{"id":340056,"date":"2021-03-11T06:05:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T20:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=340056"},"modified":"2021-03-11T06:05:29","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T20:05:29","slug":"a-weary-world-looks-back-and-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/a-weary-world-looks-back-and-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"A weary world looks back\u2014and forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n

No one has been untouched.<\/p>\n

Not the Michigan woman who awakened one morning, her wife dead by her side. Not the domestic worker in Mozambique, her livelihood threatened by the virus. Not the North Carolina mother who struggled to keep her business and her family going amid rising anti-Asian ugliness. Not the sixth-grader, exiled from the classroom in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n

It happened a year ago. \u201cI expected to go back after that week,\u201d said Darelyn Maldonado, now 12. \u201cI didn\u2019t think that it would take years.\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, few could foresee the long road ahead or the many ways in which they would suffer\u2014the deaths and agonies of millions, the ruined economies, the disrupted lives and near-universal loneliness and isolation.<\/p>\n

A year later, some are dreaming of a return to normal, thanks to vaccines that seemed to materialize as if by magic. Others live in places where the magic seems to be reserved for wealthier worlds.<\/p>\n

At the same time, people are looking back at where they were when they first understood how drastically life would change. <\/p>\n

On March 11, 2020, confirmed cases of COVID-19 stood at 125,000, and reported deaths stood at fewer than 5,000. Today, 117 million people are confirmed to have been infected, and according to Johns Hopkins, more than 2.6 million people have died. <\/p>\n

On that day, Italy closed shops and restaurants after locking down in the face of 10,000 reported infections. The NBA suspended its season, and Tom Hanks, filming a movie in Australia, announced he was infected.<\/p>\n

On that evening, President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office, announcing restrictions on travel from Europe that set off a trans-Atlantic scramble. Airports flooded with unmasked crowds in the days that followed. Soon, they were empty.<\/p>\n

And that, for much of the world, was just the beginning.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Today, thanks to her vaccination, Maggie Sedidi is optimistic: \u201cBy next year, or maybe the year after, I really do hope that people will be able to begin returning to normal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it is a hard-earned optimism. Sedidi, a 59-year-old nurse at Soweto\u2019s Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, the largest hospital in South Africa and the entire continent, recalls she was devastated when the first cases appeared there last March.<\/p>\n

And she recalls being terrified when she got COVID-19. Her manager fell ill at the same time and died.<\/p>\n

South Africa has had by far Africa\u2019s worst experience with the virus. The country of 60 million people has had more than 1.5 million confirmed cases, including more than 50,000 deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can imagine, I was really, really frightened. I had all the symptoms. except dying,\u201d she said, with a survivor\u2019s grim smile. Her recuperation period was lengthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had shortness of breath and tightness of the chest. It lasted for six months,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it would ever go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she mended, and she\u2019s back at work in the surgical ward. Others have not been so lucky. In the United States\u2014the world\u2019s most COVID-wracked country\u201429 million have been infected, and 527,000 have died.<\/p>\n

Latoria Glenn-Carr and her wife of six years, Tyeisha, were diagnosed at a hospital emergency room near their home outside Detroit on Oct. 29. Despite Latoria\u2019s qualms, they were sent home.<\/p>\n

Tyeisha, 43, died in bed next to her wife three days later. <\/p>\n

\u201cI woke up on Sunday, and I didn\u2019t feel a pulse,\u201d Glenn-Carr said.<\/p>\n

One month later, COVID killed Glenn-Carr\u2019s mother, too.<\/p>\n

In quiet times, in prayer, Glenn-Carr thinks she should have pushed for the hospital to keep Tyeisha, or should have taken her to a different hospital. She is also angry at America\u2019s political leaders\u2014in particular, Trump, who she believes was more worried about the economy than people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he was more empathetic to the issues and concerned about people, in general, he would have taken it more seriously,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd because of that, 500,000 people are dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

She joined a survivor\u2019s group for people who lost loved ones to COVID. They meet weekly on Zoom, text each other and help with the grieving process. Glenn-Carr knows she will dread birthdays and Mother\u2019s Days that will go uncelebrated.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing goes back to the way it was\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

At Queen Anne Healthcare in Seattle, 96-year-old Jean Allen was infected and recovered. But 19 of her fellow residents and two beloved staff members died.<\/p>\n

The deaths trailed off, but the isolation and boredom continue. Allen is now fully vaccinated. She has had enough of sleeping her days away, of having only limited visits with other residents. <\/p>\n

