The Uncertainty of Our Future

A lot of speculation has been circulating throughout the media regarding the end of COVID and the end of the pandemic. The top figures in our government and our top health officials say that a vaccine could be ready for distribution as soon as November or early December; but is that really true? The truth of the matter is, we don’t know when this pandemic will end, if ever, and we have no idea what it’s going to be like once this virus is finally gone from our lives “forever”.

One thing we can probably expect as society starts to piece itself back together and we start to regain a semblance of normalcy will be the implementation of stricter health and safety guidelines in public spaces. Honestly, with the way that viruses and other illnesses spread, through contact and the air, stricter enforcement of health and safety measures should’ve been put into place a long time ago; take it from someone who got MRSA (the world’s deadliest Staph infection) in an indoor softball facility at the age of 11. There is a lot more that can be done to keep us all safe and healthy. Now I’m not saying that places like the movie theater or bowling alleys are going to require you to wear masks while you’re enjoying your movie or your game of bowling (heck there’s speculation in the media that movie theaters won’t even survive the pandemic). But employees as well as patrons in all public domains, not just the two I listed previously, are going to have to abide by the rules that these companies put into effect. Whether that is having to wear a mask or not being allowed entry if you have a certain temperature or the staff of these places having to spend extra time sanitizing equipment and furniture to ensure that there is less of a risk of infection for anyone entering the facility, we all are going to have to do our part to ensure that something like this never happens again. If not for ourselves, the general public, but for the healthcare workers that risked their lives throughout the entire pandemic.

Since March, our healthcare workers have put their lives on the line to save people from this virus. Pictures of the marks that healthcare workers have shared displaying the imprints the protective eye-wear they wear left on their skin continues to circulate throughout the media, showing not only the physical impact the pandemic has had on them but the emotional impact you can see in their exhausted, defeated eyes. Limited staffing in hospitals and communities where the virus was rampant resulted in medical schools releasing some of their older students, like my cousin, onto the front lines to do their part to combat the virus. According to a The Medical Futurist article, the virus is going to lead to a high spike in burnouts of medical professionals because of the extreme work conditions and war-like scenarios which were physically and mentally draining on the doctors, nurses, and every other healthcare worker that had to deal with COVID-19. The article also stated that more frontline workers from the pandemic will begin to experience signs of PTSD as a result of the emotional and physical burden of working throughout the pandemic.

What it all boils down to is that we have no idea what the world is going to be like once we return to the new normal. The world has completely changed as a result of this pandemic, changing the people and the way we live along with it. There is no telling what the world will be like next year, month, week, or even tomorrow, because every day in this pandemic offers new information about the virus we didn’t previously know, constantly changing the way we live our lives. Our world will never return to what we once knew and the people who have survived the pandemic are changed forever as a result of it. All-in-all, there is no way of knowing what it’s going to be like when this is all said and done, we as humans, however, have the responsibility to do everything in our power to ensure that this never happens again. There is no telling what the future holds, we just have to continue living our lives, one day at a time.

• Coronavirus
• COVID-19
• uncertainty