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2021-01-11
In January, my parents heard the news about a disease that originated in Wuhan China. The assumption was that the virus Covid-19 was caused by bats. In the food markets in Wuhan, I think since the meat was not healthy and clean, the person who ate it got contaminated. The virus was first discovered when a patient arrived at the hospital with an unknown virus. The doctor that tried to treat the patient is already dead. Many viruses have been caused by sick animals. People could get sick by eating the wrong part of poisonous animals such as pufferfish, so the idea of getting sick because of bats seem reasonable.
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2021-01-11
One of the longest lasting memories for me of the Pandemic will be the olfactory association I will forever have between the smell of musty, soiled fabric and this period of time. The combination of coffee, toothpaste, sweat and laundry detergent was a defining one for me this year. As a high school teacher and coach, my days were long and required extensive periods of lecture based discussion and non negotiable face coverings. While the requirement was understandable from a safety perspective, the result was a facemask that always either smelled like it needed washing or had just been washed. For that reason, these scents will always remind me of this period
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2021-01-11T12:13
In the beginning, there were many theories of where the coronavirus came from, all of them having to originate in China. I was told that it was from eating bats, which sounded absurd. I think this is one of the many reasons why I thought the virus wasn't real or wasn't as serious as it is because it all sounded ridiculous. And then I was told that it was Chinese scientists' fault and that they had created and manipulated the virus in a lab. I started to believe this theory, and it clouded my judgement when I was told the truth: the coronavirus was from the wilderness. As I said before, I did not believe in the eating bats theory which is why I was skeptical that the new theory involved bats once again. But, once I got concrete evidence, like the fact that in the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, it originated in bats, I started to believe this new theory, or the truth. Over the last 10 months, scientists have uncovered so much more about the coronavirus than thought possible. Because of the many false theories and accusations made throughout the COVID history, China has become the scapegoat for many people to blame this whole situation on, stating that is all their fault, even though we don't have concrete evidence if this is true or not. Whatever the cause of the COVID breakout, we should not blame it on other people, but help each other get through these tough times.
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2021-01-11
I personally don't believe there is one person to blame or one specific start of the virus. Yes, it had to have first started somewhere, but because it spread so quickly it's hard to narrow it down to just one specific starting point. I've heard all the different theories of what "truly" caused the virus, but I believe it started with a few people and it then spread quickly from person to person. Because it was a mutation disease no one had the antibodies to fight it off quick enough to not spread it or carry it with them. Since we also don't know where it truly began or even when there is really no way to find the original cause of this virus.
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2020-03-13
When covid first came out, it was a really small issue. No one immediately required social distancing measures and we were continuing life as normal. I was told that it was only in China, and the likely cause was someone eating a bat. However, as it got to the US, cases quickly escalated and everything shut down, taking sanitizer and toilet paper off the shelves and destroying small businesses. I was scared, but I knew I wasn't going to die. When school got off I thought the virus would go away in 2-4 weeks. Now the cases keep escalating, and it is January 2021. I am way more serious about social distancing now, having learned the impact of following the rules and the terror covid nurses go through. Looking back on myself in march, I feel stupid because I had no idea what was coming. I feel like this was a year of karma, learning, and self-growth and improvement.
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2020-01-11
I think the cause of Covid-19 is a food item. Near Japan, they eat a lot of things that probably shouldn't be eaten, and if you don't cook it right it can have bacteria still on it. Actually, most animals haw viruses that their body they can handle that humans can't. And that is how I think the virus started, from something on an animal.
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2021-01-11
When the Corona Virus was just starting, my family and I were in Mammoth for our Winter Vacation. We started to hear stories on the news about a deadly deseise spreading throughout China. Back then we weren't really discussing where it came from, we just thought of it as something that was happening in a far away country that didn't concern us. Once we wen't back to school the virus had started to spead all throughout Europe and Asia and it was becoming more of a concern. Because of this there was an exponential growth in interest in the facts of what the Corona Virus is and where it came from. At first it was thought amoungst our group that it was created in a lab and escaped (much like the killer bee). This was later proven to be false by science studies. The next belief was that it came from bats! That stuck for a few months. Then, right before summer we stumbled on what we still believe to this doay to be the cause of the Corona Virus pandemic. The research of many scientists found that the virus come from an animal called a pangolin being sold at black market traders in China. There were may of these black markets all around the country. They all eventually got closed down, but not soon enough. COVID-19 had already spread to the entire planet and is now one of the most deadly pandemics of all time.
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2020
I first found out about COVID was from my former science teacher. We had been talking about viruses and someone had mentioned the word "coronavirus" well all thought this would just be another virus that would just come and go. We were told that covid initially came from a snake in China and it would never travel to the US and we would be fine. Now my knowledge from what we learned I really don't trust any government with heir telling of the story because each one if different. This experience really has changed me and a person and who I really trust in many things.