She recalled the yarn shop she ran decades ago, where she taught knitting and gabbed with the customers, and thought maybe she\u2019d resume that old hobby, which she learned from her grandmother around 1930.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m starting to get that feeling: It\u2019s time to go back and do something,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you find some knitting needles, let\u2019s say size 3 and 5, pass the word on to the front desk. They\u2019ll get them to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

With the pandemic came hard times to so many places. In Nepal, the stream of foreign adventurers arriving to climb Mount Everest stopped\u2014a disaster for guides like Pasang Rinzee Sherpa.<\/p>\n

Sherpa has scaled Mount Everest twice and spent 18 years helping climbers up the highest Himalayan peaks, generally earning about $8,000 a year. In the past 12 months, he had no income.<\/p>\n

Sherpa had to beg his landlord in Kathmandu to waive his rent. He borrowed money from friends, cut down on expenses, stopped sending money to his parents, who have a small farm. He lives on two simple meals a day, cooking them in his room. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s been difficult. \u201cWe are mountain people who are used to walking freely in nature,\u201d Sherpa said. \u201cBut for months during lockdown we were forced to be confined in a room in Kathmandu city. It was mental torture for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Mozambique, one of the world\u2019s poorest countries, domestic worker Alice Nharre remembered the desperation of people forced to stay home for a virus that some initially thought was not real. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were thinking: \u2018We\u2019re going to stay at home, with no help from the government\u2014how are we going to survive?\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The southern African country\u2019s government pledged that relief pay of the equivalent of $20 would be given for three months to those thrown out of work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt never happened,\u201d said Nharre, 45. \u201cMy mother signed up, but the money never arrived. We don\u2019t know what happened to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a delivery from the COVAX initiative this week, the country has nearly 700,000 vaccine doses for its 30 million people. It\u2019s not clear when they will be widely available.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe, it\u2019s for doctors, and the big people. For us, the little people, we don\u2019t know,\u201d she shrugged.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

When Trump began calling COVID-19 the \u201cChina virus,\u201d Joyce Kuo tensed up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like \u2018Here we go, brace yourself,\u2019\u201d said the 36-year-old furniture manufacturer from Greensboro, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Soon after, she recalled, when she took her three children to the dentist, a white woman in the waiting area pulled her daughter close and loudly instructed: \u201cYou need to stay away from them. They probably have that virus.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than once during the pandemic, Kuo and others in her family encountered that kind of racism. Though born in America, she was unnerved by reminders that others felt she did not belong there.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Kuo and her husband were trying to pivot their outdoor furniture business in the face of government shutdowns. They started using upholstery materials to make cloth masks, which allowed them to stay open as an essential business keep paying their 25 employees. <\/p>\n

Kuo recalls being constantly stressed; it seemed grocery store shelves were always out of basic foods and toilet paper. Later, because of a teacher shortage, she began homeschooling her children\u2014ages 4, 6 and 8\u2014while also trying to get work done. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think for any parent with children, working from home is almost a joke. You do what you can,\u201d Kuo said. \u201cA lot of times my work from home happened after the kids have gone to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Life pivoted for Darelyn Maldonado last March during her library class. She recalls sitting at a table with her close friends, talking with the teacher about COVID-19. The teacher told them their school in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, would be shutting down\u2014briefly, she said.<\/p>\n

In the 12 months since, she has lived in limbo and online.<\/p>\n

Where she once awakened excited to go to school, she now struggles without the give-and-take that comes with sitting in a classroom. <\/p>\n

There are good moments. Sometimes her Shih Tzu sits on her lap and licks the computer screen during class. Or her 1\u00bd-year-old brother, who has grown from an infant into a toddler in the course of the pandemic, opens her bedroom door.<\/p>\n

But Darelyn lives with the worry that someone she loves could die. There\u2019s also the frustration of having to give up softball and so much else that brings her joy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have very many friends anymore,\u201d Darelyn said.<\/p>\n

There is a light at the end of her tunnel. Parents in her city waged a pressure campaign to reopen schools, and she is due back in the classroom on March 16.<\/p>\n

A year from now, on March 11, 2022, she pictures herself doing all the things she missed in this endless pandemic year.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying outside with friends, playing softball with the dog,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing with the people that I love most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Corey Williams in West Bloomfield, Michigan, Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Nepal, Tom Bowker in Maputo, Mozambique, Terry Tang in Phoenix and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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