my desperate endeavor

Never thought I’d make an angry Facebook post but here we are! Even though posting on Facebook is a shout into the void and essentially an echo chamber, this is for everyone who is going to big events, house parties, etc. and somehow has the audacity to share about it on social media.

As of typing this, over 137,000 people have died in the United States of COVID-19. Some states like good ole Nebraska have “only” had 245 deaths. 245 people have died in your state that should not have died. They died as part of a world wide pandemic that has claimed over half a million lives.

What’s going through your head when you share pictures of attending large events with friends, not wearing masks and not social distancing? You’ve obviously been following the pandemic on the news like the rest of us. You probably social distanced at home for some period of time. What made it feel like things went back to normal for you? What makes you feel invincible cause I’d sure as hell like to have that feeling.

I’ve worked on the COVID-19 response longer than I worked my normal job at this point. Since March I’ve had multiple roles-- contact tracer, case investigator, hospitalized surveillance, sit-in-this-office-and-wait-for-a-CDC-call. Since April, I’ve ramped up my hours to full time working hospitalized surveillance. I’ve read hundreds of hospital charts about all kinds of people with COVID, from little kids to centenarians. I’ve seen people who only are in for 6 hours before getting discharged, never requiring oxygen, and I have people who have been in since April and I don’t know when they’ll get out. 

Do these people mean nothing to you?

Do you rationalize it that they are older, they had an underlying condition, they just weren’t lucky?

Nebraska isn’t hard hit. I get it. Your R0 is low, things seem okay, why worry right?

That could all change in the blink of an eye. It’s a pandemic! It’s an illness that we don’t know what the hell it does since it’s only been around for 8 months? Max? Many of those who survive COVID-19 have permanent organ damage, they’re taking months to shake off the effects, and we’ll probably keep discovering more as more people get sick and we get more data. None of this registers? You just go about your normal life thinking “It won’t happen to me?”