Coronavirus – Page 14 – Blind Injustice

December 28, 2020December 28, 2020

Blog Wrap-Up: Calendar Year 2020

Okay, so I know this is my blog wrap-up post for this calendar year, but in typical 2020 fashion, not even this wrap-up post could be done as normal…

Given the surge in COVID in New York City, I just wanted to give a brief update on COVID here right now, before going on to the main subject of the post, which is the blog wrap-up for this year. Here are some quick updates:

Everyone in my immediate family is still COVID-free.
That being said, the positivity rate continues to rise where I am, and in the zip code just north of mine, the test positivity rate is approaching a whopping 13%. Needless to say, I still very much feel like we are heading in the wrong direction where I am, in my part of New York City (southern Queens).
For the first time since mid-May, New York State is reporting over 100 deaths a day from COVID on a regular basis.
For those worried about what I’m doing over the holidays, worry not—I am not traveling during them, and I’m taking care of myself right where I am.

I know this is not the typical way to start a blog wrap-up post for the calendar year, but I figured that it would be better to give a COVID update now, during the middle of the holidays, instead of waiting completely until after the holidays.

Okay, now for my originally scheduled wrap-up post…

Honestly, at times it has felt like just too much to keep up with everything, both personally and blog-wise. I’m guessing that many of my readers might say the same—that it was a struggle to keep up with all that was going on.

And yet, we persevered. We’ve made it through 2020.

In light of all that went on this year in the United States (and in the world), talking about what this year in blogging has been like for me feels a little insignificant. That being said, I would like to highlight some pages on my blog that seem relevant, given all that is going on right now:

My Coronavirus Diary page. This page classified as “Coronavirus Diary” is broken up into two categories: the weekly updates from New York City (something I did for a couple of months when the pandemic was particularly bad in my hometown) and blog posts about injustices related to COVID-19.
My blog’s page on racial issues. While I have some posts on that page that precede the killing of George Floyd, some of my older content is as relevant as ever, in light of Mr. Floyd’s death. Some posts that may be worth a read (especially if you’re someone who’s followed the blog in the past few months) include ones on how institutional racism affects policing, how the fight for African American Civil Rights is not over, and what white guilt is.
The page I have for the “What Is” blog series. The goal of this series is to hopefully help many of us better understand terms that are often used in social justice circles that some of us may struggle to understand.
The page I have for “blog advice” posts. Since I’ve gained a substantial following, I want to make sure that my own tips on blogging get passed down to both current and future bloggers. I will say that this is taking a back seat to my COVID update posts for now, but whenever this pandemic settles down (and I really believe it’s a “when” and not an “if”), I will continue giving blogging advice.

I want to end this wrap-up post by offering a few “thank-yous”:

First, thank you to those who nominated me for blogging awards. This includes Em at Invincible Woman on Wheels, for the Ideal Inspiration Blogging Award; the blog Living Everyday, for the Outstanding Blogger Award; and Keith V at On My Mind Today for the Blogger Recognition Blog Award.[1]

Thank you, of course, to all my readers this year. I know many people are feeling quite fatigued from all the screen time we’re having, so I don’t take lightly the fact that people are using a little bit of that screen time by reading my blog.

A thank you goes to all the essential workers, such as those in grocery stores, those keeping mass transit running, fire fighters, and many others who kept things functioning as best as they can during COVID. Many of these people had to deal with COVID in their workplaces yet did the best they could to make sure things were kept running—without help from our essential workers during this time, it would be impossible for us to see our most basic needs met.

Most of all, thank you to our EMTs, nurses, doctors, and other medical workers who’ve been helping during this time of pandemic. I am grateful for the work you all do. You all deserve better than the ignoring of basic public health guidance that has led to many of you feeling overwhelmed.

Finally, I just want to wish that everyone has a healthy and safe holiday season.

I will not be publishing a post for the rest of the week, in observance of New Year’s Day.

[1] I still need to do an award post, as this too has taken a back seat for now to the COVID update posts. That being said, I do want to at least acknowledge that I got nominated for this award!

December 17, 2020

Coronavirus Update From New York City: December 17, 2020

Currently, many of us here in the northeastern region of the United States are in the process of digging out from a major snowstorm. I hope that all of my readers who were hit by the storm are warm and safe.

Everyone in my family is continuing to avoid the coronavirus, but it is getting more and more nervy as zip codes around us are seeing concerning rises in positivity rates. To add insult to injury (in terms of being on edge with COVID) is the fact that my parents in particular have seen a few places in our neighborhood where people are not wearing their masks and practicing social distancing as they should. I know I’m a broken record in saying this, but please wear your mask and practice social distancing! Also, when you wear your mask, wear it over your mouth and your nose, like the person in the photo below.

