You Think Covid’s Been Bad? Wait Until the Next Pandemic.
We just allow things to get needlessly worse, don’t we?
It’s been over two years, going on three that the Covid-19 pandemic first emerged and — as dramatic as it may sound — forever changed the way so many of us exist within and view the world. Over a million people died, tens of millions lost their jobs, and it somehow managed to reveal every single crack in the foundation of the dying American Empire. I work as a nursing assistant in a nursing home in rural northern New York, where my coworkers and I were putting our bodies on the line for a little over $12 an hour in the middle of an outbreak that lasted over two months. It was an experience that — over a year and a half later — has not only continued to define everything at work, but changed our lives as well. You’ll notice in conversations, even with people who weren’t working there at the time, that it’s all framed in a way that talks about “before” the outbreak, and the “after” that we’re still attempting to figure out.
My coworker was just 25 when we had our outbreak. I remember helping her get a resident into bed, and she told me anxiously that she was coming down with a sore throat. She went to get tested, they sent her home, and she hasn’t been the same since. She was healthy beforehand. Her first day back, she fought back…
