So much has changed since I last wrote one of these little notes for the magazine. COVID-19 didn’t have its official name, people were laughing it off, China said they had it under control, and the U.S. response at the time was deemed racist or overkill. So much has changed, and so much has been relaxed. Has this situation brought out the good in the world? Too right! Has it brought out the bad? Yes, to that as well.
New “normals” are forming everywhere. Kids are home from school with remote learning becoming a staple for many parents. Parents are also working from home, and with that, new challenges and frustrations are rising. We’ll get there. We just need to give ourselves some grace and flexibility to find our way through this quagmire of new responsibilities. And importantly, we need to give grace to our kids. They’re resilient, but we will have to wait and see how this affects them in the long-term.
Each generation has had to face something unknown, preparing for “What-Ifs,” and coping in the ways that make sense to them. My generation was on the tail-end of the Cold War and educated on nuclear bombs, with a running joke that cockroaches and our feet in the leather school shoes we wore would be the only things to survive a blast (long story, but Australian schools put a lot of emphasis on leather school shoes back then!). We turned out ok…or did we?
The point is that we, in the U.S., are in a way better situation than most of the world. Yes, our cases are still climbing (at the time of writing, the calls are that this week will be the worst for our nation; we lost 1,300 last night alone), but we have a wealth of educated people who have put their personal lives to the side and dedicated themselves to helping people through this horrid situation.
This is all so fluid and we can see that in the way that HHS and CMS are adapting and responding to calls to minimize red-tape and increase positive outcomes. How this will play out in hindsight is going to be interesting, so in the event there will be reviews and audits on down the line, be careful and make sure you’re paying attention to what’s being put out by the powers-that-be—and ensure you know and trust your sources.
Our lives will never be the same after this and we need to learn and implement some hefty changes so that next time this happens (and yes, it will happen again somewhere, somehow), we can meet it head on, standing tall, with our people as protected and healthy as possible.
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