The Pandemic of 2020

Author: Jamie Bessette

During WWII England came up with the phrase “Keep calm and carry on”. It was meant to help calm the English citizens and give them some hope that things would get better. The phrase became popular again about 10 years ago and since then I’ve seen a variety of spin-offs from it as I’m sure you have as well. During this time of “shelter in place” orders by our governor that phrase keeps coming into my mind. Not because of all the silly spin-offs but because of the original WWII creation. As of this writing there are 26 active cases of Covid19 in the county I live in and the people here are acting like the world is going to end. The amount of fear that the media has pumped into society is almost unreal.

It bothers me that so many businesses have been asked to close. While I understand that the purpose is to slow down the spread of the virus has anyone thought about all the freedom they have lost and the long term effect this will have on our economy?

As some of you know I currently work for a school district in the state of Washington. At the beginning of the outbreak the town was considered one of the epi-centers on the east side of the state. I think the district I work for handled it in a calm but cautious manner. They kept their staff informed and followed CDC recommendations. What more could an employee ask for? We didn’t close our doors until directed to do so by the governor on Friday, March 13, 2020. (I think that just because the shut down started on Friday the 13th people got freaked out.) Our staff reported to work on Monday as the school closing went into effect on the 17th. I have never seen so many people come together on such a short notice to problem solve and plan for sending students home with work to be completed. I know my district was not the only one doing this as my kids are in a different district and they too came home with packets of work and google classroom accounts set up that they needed to access.

While every school district faces their own challenges with getting work out to kids I can only comment on what my district has done. Our district is unique in our area because it has a really high free and reduced lunch rate and many of our students do not have internet access. Some neighboring districts sent each student home with a chromebook and lessons to complete online. While I love this idea and think it is a great option if your students have internet access this was not an option for my district.

I have been on a number of zoom meetings each day trying to figure out how school will work for our district. Because this all happened so quickly the guidance from the state and feds on how to proceed has been as clear as mud. The message is changing every day. I feel like as soon as I get one task accomplished in hope of benefitting our students the target changes.

As weird as this may seem because I have been working from home and there are no students around I am just as busy if not busier then when I worked in my office and school was in session. Because of the fast pace of things I seem to be drinking more coffee to keep up, yesterday my husband informed me I drank 2 pots of coffee minus the 2 cups he had.

We came out with guidance for our teachers today of how to provide work for our students, it only took a week, and now OSPI (Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction) has once again changed their expectations so back to the drawing board we go.

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Being that I was exposed to people who got the virus my husband had to stay home from work too. There is a staff member in his office who has a child with a compromised immune system and one of our children has a compromised immune system as well. I’ll be honest, we have not sheltered her because I can’t help but think she will be in contact with it eventually. It took me many years to unwrap the “bubble wrap” from around her. I used to bleach all her toys and wash her stuffed animals trying to keep her healthy. It helped that her immunologist told me that she would reach a point where her immune system would be developed as much as it could be for her, and after that I guess I figured it will be what it will be.

Within the first week of our home isolation she ran a fever, was very tired and had a sore throat. At the time, I assumed she was getting a cold and I treated it as such. Please remember that while we are going through this pandemic there are still other illnesses that are being spread they didn’t stop spreading just so we could all get through this world wide pandemic. Less than a week later I became very tired and also developed a sore throat. I figured I’d caught her cold. A few days later our county health department added to the list of symptoms, and a sore throat was on the list. On the third morning I woke up in bad shape. I was tired (even though I’d slept something like 12 hours), I had a headache, my lungs felt heavy, my back hurt, I had no appetite and my muscles ached. A few more days in I was short of breath and felt dizzy. Could this be more than a cold? I went back and counted my days since I’d been exposed to the virus and it did fall within the 14 days. On about day 5 of my illness I began to wonder if what my daughter had wasn’t a cold either, as she had not bounced back like you would after having a cold for over a week. I didn’t really start to feel better until day 11 after 1st getting mild symptoms. That is when my son started showing the first signs, even though he kept saying “I’m not sick” you could see it in his eyes. Test kits are limited and I felt we had mild cases so I didn’t even bother calling the kids or my doctor. My best guess is that this is the corona virus but I guess we’ll never know until we can take an antibody test.

I wrote the first half of this before I got sick and am now finishing this up on day 12 since I first had symptoms. While my daughter and I feel better we are not fully back to our usual selves and my son keeps saying he’s not sick.

It’s about all the energy I have to complete this so hopefully it sounds orderly and coherent. Let me leave you with these parting thoughts: get sleep, take your vitamins, eat real food and hug the people you love most. We shall overcome this, remember: Keep Calm and Carry on! (While social distancing of course.)

The picture above was taken while my husband and I sat in bed on 4.6.2020 and watched Washington Governor, Jay Inslee, state in a press statement that the schools would remain closed for the rest of the 19-20 school and that we would continue remote learning.