Here’s a little rant about this whole COVID-19 situation. I read somewhere that historians from the future would love it if more people write about what’s going on on a day-to-day basis, especially in times like this (hi future historians! *waves*), and I do think it’s useful for me to let some of these thoughts out instead of just keeping them all to myself, so here’s a little rant.
The COVID-19, or the coronavirus disease of 2019, apparently, became really pronounced around the Chinese New Year of 2020. I’m Indonesian of a Chinese descent, but now I’m studying in a university in Canada. So, at the start, I was just, okay, whatever. It’s spreading in China, and there’s a few cases in Canada because people travel to their hometown in China during Chinese New Year and come back, no big deal. They can lock down the city, and keep people who do have it and have traveled back to wherever they live in quarantine and nothing big will happen. Oh boy was I wrong.
My friends started joking about the coronavirus at first. It’s really not a big deal for us in Canada, and we have much, much bigger concerns, like finishing our problem sets and our next midterm. So they started joking about it, and I didn’t think anything of it other than noticing how my brother can’t go back to university in Hong Kong because they are closing the universities there. Oh, and let’s not forget, my brother hasn’t been in school for a couple months because of the riots of Hong Kong, and now he can’t even go back. People were joking about how the Chinese government develops this virus to end the Hong Kong riots.
Then, as things started to get worse, racism happened. Yay. As I said, I’m of Chinese descent, so I look Chinese, Even if I don’t, I’m Asian, and people started to suspect EVERY SINGLE ASIAN PERSON to have the virus. At this point I haven’t even left Canada in months, because the flight time home, even for winter break, is horrendous, and if I had the virus it would be because someone gave it to me in Canada, which means the odds of you getting it is about the same as me getting it. It reaches a point where I’m scared of coughing in public, because people will then think I have the virus.
Not to mention that I’m still monitoring how things goes in Indonesia, since it is my country. Until months after the outbreak happened, there is no single case in Indonesia. And people started to think that it’s because Indonesia just doesn’t have the capabilities of testing for the virus. Like, are you kidding me? I’m all about criticizing how the Indonesian public health system is, but you don’t have a leg to stand on by saying how Indonesia is a possibly dangerous country to get infected with COVID-19 when you already have the cases of COVID-19 in your own country. Yes, I’m talking to you, Australia and Singapore. Shut up, and deal with the people in your own countries.
But then, of course, things don’t just stop there. More and more cases started to sprout up, and with it, of course, more and more misinformation. Theories about how the COVID-19 is about China developing this virus to take over the world. Like what? And things about deaths because of COVID-19, people spreading panic, and of course, because of smartphones and social media, people who have no idea how to filter information spreads this information even further. Unfortunately, many of my families are amongst them. There are so many misinformation about the virus, but people are not getting the most important information about all of it, which is to WASH YOUR HANDS! They talk about wearing masks, which, does not really help unless you’re already sick and trying not to infect people. Some people wear the N95 respirator, but they don’t do it properly, and leave gaps between their faces and the mask. Some people went further and wore googles and gloves on top of the respirator.
Then things start to get even worse. Italy started to lock down, along with many other countries. The primaries in the US became disrupted because a lot of people got the virus. Indonesia finally had its first case, and the numbers grow exponentially. People are starting to get really scared.
Students start to petition universities to shut down, because 500 students in one room is prime breeding ground for an infectious disease. WHO finally decided to call this a pandemic, which, I’m still bitter about because they only do it once European and American countries started to get lots of cases. But I guess for WHO the definition of a pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease. (And the WHO only considers the world to be Europe and America anyways, but that’s my own thoughts and another discussion.)
Finally universities started closing, including my own. All my classes went online in a VERY short time. I applaud all my professors who had to figure out how to went from face-to-face instructions to online classes in a span of about two days. And they managed to make the best of this situation too. Cheers to you, profs! (I’m aware that this has not been the case for a lot of students, and I’m sorry to hear that.)
Canada declared emergency, and all events are canceled, including a lot of performances. The National Ballet of Canada canceled their performance of Romeo and Juliet, which I’m kind of looking forward too. All of the dance crews in my university also postponed or canceled their performances, including my own. We had two big performances scheduled at the end of the semester, and both of them got canceled. My friends who are in performing arts programs got it the worst though. Their year-end performances, which they must have been working on for months, got canceled. I can’t even imagine how disappointed they are. Even I’m already disappointed, and I only dance as a side.
Then famous people started to test positive for COVID-19, including Canada’s prime minister’s wife. Actors and athletes started to test positive. Though, there’s weird and insensitive things that’s happening. First of all, since the COVID-19 mortality rate for people under the age of 60 is not high, a lot of young people thought this is not really a concern for them and continue their travels and parties anyways. Even if you don’t get infected, other people might come in contact with you and then THEY can get infected. And the parties? Come on, people are dying and getting sick. Once classes got canceled a lot of my friends spent the entire weekend partying. You do realize that classes do not end, right? They just got moved online?
Secondly, people started to hoard things. Toilet paper, for once. That one was weird. I don’t know why people want to hoard toilet paper. But then they start to also hoard food and soap and hand sanitizer. Apparently a guy bought 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer. That is super weird and insensitive. Why would you even need 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer?