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2020-01-07
when I first heard of covid was when I was in my moms car like a little less then a year ago. On the radio it said there was a virus in china and the suspected its origin was in a meat market in Wuhan China. some people thought it came from a type of rat that when skinned it spread through the air. the more popular idea was it some how cam from a bat. I first thought it bit someone and gave it to them that way. but some of my friends thought it was from when the bat died or was eaten. I don't think anyone knows for sure where it came from but everyone knows it came from that meat market.
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2020
I think that the cause of covid-19 is that the covid virus mutated in an unexpected way, and people didn't realize that they had it, and brought it to other countries. Then it spread throughout the world, becoming a rather deadly virus, but we don't really know, because the statistics are so skewd.
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2021-01-11
When I first heard about the virus I was at school in the hallway going to Spanish. I didn't know much about it, but I remember them saying we might have to be online for a month or two, maybe even going through summer. When I got home that day I watched the news about the virus with my dad and saw details on it I originally thought it was like the flu and I turned out to be right. And when I found out that we would maybe have to wear masks wherever went, I was distraught. But I learned to live with it and shockingly we still have to nearly a year later. I don't know many people who got covid except for my aunt and her sister who had gone on a trip to Europe and got it on a plane. She lost her taste and smell for a few days and she was better in about 2 weeks and she slept in the same bed with her husband and he or her kids didn't get it. So to the average population, I believe that it's not too harmful as long as you are healthy and aren't too old.
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2021-01-11
I thought this was going to be like the common cold everyone would get over it in like 2 weeks.
but after a few days it started to get a lot more serious in a way that everyone had to start wearing masks.i think the cause of how its spread so much is that some people don't want to wear a mask. my knowledge has changed because now I know a lot more than it can just kill people. some of my experiances with this is that when the people came across the news that they were saying that the first case of covid has came into the u.s., was that it was kinda confusing because I didn't know what it was.
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2020-03-18
I have always loved cooking, and from a very young age, I spent time working through tough moments in my life with the comfort of flour, sugar and butter in the kitchen. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, I was a student teacher at a middle school in California, and finishing up my final quarter of my masters in education. I loved my job, my students, and my colleagues and I was heartbroken when I had to say my final in-person goodbyes to my first set of students. Just as I had in the past, I took my confusion, worry and stress to the kitchen, and began to procross the difficult road that I knew was ahead of me. One of the first recipes that I baked in quarantine was coffee cake because I had been talking to a friend, who had never tried it before. As I listened to my mixer beat the sugar and butter together, I could feel a sense of calm wash over me. Baking, even though it’s science, has an interesting paradox of being confusing and straightforward at the same time. I typically understand how the ingredients work together, and the process of following each step of a recipe brings a sense of peace. As I incorporated the eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, dash of allspice, salt into my mixture, the daunting nature of a global pandemic hit me. How was I going to adapt to online learning? How was I going to get a job in the fall as a teacher? How was I going to handle the next unknown amount of time? The smells wafting from my mixer comforted me, and even though the smell was confusing to my nose, I knew that the end product would be delicious and bring warmth to those who tried it. As I poured the mix into a pan and set it in the oven, a new sense of ambition began to bubble in me. If I could bake this wonderful cake, how hard could it be to face a pandemic? As I said this to myself, I knew how ridiculous it sounded, but I knew at this point I had to fake it until I made it. So as my coffee cake was baking I sat down and began to plan the next few weeks of virtual learning and by the time the timer went off, I had a rough plan of what I wanted to do. Taking the cake out of the oven and sampling it for the first time was glorious. I had worked hard to produce this thing, and I knew I could do the same with any task put in front of me during this pandemic. As I delivered baked goods to my friends doorsteps, while maintaining 6 feet of distance, and wearing a face mask, I hoped that a taste of coffee cake would bring the same comfort to my friends as it did to me in the tough early days of the pandemic.
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2020-03-13
My mom said that we were going to keep me home from school for a couple of days and I remember thinking...what is happening? I stayed home from Wednesday-Friday and on that Friday, my mom drove me to school in our Black honda to go pick up my books and clean out my locker because we were going to have an "extended spring break" which really turned into 8 months+ of online school. I thought that this was all super crazy! I was in shock that we had to stay home and learn from a computer. My opinions have changed a bit from back then. I started off thinking that this all would fly by and we would be back in school in a couple of weeks and maybe a month, but now I am not even sure if the world will ever be the same. Will we always have to wear masks? Maybe, but no one knows because the virus keeps getting bigger and bigger. I just couldn't believe that all of this was happening, at first, I thought it would be fun, but as time went by it just got kinda boring.
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2020-01-11
The first case I heard about this was back 2 years a go in December. I heard lots of theories the first one I remember hearing is that someone ate a bat and contracted this virus. I didn't think much of it at first but after time I realized how serious it is and how much it affects everyone in the world. My opinions on the virus have defiantly changed over time though, but I still manage to keep the same precautions and make sure to follow the instructed rules to keep everyone safe.