The person in the photo is me, by the way.

It’s not just my family who’s getting nervous about COVID, either. New York City is also getting nervous, as evidenced by a shutdown of outdoor dining that started last Monday, as well as noises of a more complete shutdown after the holidays (as to why we’re waiting for the holidays to do this if the situation is that serious, I’m not quite sure). The nervousness is understandable–with stories across the country of hospitals being overwhelmed, the fact that hospitalization and ICU rates are on the increase at a time when we don’t have a ton of hospital and ICU beds available to begin with in New York City is a cause for nervousness.[1]

At this time that many hospitals are being stretched thin due to this pandemic, I offer a simple plea: please listen to guidance from your public health officials about holiday gatherings, even if it means staying home. I know, understand, and appreciate that it is tough to not visit family you desperately want to visit–I know that because I desperately want to visit my mom’s parents too. However, a visit to them, even if it were allowed by their senior living community (which it is not), could potentially put them at severe risk because of their age and the condition they are in. Many of us here in the states could put our relatives in similar potential peril if we visited them. As much as we may love our relatives, the best way to love them may be to stay home and minimize the chances of relatives getting the virus.

My warning aside, I do wish everyone a good, healthy, and safe holiday season. Let’s care for each other and love each other at this time by doing all we can to keep each other healthy.

My last post for this calendar year will be on December 28th. That post will function as a combination of a COVID update post and an end-of-year wrap-up post for this blog.

[1] https://projects.thecity.nyc/2020_03_covid-19-tracker/?_ga=2.239467267.1478419328.1608083101-1077310081.1606063751

December 10, 2020

Coronavirus Update From New York City: December 10, 2020 (COVID Test Edition)

I hope all of my readers are healthy and safe during a time when the pandemic is getting truly scary in parts of the United States, and the world. It is particularly sobering that we had more deaths from the virus yesterday than the entire country did from terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

New York City is starting to see its hospitalizations and ICU beds used due to COVID rise. Data seems to indicate that we have a few hundred ICU beds still available and a few thousand hospital beds, but with COVID rates on the rise, as well as hospital and ICU beds used due to COVID on the rise, we should not get complacent here in New York City. If you want to track data in New York on a day-to-day basis, I highly recommend your visiting the coronavirus tracker webpage for an online newspaper called The City.

With statistics trending in the wrong direction, there are noises about more things shutting down in New York City before long. Things such as indoor dining, which have been open at a reduced capacity for the past few months, may be in danger of shutting down completely in order to try and not let this virus go too out of control again. I fear though that we may be too late–since many ignored the warnings of our public health experts with regards to behaviors during the recent Thanksgiving holiday, I expect the virus to continue to get worse in New York, and nationwide. I hope I am wrong.

I want to spend most of my post though talking about my experience with getting a COVID-19 test. I got a COVID-19 test for the first time on Sunday so I thought it was worth sharing what the experience was like…

So, to give some backstory, a couple of family members had some symptoms of COVID-19 due to something that was acting like a head cold. Even though it was acting as something no more serious than a head cold for them, I decided to get a COVID test anyway since there is some overlap between COVID symptoms and head cold symptoms.

The test itself was not too bad. Having swabs go into your nose is not the most pleasant feeling in the world, but that didn’t last for long. All in all, for a virus so serious and so deadly, it was not a particularly painful experience. Having blood drawn is to me a much more unpleasant experience than the COVID test that was administered to me.

The experience beyond the test was a lot more mixed. Positives of the experience include receiving free masks, getting free hand sanitizer (not sanitizer I personally needed, but some people do want and/or need that), and a relatively simple process to ensure that I learned the results of my test (which came back negative, by the way, so I don’t have COVID). Negatives of the experience include standing in a long line in cold weather (it was a walk-in site and not a drive-in site) and the fact that the seating area where some people were waiting for test results had some individuals who were unmasked. Overall, if I felt COVID symptoms or knowingly came into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID, I would still get a test and strongly advise people in a similar sort of situation to also get a test. That being said, I think that in order to successfully test and perform contact tracing, we need to make the COVID testing process as pleasant as possible–something that New York City is I think trying to do through the free masks and hand sanitizer, but needs to improve on through more testing sites (something which admittedly may be difficult to achieve if we do not have adequate tests available to begin with).

