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How much has the Coronavirus pandemic affected your life?
It’s hard to believe we’ve collectively been living this pandemic experience for a year now. I vividly remember learning of the first cases of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, then watching as it spread across the globe.
In the months since then, my friends and family have all been impacted by this differently. Some have lost jobs, income, and their livelihood. Others have lost loved ones. Some managed to date and get married mid-pandemic (!!). Others have been isolated at home for an entire year. Some have put off necessary medical procedures because the hospital is not a safe place for them to be. Others have continued living their lives as if there is truly nothing out of the ordinary going on.
The degree to which our lives have been affected varies greatly.
When I take stock of my life, I acknowledge that there have been many less-than-pleasant aspects of this pandemic, but my primary emotion is gratitude. My daily routine hasn’t changed too significantly from pre-pandemic times. Our household has not been negatively financially impacted by this. We have stayed safe and healthy. I’ve been able to spend more time with my loved ones here in our home. My CF team has been able to address all my health concerns from a distance. Although it hasn’t been ideal, my routine care has continued with the use of telehealth and the utilization of local labs.
I am safe, healthy, and happy. We’ve had to make adjustments, and I miss friends and family dearly. But overall, my life and health have not been greatly impacted by this virus. I recognize the privilege in saying this. Far too many have been less fortunate. I see the devastation both locally and around the globe and my heart aches for so many.
To what degree has your life changed or been impacted during this pandemic? Are you able to get the healthcare you need? What has been the hardest part of this experience and what has been the best (if you’re able to find a silver lining)?
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1 Reply
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I answered most of this in https://cysticfibrosisnewstoday.com/forums/forums/topic/is-your-life-still-changing-for-the-virus/
I can completely subscribe to your evaluation, Jenny.
But I also think we should look at the emerging of the virus as a natural phenomenon. Viruses are a very ancient form of “life” on earth, they can infect all lifeforms and are an important part of the evolution of life because they can increase genetic diversity. They are not something alien to fight and destroy, but a feature of the whole that we co-exist with.
Our enormous vulnerability to a new virus like this is primarily due to our entire way of life. We can try to overcome this current virus with vaccination, but there will be more viruses like this in the future. And it is not certain that we can deal with those, nor do we know for sure that vaccination will end the covid pandemic. This virus acts a lot like the flu, and we have so far not been able to eradicate the flu. We can hope that the covid situation might in time gravitate towards the flu-thing, with yearly vaccinations of the most vulnerable people against the latest covid mutations.
So far we seem to think or at least hope so, but it would be wise to zoom out and look at the whole picture. If we don’t change our way of life voluntarily, plagues like these will force us to, and it won’t be an easier process. On the contrary. We only have to look around to see how much trouble the combination of our current way of life and a virus like this causes if we don’t fundamentally change a lot of things.
So perhaps we should take all the ways this virus has so far affected our life’s not as temporary setbacks that we only have to overcome as soon as possible to return to business as usual, but as lasting clues to start changing our ways in a direction that will make us less vulnerable for plagues like these in the near future. We can think of less travel, less destruction of the natural environment of wildlife, an end to mass-production of animals as food, an end to pollution of air, soil and water, an end to mass gatherings of people, an end to overpopulation in city-life, to name but a few.
We can’t defeat nature or manipulate it for very long. It will soon take back all that we have unjustly appropriated. The current climate crisis and also covid are clear signs of this and of what is to come.The only solution is a return to living in and with nature in stead of ever more separating us from it.
This will of course take time and lot of effort and reflection, because I think we will need to turn our minds much more inwardly in stead of outwardly. I have no doubt we would all benefit greatly from this and an entire new earth could emerge from a revolution like this, with a species that would no longer suffer from what we nowadays call “the human condition” and which would co-exist in peace and harmony with nature and all its creations.
It would be great and a miracle if covid would be the starting point of this evolutionary shift in the minds of homo sapiens as a species. We can either do it ourselves, or let nature force us to. But it will happen one way or the other.
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