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2020-03-12
When this pandemic first started there were many different theories of how COVID-19 started. The one I knew about was this virus came from a bat in China. Someone ate it and got contaminated. To me, it sounded ridiculous because it didn't make sense to me that a bat started this whole entire pandemic. Since then, my opinion has changed. I believe that in China scientists were looking at the Covid 19 in a lab. I think it escaped and that's how it got out to the whole world.
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2021-01-11
At the beginning of the pandemic, I thought that the Coronavirus originated from a bat in a Chinese marketplace. While we still don't know where the virus originated, I highly doubt it came from a bat, though you never know! It truly could have come from anywhere.
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2020-04-01
I'm still not quite sure what caused Covid initially, even after almost a year. I first thought that it was just another mutation of some other virus or something else, like the flu. I didn't really give it much thought. I first saw the claim that Covid came from eating bats in China in a youtube meme video, where one of the memes implied that Covid came from animal consumption. I have seen a few other things that also say that it originated when we ate bats.
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2021-02-11
My story begins February of 2020. I remember that Covid had not become such a big deal in the USA yet, but it was about to. School had not been closed yet and I remember that the Science Fair was maybe going to be canceled. I had been working on it for a long time and I was hoping it was not going to be canceled. Thankfully, it was not canceled and we were able to participate in the Science Fair. As the month of March began, it became more serious and they had to shut down the School. I though it was just going to be until the end of the school year, but it lasted until 2021. That is myself story of the time before Covid-19.
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2021-01-11
When I first learned about the virus, I was told that it came from bats. And the first people that had contracted covid-19 had eaten bats that were sold at a market. I thought it was sad because people were dying from it. I also never thought it would be more than a couple of people that ate some bats and got the virus, I never thought it would become a world wide pandemic. I still believe that there is a virus and that masks effectively work. I know what you can do to prevent you from getting it. When I was first told about the virus, I was told that the flu was worse, in some cases that is true, but because there was no vaccine yet, and it can have also a larger long-term effect on some people. Also, I think that if our president put the entire country in a 4-week mandatory lock down where you were only allowed to leave your house for groceries, we would not be in this massive outbreak now. Also if all those anti-maskers just put a mask on and stopped saying that they have medical conditions that prevent them from wearing a mask, it could also be a lot better. Yes, there are certain medical conditions that prevent you from wearing a mask like a face burn, but if so just get your groceries delivered and stay home. Also if people stopped spreading lies that covid-19 is just a hoax, maybe some people would take it seriously and we would be in a much better situation.
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2021-01-10
For the past four or five years, New Year's Eve was always something I greatly looked forward to. Usually my night was spent with friends, playing games or enjoying a drink while waiting for the all-important countdown to the new year. One year, my roommate's mom came to visit and we celebrated by bombarding each other with silly string as the clock struck midnight. The next year, my friends and I decided to participate in the Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes at midnight, one at each stroke of the clock, but forgot until about 5 strokes in and risked choking as we attempted to catch up with the clock. In 2019, which seems like so much longer than a year ago, I celebrated with a friend who worked for a dog-sitting company; as midnight came and the fireworks began, we toasted with champagne while comforting the nervous pups. Despite what had happened in the previous year, or whatever challenges I already foresaw for the upcoming year, New Year's Eve was a chance to end the year with some fun, and start the year with good company.
Obviously, this year was different.
Leading up to December 31st, I felt a sense of loss. In 2020 I had moved to a new state, and the friends I usually celebrated with were over two thousand miles away. Even if I was in the same state as them, it would have been irresponsible to celebrate in the way we previously have. What was usually a night I looked forward to every winter was instead serving as a reminder of the often overwhelming sense of loneliness this pandemic can bring. I was heading into the end of this year melancholy and disappointed. But then one sentence, which I saw on instagram, changed my outlook.
While I did not screenshot it, it said something along the lines of this: Celebrate New Year's Eve by going to bed early, so you can start 2021 rested, refreshed, and ready to take on the year.
So that's what I did. After finishing work around 7:00 PM, I went home, took a shower, read a little, and called it a night. I recall briefly waking up to the sound of fireworks, but for the most part I slept well and began 2021 rested, rather than exhausted from staying up all night. While I was still a little sad to have spent the night alone, without the usual fun activities, I think it was a good way for me to start out the year. I can use that night as a reminder that even though 2021 will still be unusual and, at times, a bit lonely, I can take this alone time to focus on myself, and what allows me to feel rested and refreshed. It's not the most revolutionary resolution, but as far as New Year's intentions go, I think it's a pretty vital one.
