At my asthmatic daughter’s doctor appointment a couple days ago, the nurse read through the standard questions for the chart—the same ones she reads every time.
When she said, “Have there been any big life changes to changes to her routine?” I burst into laughter.
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our lives upside down. My children’s schools are closed and their extracurricular activities are cancelled. I am now working from home while attempting to simultaneously monitor their home-schooling. Our family outings and vacations are cancelled. We no longer visit friends and family. My healthcare provider husband strips down in the garage and showers after his rounds, hoping not to bring anything deadly into the house. We are eating our food storage because the store shelves are bare.
And yet, ours is a best case scenario. We haven’t gotten sick. We haven’t lost our jobs. I have a desk job, so I was able to transition easily to at-home work. My husband works with patients who are (presumably) not suffering from infectious disease. My children’s schools are offering online instruction. We have health insurance, food in the pantry and some money in the bank.
This pandemic is not affecting all of us equally, but it is affecting all of us, even the most privileged among us. More often, disaster strikes only a few of us at a time. One household experiences a tragedy, while everyone around them continues life as usual. Now, we are all coping simultaneously. This shared experience has the potential to bring out the best of human compassion, empathy, resourcefulness and innovation. Or, it could become a time of unprecedented selfishness, finger-pointing and despair.
As we embark in this shared journey, Exponent bloggers and our guests have been writing about their experiences, offering practical advice for life in quarantine, insights about how to deal with the physical and emotional toll, discussing the implications of these unique circumstances for policy and culture, and lightening the mood with humor.
You can find posts in the series with the hashtag #CopingWithCOVID19 and at this link: https://www.the-exponent.com/tag/copingwithcovid19/
Now we want to hear from you. Send us a guest post and add your voice to the #CopingWithCOVID19 series.
