4/16/20 Kayla Wong PD1

Kayla Wong PD. 1

Blogger # 30

04/16/20 

Modern Mythology 2020

What is it like to work from home?

When online school first started it was a great change and it felt good to wake up when i felt like it. However, the happiness of working from home soon turned into wanting school to open again. Working from home gives me no motivation to do anything at all and causes me to procrastinate more than I used to. I miss going outside and meeting up with friends. I now realize that I liked the schedule school gave me, the days feel shorter and there was less work compared to online school. It’s my senior year and this is what I least expected or even wanted. I wanted to spend my last year in high school hanging out with my friends more and going out whenever I felt like it. Now, I’m stuck at home with nothing to do. I am constantly on my laptop or my phone and it isn’t healthy for my eyes or my body. APs are in less than a month and I haven’t studied, I don’t have the motivation to study. I really think about just winging the test because I haven’t opened the books and I don’t know when I plan to do so. 

What are the updates around the world/community regarding the virus?

    From time to time I would check the updates of mainly NYC. When I saw the graph of the number of new cases in the city, it was decreasing and I thought that we finally hit peak. If we finally hit peak these past few days, there’s a slight chance that schools may open again by the end of May or June. However, when I checked this morning, the graph increased and it might even be the highest number with 11,571 new cases recorded yesterday. There are approximately 2.1 million cases worldwide and the numbers are only increasing with most of the cases coming from western countries. The USA on its own has 675,243 cases and NYS makes up almost a third of the cases with 222,284 cases. Harvard researchers say that social distancing may have to last until 2022, NY might cancel all concerts and large events until the fall of 2021, and some universities are thinking of continuing online classes through fall 2021. LA mayor confirms that big events might be banned until 2021. Study abroad programs have been canceled until after fall 2020. Michigan had a protest to go against the stay at home order. 

Your own personal feelings and thoughts about what is happening right now.

    I feel baffled towards the protest in Michigan. They don’t seem to understand that the pandemic is affecting many people and people are dying. The stay at home orders are there to help protect the citizens of the state, but yet people are going against it. Yes it may be frustrating to stay at home all day for a long time, but the numbers are increasing rapidly and we don’t know when it will stop. It’s alright to protest if they aren’t affecting anyone else, but they are. They blocked roads to the entrances of hospitals. This prevented ambulances from getting through as they were trying to save lives, other visitors of the hospital had no way to get there. With the cases rising in the city and the potential ban of large events until 2021 is upsetting. I understand that the actions taken are necessary but it’s upsetting because I was planning on going to multiple concerts this year, but they may all be canceled and I would have to wait for a while before  I can go. I am also very disappointed that people call the COVID -19 the chinese virus. Yes it may have originated from China but it is no excuse for the racism out there and the ignorance of people. They shouldn’t blame China or Asians for the spread of the virus but rather their governments incompetence to act and prepare for it. China and South Korea had their outbreak in the beginning to the middle of February and this gives western countries especially the USA to quickly prepare for the worst case scenario. There are many people who use the Spanish Flu as an example of a virus named after an ethnicity or country. But they fail to realize that the Spanish Flu didn’t originate from Spain or any Spanish speaking country but rather the USA. There are also other viruses that are named after a region or a country, but that is usually an epidemic and not a pandemic. Honestly, NYS might be on a stay at home order, but when I look out the window my street looks just as busy as it usually is and I still see people walking around in groups without masks. I don’t understand why can’t the governor or the mayor put NYC on a full lockdown like China did to Wuhan. As the deaths are increasing in NYC, officials were planning on using parks as temporary burial sites and putting dead bodies in a freezer. Why don’t they burn it? Thailand already had its first transmission of the virus from a dead body to the living. By keeping their bodies intact the virus may still be active and can continue transmitting to other people, further increasing the number of cases.