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2020-03-10
On March 10, 2020 I heard of a virus. It was called COVID-19 or coronavirus. I heard many conspiracies on how this virus started. The one who standed out the most was that the virus started in China and someone ate a bat that had a bad virus. The person who ate the bat then spread it to people around china. It just kept getting worse and spread to the entire world. The next one is more political. People in China wanted revenge on president trump because he closed borders and industries with them. Since China wasn't getting any money from selling stuff to America they created a virus. They started spreading the virus to America. People started to blame president Trump and wanted to impeach him. The last one is also very political. Democrat's did not like Trump being in office and they wanted to get rid of him. They teamed up with China to start a virus so they could get Trump impeached. Since that didn't work when the election came they added more votes to Biden so he would win. Personally I believe the second conspiracy. All in all, I do not think we will ever find out what actually created Covid-19 but it still caused harm to many people.
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2021-01-11
I first learned that the cause of this virus was that people stored coffee beans that made a bad smell witch caused a disease that was deadly and there could have been someone who got sick from somewhere else and brought it to everyone then and that's how everyone got sick all because of people traveled by ships they probably picked up diseases then. I think it was trying to kill people so they lower the population of the people there. No, my opinion did not change. My experiences with discovering this disease were kinda relevant right now we're kinda similar to each other because we are going through the disease.
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2020-02-08
COVID-19 has been a topic on everyone's head for quite a while now. At least a week or so has passed since COVID-19 started getting attention. I have not been up to date with COVID-19 until I started to hear of what it can do, and how fast it was spreading through China, the official origin country of the virus. Many theories were spreading, but I specifically believed that China attempted to make a virus which is able to kill off the old, but keep the young, since 1, China had a stupidly large population (about 3-4 BILLION), 2, a good amount of that population consisted of elders, and 3, the virus does next to nothing to people 30 years old and below, but almost completely decimates those 60 years old and above, and everyone in the middle just feels that they have a small fever. Of course, my theory may not be correct, but you never know...
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2021-01-11
I originally heard that the virus originated in China. I had hear that it came from people selling/buying bats as consumables on the Chinese market. Im not sure that the bat thing is true but I am sure it originated in China. I am honestly not sure about the origin of the Coronavirus.
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2021-01-11
I first heard of this back in January, on the news when people were saying that Wuhan China was being quarantined. Originally, I didn't think much of it, as I thought that China was taking the necessary precautions to minimize infection. However, it got worse, and I was hearing about cruise ships becoming infected and having to dock at ports. Then the time came where Americans were getting it and President Trump issued military planes to bring the people back. In my opinion, we should have left people until the two weeks were over, due to the fact people could be asymptomatic and bring it back without feeling ill. I'm also rather resentful of China's government, as I feel they were trying to hide it from the rest of the world to keep their economy and business going. I still wasn't nervous, as I didn't think it would spread as rapidly as it did to pretty much the whole world being infected with Covid. On March 7th, my school said it would be our last day of in person school for some time. I still wasn't nervous, as I just thought it would be a brief period of time and then we would come back. For the next few months I was inside, and thinking that I would be fine no matter what happened. But when researchers said that it targeted people with underlying health conditions, I got nervous. I have half a right lung and diabetes, so it would not be good if I contracted it. The last few months I have been super precautios, only spending time with people outside or in a safe environment. Overall, I think it will pass with time, but for the moment I need to keep myself alive and not take any massive risks.
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2021-01-11
I think The cause of the virus is definitely because of people interacting with animals, because a virus needs a creature with a cell to live with, an animal is the best choice, because most of them live with humans. The cause is probably someone kissing an animal or eating animals. The virus is able to get through the blood and make the first person sick, when the virus is in the human body, it changes, and becomes easier to spread, then there’s more and more people getting infected.
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2021-01-11
Corona Virus started around the beginning of 2020, people have many arguments about the cause of the virus. Some said it’s originated from a bacteria on bats, and some said it’s a virus that accidentally released from a lab. From my observation through the year of 2020, COVID 19 MERS and SARS which they all started from bats, camels, cats, or cattle.
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2020-03-23
The story that got around about Covid-19 is that it came from bats. Bats would carry the virus around naturally but one day, someone in China decided that it would be a good idea to eat one of these bats. I think that a handful of people ate these bats that carried the virus and it was very contagious. Once a couple people had it everyone got it and people were dying left and right. Everyone tried to get out of China and they gave the virus to the whole world.
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2021-01-11
I was first told that COVID-19 was started because of bat soup that was commonly sold in Asia. Bats are known to carry many diseases and I was originally not surprised by the cause of this virus. However, I now know it was a man-made virus and was developed and let loose in a lab. With this information, I thought it was a lot different than bat soup. I was a little surprised at hearing this information, but it was starting to make more sense over time. The origin of this virus is now known to me and I now know that we need to be more careful when experimenting. I also know that we need to prepare for other pandemics in the future.
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2021-01-11
At first, when COVID started, I thought it came from mosquitos, but later I found out it was from bats. I thought this was interesting. My opinion has not changed from the beginning until now. Once I discovered the origin, I was amazed.