Hopefully, my mixed review does not scare anyone away from getting a COVID test! In spite of my mixed review of the testing experience, I am glad to have the peace-of-mind of having that negative COVID test. And, if it was found out that I tested positive, appropriate actions could be taken so that others could quarantine accordingly, and protect others yet from the virus. While the testing experience itself was not ideal, testing is important and needs to exist more widely. What’s also important is social distancing and wearing your mask over your mouth and your nose.

December 3, 2020

Coronavirus Update From New York City: December 3, 2020

I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to resume my weekly updates on the coronavirus ever again. But alas, here I am, resuming my weekly updates on this virus.

While there are still many places in much worse shape than my city and my state, we are trending in a very bad direction. Just a few weeks ago the COVID test positivity rate in my zip code was quite low, but now we are at a positivity rate of 6.5%. Given that we are trending in a direction that could lead to many more hospitalizations and deaths (deaths being a lagging indicator but an indicator that’s also starting to go in the wrong direction in New York State), it seems like a good time to restart my weekly updates.

Another reason I’m restarting my weekly updates is that, even though we’re not quite the center of the COVID universe in terms of cases and deaths right now (though if numbers keep on trending the way that they are, I fear we will be in bad shape before long), we still seem to be at the center of the American universe (or at least a center) when it comes to questions over COVID-related restrictions. Two instances where my city was at the center of questions about COVID restrictions were with the closure of schools citywide and the restrictions on the number of people attending religious gatherings in COVID hotspots.

With regards to the school closures, the public schools had a hybrid of in-person and online learning at the start of the school year, with schools in COVID hotspots (or schools with COVID issues) going fully online until those issues with COVID were resolved. However, with COVID rates spiking in New York City, a decision was made to go fully online for now. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has received significant criticism for this move, which perhaps explains why there’s work towards schools reopening again for hybrid learning in the coming days.[1] We’ll see how that goes.

With regards to the restrictions on the number of people attending religious gatherings in COVID hotspots, what happened was that entities of various kinds, from religious gatherings to non-essential businesses, faced various restrictions if COVID were bad enough (based on the test positivity rate) to warrant placement in an “orange” or “red” zone. In the case of religious gatherings, they were limited to 25 people in orange zones and 10 people in red zones. These restrictions were controversially struck down by the Supreme Court.[2] My thoughts on this are…complicated. Personally, I think that it was rather bizarre to have such arbitrary numbers for the number of people allowed to attend religious gatherings, regardless of the size of the religious building (whether it be a large cathedral like St. Patrick’s or a smaller church like the one I go to every Sunday)–it would have been better in my humble opinion if the capacity limits were determined by percentages (33% of space capacity, 25% of space capacity, etc.) instead of arbitrary numbers that applied to religious spaces of all sizes. That being said, I don’t see eye-to-eye with the argument made by the religious institution I am a part of,[3] and by extension the Supreme Court’s argument, that this is an issue of religious freedom for Catholics[4]–the real infringement on this freedom is if we don’t take the proper precautions, get ourselves and each other sick, and then prevent ourselves and others from feeling up to a vibrant exercise of our religion. In other words, the attack on religious freedom, at least in my own humble opinion, is from the virus itself and those unwilling to take basic precautions against it. I would also add that with the existence of televised and online Masses where you can even receive the most important sacrament (the Eucharist) spiritually,[5] I have a hard time seeing how being forced to watch a Mass virtually for the sake of COVID precautions crosses the line from “not ideal” to an attack on religious liberty. Maybe someone can enlighten me though, as I know I have readers with substantial amount of knowledge on Catholic theology.

Between the news coming down from the Supreme Court (just in time for major religious celebrations) and the number of people travelling during the holidays, I fear that these numbers are about to get much worse. I hope my fears are inaccurate.

I do have hope though for New York City. This hope comes from the fact that we know so much more about this pandemic now than we did in the spring, and that as a result we hopefully will not have hospital and death rates anywhere near as high as what we did back then. I want my hope to turn into reality, but alas, global pandemics do their own thing and do not listen to any hopes I may have.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/29/new-york-city-public-schools-to-reopen

[2] https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/11/26/scotus-rules-against-ny-religious-gathering-restrictions/

[3] I am a Catholic, and I live in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. It’s the same diocese that was involved in legal challenges to Governor Cuomo’s restrictions for “red” and “orange” zones.

[4] However, I cannot speak for other denominations of Christianity, let alone other religions.

[5] Catholics have something called Spiritual Communion, where one who desires to physically receive the Eucharist but is unable to because of circumstances can receive the Eucharist spiritually.