4/6/20 Thomas Doyle Pd 2

Thomas Doyle Modern Mythology 2020

Blogger #11 4/6/20

At its surface, working from home is the idea of a perfect scenario. Waking up at the start of a class, and then attending said class from bed is, well, awesome. The first week of quarantine was paradise on earth. However, as the weeks rolled by, without seeing my friends or having any physical interactions with people, it began to feel like an episode of the Twilight Zone. My dad has been way too happy recently, I mean like scarily so. Seriously, no one should be as cheerful as he has been working at 6am regardless of the situation, but he has acclimated well. My mother, working rigorously on her Phd, has welcomed the free time as it eased her workload. My siblings, too naive to understand the severity of their situation, have had a blast playing video games and backyard sports, almost like a vacation. I’ve had home cooked meals every night, as my parents seek to expand their repertoire of dishes, each meal eaten together as a family.  I can say that I am truly blessed to have the support system at home that I do, as well as the safety and comfort of my home. And yet I hate it, so much. But more on that later, i'm gonna split it into two seperate prompts :).

These past two weeks have been referred to by many officials as the peak of the Coronavirus pandemic. And in these two weeks, a plethora of information has been heaved towards the American people. So in this time, for our not so tech savvy relatives, and even ourselves in the sea of misinformation, should know about their present situation. So first and foremost, the numbers. As of today, April 21st, 15 days after this blog was due, there has been a confirmed 2,552,491 cases around the world as the death total of 177,234, while 688,430 people have made a full recovery. Of all active cases, only 3% of patients are in serious condition. Back home, We New Yorkers boast almost 140,000 cases, more than most European countries, with 10,657 casualties and counting. But the government has been drastically increasing efforts to combat COVID-19. Just today, the Senate passed a $484 Billion dollar relief plan. This would be allocated to funds designed to support small businesses in this time, provide hospitals and other sites with the resources they desperately require, as well as help for the locations most affected by this virus. This is not the first influx of federal funds, as the $1.2 Trillion dollar initiative passed weeks ago providing unemployed Americans with means to survive. 

While the coronavirus has dominated most of all news coverage, there have been some recent developments around the world that are being drastically underreported. For the past couple of weeks, a plague of locusts have been destroying African crops at a biblical level. In London, the second man in history was cured of HIV, showing real possibilities of that disease becoming an afterthought. Recently, Fox News broke multiple stories later corroborated by major news networks that did not show the Chinese Government in a positive light. This included the origins of COVID, a Chinese program being built at an unsafe pace to match the US in disease prevention. It has been theorized that the patient zero was exposed and travelled to the food market, where the disease spread. Further, information came out that stated if the Chinese Government had been honest about the severity of the disease and number of cases THREE WEEKS earlier, lover 95% of cases today could have been prevented. They apparently have continued to hide information, as footage was leaked of the military welding people into their homes, tying people outside to poles as a reprocussion to being outside. Honestly, I could write a whole paper concerning the missteps the Chinese Government has taken these past months, as American legislation will decide how to handle that situation after we get through this together. In closing news, Kim Jong Un is very likely brain dead, but no information was released futher, and Rob Gronkowski has been reunited with Tom Brady in Tampa to play for the Buccaneers. 

Okay, back to the good stuff. As my first paragraph elaborated on working from home, I will take the remainder of my words explaining my own thoughts on the situation. Who knew I could take up two sentences explaining how I bend the rules and prompts? Anyways, I think I am losing my mind. As a senior, I obviously speak for myself, but I am not that upset about losing my prom. Nor am I really upset about senior day, as looking back, I’ve come to learn that that wasn’t where my heart was at. Heres what hurts. It has become apparent that witholding a miracle, we will be finishing our highschool at Zoom University. My last month of high school will be spent in my house. I will not have any new memories made of friends in classes together, properly sending them off on the last day, people who I may not see for a long time. I wont be able to thank the teachers and faculty who have done right by me in the time I knew them. Not in person. Not until a much later date. And this may be percieved as juvinile but I would’ve liked one more conversation with those who doubted me, those who said it couldnt be done, or said that I was a lost cause. Not to berate them , but maybe have them look at the next Thomas Doyle that walks through their door in a diffferent light. Finally, what had killed me for the first couple weeks of quarentine was my inability to do any work. And I mean beyond school work. I had told myself for years the things I could do with more time, and now that I seem to have all the time in the world, I couldn’t bring myself to do what I had wanted to, and watched in my mind as I formulated new excuses. So, my new mission, one of which I have undertaken this past week, and hope to maintain through the remainder of quarantine, and even carry through life, is to push through the excuses. I have begun self improvement on all fronts, and slowly am beginning to feel confident in my ability to, well, improve. If there was a fourth blog that would take up a majority of the content, but as we are at the end of this one, to all reading, I wish you nothing but safety, good health, and a positive outlook on whats to come.