4/17/2020 Fahad Shafat PD 5

4/17/2020

Sophomores 2020

Fahad Shafat

Period 5

Blogger #20

What is it like working from home?

    The dramatic shift to remote learning has mostly been comfortable for me so far. Personally, I am not a huge fan of school, due to the constant (but manageable) stress a student undergoes. For example, every student has to worry about whether or not they will get late to school and going through my afternoon commute that gets usually annoying when I have to wait at a bus station for a long time. Even though I live in Staten Island in which my commute isn’t long compared to other students’, I usually found it to be lonely. I usually wouldn’t have a friend taking the same bus as me, that I can start a conversation with to pass the time. Working at home, I don’t have to worry about waking up early and getting to school on time. I feel much more relaxed due to the increase in free time I now have. The workload has become more manageable since assignments are due every 3 days. I am able to sleep for a healthier amount of hours, compared to doing so on a school day. Overall, my life has become much more balanced.

    However, this relaxed environment also comes with some drawbacks. I sometimes feel that I’m not learning enough, or that I can easily become lazy. Sometimes, one can start to take his work less seriously, and ignore due dates for assignments and projects. Despite the large amount of time we have, it ironically becomes easier for us to procrastinate: every student’s biggest enemy. Thankfully, I have managed to keep up with all my work and submit it on time on Google Classroom. But learning in an actual classroom, face-to-face makes it more interesting (and memorable) for me to learn new information. 

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

    As of now, the coronavirus pandemic has reached a very dangerous level, that was once unthinkable a few months ago. Especially that New York is now the epicenter of the pandemic that originated 7,500 miles away in Wuhan, China. As of right now, COVID-19 infections have surpassed 2 million cases and at least 146,000 people have died worldwide. As of 10 pm ET, there have been 701,131 cases and 36,997 deaths so far in the United States. The number of deaths has grown by at least 10,000 over the last week. I remember seeing on CNN that there were 17,000 deaths which had really terrified my parents watching. Even more terrifying, this morning when I started typing up the blog, there had been just around 30,000 deaths in the U.S.Even though there has been word that the coronavirus cases are starting to drop, this crisis is still far from over and we still have to continue taking many precautions.

    Because of the fact that New York has become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, major news channels have been broadcasting NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily morning press conferences for the past weeks. The pandemic has become much more personal for him, when his own brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo tested positive for coronavirus March 31st, 2020. He has continued to broadcast his program, Cuomo Prime Time from his basement, describing the symptoms he has. Cuomo said that he had a fever that was so bad, that he hallucinated seeing his deceased father and college classmates, whom he described as “people I haven’t seen in forever”. These words demonstrate how scary and bizarre the coronavirus really is, how it is unlike any other disease we have ever seen in human history. 

    Europe believes that it has already passed the peak of the pandemic, thus it is starting to slowly reopen. Italy’s cases have started to decline, despite it having been the previous epicenter of the pandemic for having the most number of deaths. In Denmark, classrooms are starting to be full of students. While this obviously provides hope for the situation globally, it is still going very badly in the U.S. President Donald Trump has been under fire for having dismissed the coronavirus pandemic earlier in February, saying that it will eventually die down. There have been rumors that he’s going to fire the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a person who is viewed by many Americans to be more knowledgeable of the situation than President Trump is. Dr. Fauci himself has predicted that the U.S. will soon have 1-2 million deaths and that reopening the country in May would be “overly optimistic”.

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

    Overall, I felt nothing but shocked by these current events. When I was just preparing for the many tests I had on the days that ended up getting closed, the world turned upside down within a short amount of time. Every city in the world has become a ghost town. A week after Mayor de Blasio shut down all the schools in New York I had to go to Manhattan for a personal matter my neighbor had. It only took us just under 20 minutes to cross the Verrazano Bridge, when every time I have crossed it in my life, it has always been jam-packed. If anyone were to tell me on the first day of the school year that I would be off from school for 3 months, there would’ve been absolutely no way I would’ve believed that person. It obviously sounds like a lot of fun to not be in school for several months. However, it simultaneously makes the situation much more frightening for me despite having taken all precautions of staying home and washing my hands frequently. As a New Yorker, I still fear that my family has a chance of catching the disease. We are most likely not going to be returning to school until September, as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza have said.

    However, with all this despair, there is still a reason to be hopeful. Governor Cuomo has recently said that we are soon going to be passing the peak of the pandemic. I still continue to learn what I need to, for my classes. Additionally, I feel much better being able to spend some more time with my family. Since I belong to a religious family, I have started to think more about how short life really is. We never know when it’s going to end for us, considering that we live in such a materialistic time in which many of us tend to take it for granted. The world has also seen many people stand up and show their bravery as healthcare workers. Despite that many of them have already gotten infected with the overflow of hospitals, this hasn’t stopped many workers from going out to treat them. I have seen videos in Turkey, that strangers have been leaving packs of fresh food in the streets for the homeless and that the police there have been delivering food to the elderly. Ultimately, I remain optimistic about the situation and hope that this pandemic ends soon.