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2021-01-11
January of 2020 is when I started learning about COVID-19 and its origins. I first heard about the Coronavirus from my parents and news channels which stated there is a new virus around foreign countries that is spreading quickly and cannot be identified with any existing sicknesses. Rumors became of a bat that was carrying the virus and either had been consumed by humans or had transmitted the virus to man. The virus originated in Wuhan, China, but was also existing in Europe and the rest of Asia, at the time. I personally had no concern or worries with it when first hearing this news early on, but it was quite interesting hearing updates about it. My reasoning for this was it had not yet reached America or anywhere near the country. The thought of having to shut down stores, schools, restaurants, and cities did not even cross my mind because of the insanity that sounded of. Today, it seems completely normal hearing and thinking about quarantined, isolated societies because of how we've been living the past year. Speaking of today, I currently know a lot more about COVID. The symptoms, testing, origins, and biology of it are more clear now, a year after its discovery. I feel comfortable with the idea of the Coronavirus and am not scared of it. That opinion hasn't changed since the start of quarantine and COVID. There is still plenty more to learn about the Coronavirus, especially now that vaccines are out, but my adequate understanding of it and its origins is acceptable.
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2021-01-11
At the first thought of the virus, I wasn't sure what to think. I heard many things like "Covid came from China" and "Covid has always been around but it just got worse now" and other things like, "Covid is fake". I thought that Covid wouldn't be as bad. and that it would be something like the flu. when more and more people started dying, I realized how bad it actually was. I believe that Covid has always been around in the world. That maybe its been in our air forever and something happened for it to get to this point. Covid is not fake. it is very much here, and in the air. I also believe that Covid started in a certain point of the world and was brought to a heavily populated area and spread from there.
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2021-01-11
The Beginning Of Covid-19
The origin of Covid-19 had many rumores but the one that was most prominent to me during the beginning of the pandemic was bad meat from chinese markets. It all started when me and my family had a conversation about the pandemic and our thoughts and plans about it when my parents told me that it is speculated to be from these meat markets from the streets of china and since they are not preserved properly the meat carries the virus. The next day I got to school nothing was on lockdown yet so I did something that is almost just a dream to me. An actual conversation without worrying about masks, staying 6 feet away from them and having to sanitize if high five them. We talked about what they have been told about the origin and we all landed around the same point of the chinese market. Things have definitely changed, especially beliefs on the origin but this is how it all was first received.
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2021-01-11
A conversation I had probably back in February was with my dad. We had talked about what would happen if the virus came over here to America. He said that the stock market would crash, people would panic and go to mass hysteria, we would obviously have to quarantine too along with not letting people into stores and such. It did worry me at first but I had my doubts of much happening, although there still was a part of me that believed it would happen. But now that we're here I'm surprised he was able to accurately guess what would happen if the virus did come over here. When it first arrived, everyone panicked and stock piled on toilet paper or whatever, the stock market has been doing bad but I think it's gotten better, we were in quarantine for a while and those of us who are sick are still doing self quarantine. The stores and restaurants now have opened back up, some maybe just for pick up and stuff. The self quarantine has changed me a lot though, it really affected me negatively along with a lot of my friends and people I know. The stress and anxiety of just everything going on has worsened my mental state by a lot.
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2020-01-11
During the Genesis of this Pandemic, I heard that this pandemic came from bats. I was a little skeptical when people told me this. So I had the urge to look it up. After looking it up I stumbled upon that the cause of this Pandemic is "That they all came from bats." After Asia, it soon navigated to Europe and across the world, coming to our home, America. I also learned that this virus attacks the respiratory system. Whether it be the upper respiratory tract (sinuses, nose, or throat), or the lower respiratory tract (lungs, windpipes), this virus would barrage both.
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2021-01-11
when the Covid 19 virus hit, everyone was concerned. Apparently the virus broke out in China and was released to the whole world. There was even talk about shutting down the schools. We watched the news as the virus was spreading from Europe to America. as things got worse they eventually did shut down everything, schools, restaurants, ect. My family even thought of moving to another state. Then when Covid was in its groove, we realized its not as deadly as they portrayed. we all thought that this would be a killer virus as the news was saying. To some people it was very deadly, to some it is not. it was especially deadly to old people. to kids like us, it was as if we got a cold. eventually the news and CDC came out with their lies and said that the virus had a 99.9% survival rate to people with no underlining health conditions. thats when my family knew that there was no point in having everything shut down for a long time. The moral is that it wasn't as deadly or crazy as they said it is, sure, thousands of people died, but is wasn't really and grater that the deaths from the flu.