But there’s good things happening too. There’s a video online that’s basically just a bunch of Italians, singing from their balconies because they can’t go outside. There’s also news about how people are donating things to the communities impacted by the COVID-19. And the little things, like people offering to do stuff like grocery shopping for the people most at risk. This COVID-19 also shows how deeply rooted capitalism is, and this made a lot of people to start to notice how capitalism is not an inherent part of human nature.
There’s this thread online about how the COVID-19 is like a trial run for climate change, which, I sort of agreed. Governments stopped for COVID-19. They change their behaviors and stuff. They could have done that for climate change too, but they don’t, because climate change does not really affect them as a person. I guess that’s too general, but COVID-19, a virus, can literally hit even the most powerful person on earth. It has hit famous actors and athletes. It has hit the prime minister of Canada. They see it happening and they know that it can hit them too. So they act. While for climate change, they see it happening but they don’t care because it doesn’t affect them. They are not the ones starving because of climate change. They are not the ones having to relocate again and again because of climate change.
Someone online (and don’t you see a pattern about how I’m taking information online?) wrote about how most young people are so nonchalant about this disease. And in part, I guess it’s because of how the risk for younger people are lower, but also because the younger people have been fighting against imminent end of the world for years now. We know that the world would die if we continue to act the same. This is just another part of it.
Anyways, I thought that even though universities are closing, residences would not. At least not my residence because my university has a lot of international students. But a couple of days in, my dining hall started to only offer take out meals, and I had a sudden realization that this is going to get worse. So I called my parents and asked them whether or not I should go home. I really do not want to be stranded on a country, thousands of miles across from my own country where I have no family. I called them, I booked the ticket (while arguing with my father because he doesn’t think I should), and then started packing. I booked the ticket on Tuesday for a flight home on Wednesday, so I literally only have hours to pack my entire room. I went to grocery stores to ask for cardboard boxes to put my stuff in, and ended up taking one from the dumpster because none of their cardboard boxes are big enough. I arranged for a storage company to come pick up my stuff, but because everything is very short notice, I couldn’t get them to come when I’m still there, so I had to ask my friend to hold it for me until the storage company can come pick up. And then, on the afternoon, there’s an email saying that residences will be closed on Saturday. Wasn’t it lucky that I had booked a flight home before hand?
Oh, and even throughout this, people are still dissing Indonesian government’s ability to handle the crisis. My friends, who are also Indonesian, talk against going home because they don’t trust the Indonesian health care system. Bitch, I also don’t trust the Canadian health care system, and there are more cases in Canada anyways. So they decided not to go home, but then residences started to close and then I had no idea whether they all decide to go home or not. But for the most part, they had families in Canada, and some of them had families in the US. So I guess they could go there. I’m still offended about them not trusting the Indonesian health care system though. What is it about people and not trusting Indonesia? They are Indonesian citizens. It’s people like them who made Indonesia stuck in this weird limbo of being a developing country. And don’t even mention people from Malaysia and Singapore, and how they look down on Indonesia. But that’s another rant that I will maybe write with better sources.
Anyways, so I packed my entire life in two suitcases, a duffle bag, a backpack, and three boxes in the span of several hours. Then emailed my profs because I have two (TWO!) midterms in the days that I will be traveling. Thankfully they are very accommodating. I started my 20+ hours of flight, plus and additional 10 hours on transit.
It’s super weird to be in a flight with people all panicking about the COVID-19. I saw people wiping every single surface down with wet wipes before the flight. They double on masks and wear goggles. Some even wore hazmat suits. As for me, I know that I shouldn’t touch my face, so what I do is I wore make-up. Normally I don’t wear make-up on a daily basis, but if I had eyeliner on, I’m not going to touch my eyes for fear of smudging that off. Same with lipstick. That worked for me, including in the hours of flight that I went through. I also wash my hands plenty, until my skin felt like they’re cracking off because of how dry they are.
In airports, there are officials who checked everyone’s temperature with the laser thermometer. And in one of the flights everyone had to wear a mask. That was such a weird experience. And then there are forms I had to fill when I land, specifying where I had been and where. All of this experience is so surreal.
And then I got home, and my dad started to tell me to go shower, yada yada. Then he put all my stuff out in the sun, and told me that I shouldn’t meet with my grandmother for a while. All of which I know. And then he started JOKING. HE STARTED JOKING. He jokes about how I shouldn’t be allowed to come into his room, and how after I touch something then other people shouldn’t touch it. Like, that’s the hill you wanted to die on? THAT? I’m super pissed. I am perfectly aware that I should self-quarantine for 14 days, but that’s not how you go about doing it, FATHER. That’s just plain rude.
It’s like he doesn’t even want me back home. Like how I should have just stayed in Canada. Fuck you, Father. Fuck you very much. If you don’t want me home, then you should have said before I fucking book the tickets. Now I’m just swearing, but fuck you very, very, very much, Father.
And that ends my rant about this whole COVID-19 situation for now. It’s 5 whole pages of unorganized ranting. Let’s see how much of this rant I would have in the next couple of days.
Peace out, Huilian
