "stay inside" As a family, we had nothing to do . My classes had not begun , my dad's company told him to stay at home until further orders, my mom was also stuck with us two . And so we devised our new little games. We joined two tables and started playing ping-pong on it . We used an open wall and made it into a squash arena using tennis raquets. I searched out for two long sticks , and me and my dad played hockey.
And thankfully, my school and coaching started going online by April 2020. That brought a little more normalcy into my life.
Everyday when I woke up, I had a purpose, at least I had classes to attend. My friendships changed. Those people I met everyday, were mere characters on my laptop . They didn't speak, they merely wrote letters on a monitor screen...... as if we were some kind of robots. And I kept grinding.
December 2020 : The first rays of hope .... Vaccines came out.... Lockdown restrictions lifted slowly ..... Though Britain and America was going through their worst phase, a stringent lockdown had helped us a lot. My classes reopened in January . I felt so unimaginably elated when I saw my friends for the first time in months. The teachers were so enthusiastic about everything. It all seemed like the end was near.
March 2021- As everything was going back to normal. a little small thing happened.
The delta strain.
People went to hospitals and died.
People lined up for oxygen and died .
Cremation pyres burnt day and night.
People lost their loved ones and couldn't even do their last rites.
People didn't have money to do funerals, so they buried people on the riverside And when the Ganga flooded, corpses floated down the river Imagine, walking down the Ganga, a river that every Indian considers as a mother...... and seeing hundreds of dead bodies floating in the water. Truly morbid .
My school closed down . Half my exams got cancelled . And I looked for purpose in my life again.
October 2021
Exams happened , I got fully vaccinated
Lockdown restrictions are easing up. While things are going back to the “normal”, I hope we never revert back to what was once the “new normal”…. And all that I knew to do in this was
Just keep swimming…..
Just keep swimming….
Pedro
São Paulo, Brazil (28/10/2021) If I remember correctly, we started to worry about covid around January of 2020, back then it hadn't reached our city yet. At school they would always warn us and tell us to keep safety protocols, it might have not been a threat for us yet, but that shouldn't mean we didn't need to be careful. And as expected, the fateful news arrived in no time: "Someone infected is now in São Paulo". It felt like a silent but yet deafening loud panic. School closed for a while, they had no idea what would happen, expectations were that the situation wouldn't last long, so we got an "early vacation". Little did we know. Things were going wild. There was no way we could go back to normal life. Despite everything, people still wouldn't respect protocols. Cases of infected went from hundreds to thousands, thousands of infected became thousands of deaths. But hoping that everyone would be conscious would probably be expecting too much. I experienced it inside my own house, nights and nights of stress because some can't bother to care about others as much as others care for them. As worried as we all were with the state of things, at first I didn't think that quarantine would affect me all that much, I wasn't the most social person to begin with, but I could never see the consequences that awaited. Being inside concrete walls for months can change a lot in someone's mind. Having a clear routine took me away from myself for most of the time, but when your only real company is YOU for 24 hours, every single day, thoughts flood the brain, and it's hard to find escapism or reassurance, every detail becomes more noticeable and bigger, far worse any kind of motivation, the turmoil out there feels as grand as the inner one.
As scary as the mind might be in these situations, it can also help in weird ways. It brought me realizations that would have never happened in other scenarios and people that I would never have met if it wasn't for that. In the end I was lucky that neither I nor those close to me were as directly affected by the event as others, but it's undeniable that we all changed and lost because of it. It feels somewhat wrong to try seeking the good side of a tragedy without sounding like disregarding those who suffered the most, but I guess that was always a trait of humanity, we keep moving no matter what, even it takes a while, so no one knows how things will go from now on, but all we can hope is for a bright future, for everyone and everything that was taken from us all.
FOOTNOTE
Pixie ( @Vulpixie ) is a very talented writer , who specializes in extremely angst-ridden fictional stories especially those of various fictional characters in multiple fandoms.
She makes multiple alternate universes and combines many fictional universes in her stories.
Pedro (@PHCP) is also a very creative writer. His stories focus more on characters and he tells his stories from the point of view of these characters, going in depth about their thoughts, ideals, emotions etc.
And I ....... well I am just me :)
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