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2021-01-11
This virus, known in early March simply as "the coronavirus", was shrouded in mystery. We were told that it originated in China, which inspired many jokes. A parody of the song "Break my Stride" was the most memorable. In the earliest days of the pandemic, not much was known about COVID besides it's symptoms and things that we were being told could prevent it. That and that it was impossible to find paper products, cleaning products, and eggs. We knew that the symptoms were similar to the flu and that we were supposed to stay six feet away from other people and not high five. We were also told to sanitize everything frequently (hence the shortage of cleaning products) and wear masks. Not much of that has changed since then. We still do all the same things to prevent it, but somehow, it feels that my knowledge has filled out. There is less fear now (the teacher's unions are certainly using that fear to their advantage). Though I know that there is much that I did not understand in March and April, I feel that my opinions and knowledge of COVID have not changed much.
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2021-01-11
When I first heard about Covid-19, I knew that it came from Wuhan, China. I didn't know how it suddenly appeared, but many people think it had to do with bats. I didn't want to believe it, but there was no other theory that seemed somewhat normal other than bats. After a few weeks, when people were determined to find out why this virus came into our lives, I heard a bizarre thought that people made it in labs. I feel like people are getting so eager to know where it came from, they decided to make crazy ideas. The more the virus spread, the more theories came about the origins of the virus.
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2021-01-11
I first heard about the coronavirus around February. I heard of it mainly from my mom and friends. In the beginning, I was told it started from someone eating a bat in Wuhan China. Then it spread super fast. I was never too afraid of Covid and I never imagined that my school would get shut down from it. We were still going to school until around March 16th when my school got shut down. We did online school for the rest of the year and we also went into quarantine in March. My family still wasn't too afraid of the virus but for the most part, we quarantined and kept our distance from friends. we are still not too afraid of the virus and my family and my opinions have changed too much.
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2021-01-11
When I first heard of Covid I didn't really think much because I was in school. It was March 13th 2020, and it was a normal Friday. I was in school and there was an announcement. COVID 19 is now in the U.S. i had no clue what it was. I just thought it was a normal flu that was carried from somewhere else. There wasn't much to explain when we heard this. The teachers wouldn't explain so I had to figure where it came from. But thats the thing. I didn't It was no where on the internet on that Friday. But, when I got home, the T.Vs starting blowing up with all the news about the new COVID 19 strand.
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2020-01-11
I came back from Christmas break and I heard rumors of a virus in China. At first I did not believe it, but after I asked my dad, and he said that it was an actual thing. I was not afraid of it and I still am not, but there are many people who are terrified of it. After about a month, people started saying it was in California. This was confirmed when we went to online school. I did not enjoy it. It was the first year that I needed to work on my computer to do assignments, and having to do everything on my computer was a challenge, but I was able to figure it out and learned a lot more about computer usage.
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2021-01-11
It was around January 2020 , when I heard of what COVID-19 was. When I first found out that it was in China, in the markets, I have to admit that I was a little relieved that it wasn't near us in Ventura County California. I also remember wanting to learn more about it. I had two main question. How and when? I wanted to know how did this virus come to be. And when did it happen, how long has it been happening. I didn't find complete answers for either. I just found rumors about how it came to be because no one knew. The two most popular reasons were, that it was created in a lab to reduce the population in China/ and experiment went wrong. The other was that the bats in the water markets were dirty and gave the food a virus that the people then ate, which injected them with the virus. I didn't really know which to believe so I started looking into the other question. What I saw for that one was November 2019 but know really knew because China doesn't release information to the public. Over all, none of my question we answered, which made me fear what was going to happen in the future.
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2021-01-11
This is the way I learned my parents were scheduled to get their COVID vaccine. I don’t know what one they’ll get - and it doesn’t matter to me or them. They are 65 (66 in February 2021). My dad has a heart condition. I am deeply relieved that they were able to be scheduled to get one!! I am so grateful!
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2020-12-25
During Christmas break, cases in corona have been higher than they have ever been in the United States. I was only allowed to hang out with my cousins, (who live coincidently down the street) mostly the entire break. During Christmas my mom has to get creative and plan new things for Christmas Eve. She came up with a little holiday party and had so many fun games! We had secret santa and then went to bed! Even though no other holidays, this one felt real. The happiness and joy inside of me was really there to spread along to my family and I had a very little joyful covid Christmas with my family.
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2021-01-10
Christmas of 2020 is approaching fast. Faster than usually, as this year has seemingly sped by quicker than any year before. Perhaps the first sign of the coming Christmas season is when I open the fridge to find a bottle of Califia brand eggnog. Just as I think that Christmas will be perfectly normal this year, I hear some disappointing news. My cousin Michael is coming home from the Marines... With COVID. This means that I will not be going to my cousins house in Burbank like always, but that I will be spending Christmas at my own house. I don't like the idea of Christmas away from my cousins at all. I have been going to Burbank for Christmas for as long as I can remember. That being said, I can't do anything about my cousin getting COVID. On Christmas Eve, my mom grilled some steaks for dinner that she had gotten from Gelsons market, and we watched Four Christmases and Die Hard. In the morning, I woke up without the usual anticipation and excitement that comes with a typical Christmas morning. I walked down the stairs to discover the presents my parents had ordered online. I opened them, thanked my parents for the wonderful gifts, and started playing the new game I had got: Call of Duty Cold War. The rest of the day seemed like any other, and so did the rest of the week, and rest of the month, and the rest of the year at that. Now it's 2021. Everyone is filled with hope that this year will be far greater than the last, but I seriously doubt it. Especially with the news we all got on Tuesday, January 5th. That said, all we can do is stay positive and keep our heads up. As Winston Churchill once said, "If you're going through hell, keep going."
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2021-01-09
I live relatively close to the home where I grew up in Belmont, Massachusetts which is about 10 minutes outside of Boston. It’s a simple home where six of us shared a bathroom and thought nothing of it! My parents, one of whom just hit ninety years old, still reside in our home and never plan to leave with my mother asserting that she will only leave on a gurney. My parents now feel essentially locked in due to the pandemic which makes visiting, which I did this weekend, both more important but unnatural in some ways. We are Italian, for the most part, and Italians are a touchy group, always hugging, which in my family is our non-verbal communication of love.
With the risks involved with close contact there is no more hugging, and it’s hard to even want to express ourselves to these 90 year old's with a tacky elbow tap or fist bump. Verbal expression has been temporarily substituted but it is an inadequate alternative and will never replace the connection one feels from a sincere and long held hug.
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2020-12-24
Home cooked meals have always been the norm for us, but in our pre-COVID lives of working full time, gymnastics competitions, church commitments, piano lessons, Kumon, trips to Disneyland and on and on, eating out definitely factored into to our lives at least once a week. In March, that came to a grinding halt. With COVID cases in our area high, and being fortunate to work from home, we quit restaurant food cold turkey when quarantine began in hopes that the numbers would decrease. Ten months later, with daily case rates of COVID in our county now reaching into the 1000s, restaurant food is a distant memory. It was a bit shocking to realize we’ve only had restaurant food five times since March, and each time it was dropped off on our porch for a special occasion. With the kids begging for McDonald’s, we almost caved in December when the McRib commercials started. Instead of giving in, we spent December tackling the challenge of making McDonald’s at home. Big Macs, Egg McMuffins, McDonald’s pies, and yes, even the McRib made it to our homemade menu. It’s been a really fun challenge to try and get the taste just right. Also, a very odd and strange Christmas Eve to attend Christmas Eve service online and then to eat homemade Big Macs. But then, there was something perfect about it, too. What can I say? It’s a good time for a great taste in quarantine.
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2020-10-31
Halloween is usually a month long celebration at our house. We plan our costumes months in advance. We go to Disneyland at least a dozen times to enjoy the special Halloween treats, decorations, and to wear the insane amount of Disney Halloween shirts we own. On Halloween night, we serve at our church running game booths for the community and come home just in time to trick or treat (and usually get A LOT of candy because we’re some of the last trick or treaters). This year, of course, every single thing listed above was cancelled. With so many disappointments this year, we committed to making Halloween a celebration from morning until night. Making our own backyard carnival, the kids bobbed for apples, carved pumpkins and played Halloween soccer (okay, it was just soccer but we were in costumes!) My daughter was over the moon to have us all dress as Hogwarts students, except for her little brother who dressed as her owl. Lunch included ghost shaped chips, jack-o-lantern quesadillas, grape “eye balls,” and guacamole in a jack-o-lantern pepper. To make dinner extra special, we brought out the fondue set we registered for when we got married over 15 years ago and never opened. The kids loved a dinner of dipping into cheese and chocolate. The one thing my son repeated all of October was he wanted to “trick or treat to all the doors in the house.” Undaunted, we turned off most of the lights, put a bowl of candy inside every door in the house, and put either an adult or a dressed up stuffed animal (there’s only three adults here and way more doors) at each door. The kids were genuinely excited to trick or treat and actually knocked at every single door, and gleefully filled their bags with candy. It’s easy to focus on all that has been lost this year, but this simple, stress free, at home Halloween may have ended up their favorite one ever.
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2019-12-09
WHY SKIING WON"T WORK
Dear Director Silver Thread Public Health (Mineral County, Colorado),
I've had a few days to mull over the response made to my comments to the commissioners earlier in the-week regarding the ranking of Mineral County on the Colorado COVID 19 Dial and dashboard. Though I am not a resident of Mineral County I do spend the better part of my day in the county some 150 days a year, forgive me for commenting again, but I feel duty bound that someone goes on the record in hopes that a different viewpoint might have influence, even if in the back of the mind of the county's decision making as the pandemic progresses.
I see some flaws in the reasoning given for gerrymandering Dial levels, rather than using them as they are described:
Nowhere on the state’s Dial web pages is the decision process STH is using described or encouraged as its proper use. To say it is for guidelines mostly and not necessarily classification misrepresents the public’s perception and use of the dial. Changing classification to a county’s preferred level interferes with individual and the public’s crucial health options and choices.
There is an assumption in the explanation that because Mineral County is a small town that somehow the numbers of incidents per 100,000 would be treated differently. Is the known math of the virus and its tendency for spread somehow fortuitously different here than the rest of the planet? I think not. 1.7 deaths per 100 cases works for COVID whether there are 700 people present or 7,000 people present. Rates per 100, 000 are employed exactly to gauge the seriousness of outbreaks regardless of the size of communities. Dangerous spread in sparsely populated states made up of mostly small towns disapproves Creede’s desire for s special dispensation from the disease.
The explanation of ad hoc policies and improvised rankings and guidelines fall on the premise of a Public Health expert’s interpretation of “social responsibility,” an expert completely without the means to accurately monitor or enforce “social responsibility.” Social Responsibility, by the way, is also the governor’s preferred preventative and even his office has acknowledged that it has not worked.
As illogical as it is that the smallness Mineral County somehow protects it from the realities of a deadly virus that obeys its own rules (and we know its rules well) no matter where it is transmitting, the wishful thinking that a small town knows best how to make its own rules defies even the remnants of reason when the policies disregard that the county includes a resort where thousands of people have and are gathering. Even if ranking and guidelines (at the time of my comment or now) were helpful per the improvised policies of STH relative to Creede, if that logic holds, the ranking and policies for small Creede certainly could not logically also be applied to Wolf Creek Ski Area, which was and is gets visited by thousands of people per day packed into parking lots in an area about the same area as Creede and at much higher density of people per square foot. Many of the ski areas visitors have come from far flung states with high infection rates, and most are from cities where small town “social responsibility” is often something very different than enjoyed in Creede. (I’ve seen plates from over 20 different states and from literally every corner of the county.)
Small town or other norms of “social responsibility” also does not describe the atmosphere or the intent of a ski resort. It’s a vacationland where, in part, people travel a long way to take a break from their normal “social responsibility.” Indeed there is a strong element of maverick independence associated with the sports of snowboarding and skiing--including the apres socializing associated; It’s a place where, expectedly, we are allowed to break the rules a little, or a lot.
Even within the community, if the Dial is not accurate, it can be intentionally or unintentionally misused by leadership in organizations and businesses that have to make decisions about gathering. Not everyone understands the elaborate process described in the thinking of STH; even a reader of it might not be helped by its crafting. Some individuals and leaders predisposed to attitudes resistant to the realities of COVID 19 will inevitably use lower ranking to justify their own personal and organizational loopholes. Employers of that bent may use the misinformed ranking or juggled guidelines as leverage over employees who would otherwise be best protected by accurate “Level” and guidelines that adhere to the Dial’s published parameters.
Fiddling with the COVID Dial on a county level also ignores what public health experts are saying about the current dangers of the disease and models (which have, so far turned out to be pretty darn true) forecasting a debacle this winter, for everyone, including small towns. Fatalists and skeptics of the virus are using today to deny what we know is going to happen in a near tomorrow. Those tomorrows could be better or worse depending on what is done now. Fiddling for little windows of “freedom” will enable the most likely to spread among us to spread, and delays or manipulations of accuracy will cost lives, lives that in a small town count very, very much to all of us.
The danger of taking liberties with vital Public Health information by debating the application and inventively blending the facets of a Dial Level leans towards a see-saw of levels, downgrading too soon too much and upgrading too late too little.
I sincerely hope that Mineral County will make more effort to educate the public and leadership how to understand and use the dial instead of explaining (or not publicly explaining) the reasons for toying with and complicating it. It might also cut down on your mail, and relieve Mineral County’s health decision makers from the burden of taking on extra potentially egregious extra-personal responsibilities, pressures and culpability for public health outcomes. Used properly, the Dial is a tool that uniformly makes those responsibilities a matter of conferred, collaborative public policy and record rather than an ever shifting discussion inviting undue blame (or undue congratulation) for decisions that might be identified as personal.
My prayers are with you as you make these excruciating decisions, and I pledge my personal social responsibility to your efforts.
No need to reply. I know you are busy.
Sincerely,
Wayne Sheldrake
South Fork, CO
PS I don’t put this all on STH or Mineral. I know adjoining counties are also picking and choosing from the Dial. All the better reason to keep it descriptive rather than interpretive.
W. K. Sheldrake (Wayne) is the author of Instant Karma: The Heart and Soul of a Ski Bum, #1 on Outside Magazine Online’s list of “6 Adventure Books We’d Read Again and Again,” and Foreword Magazine’s ‘Gold Medal’ Adventure Book of the Year (2007). He is recording his pandemic experience in a memoir THE19: Confessions of a Mad (American) COVIDodger. He lives in Southern Colorado with his “high risk” wife where there is plenty of wide open space. They do not currently have a dog.
