Coronavirus - An Audio Journal: Recent Episodes
Jacqueline
I thought it might be interesting to try and document how it feels day to day as the coronavirus increases in global scale.
We're starting to hear about immunity passports, I believe these will become a more popular topic fo conversation as time goes. Many countries are no longer looking at Coronavirus health and economic responses as separate and the view may be shifting to number of life years lost instead of number of lives lost as countries around the world are starting the great "return to work". My mental health has been very challenged. I've been trying to figure out how to manage with these overwhelming feelings of hopelessness.
This is starting to feel like a mental health diary. I wanted to record the Harvard Business Review "The Discomfort You're Feeling is Grief" article.
I made an extremely hard decision this past weekend, I decided to come home to Canada. Fears for my physical and mental health were significantly growing and I felt like NYC was not a safe place for me to be any longer.
This past Friday I took a walk and recorded some audio of what I saw. Packed parks, people playing basketball, and the NYC classic of someone cutting you off on the sideway. All of those would be fine if we weren't supposed to be social distancing. The walk ended on a high note as I returned home to the magical moment of fire escape applause for the front line workers of this pandemic.
The US is now the country with the most confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the world. The biggest question in America seems to be around what's more important? Saving lives or saving the US economy? I terms of how I feel, this morning was the darkest morning I've had all week. All week I've been feeling a concerning level of "OK", I knew I'd come crashing down, and this morning I did.
Today I spoke with my friend Kaye who is currently living in France with her wife and their dog Stanley. She told me how things feel in France, the severe restrictions they're living under (which if disobeyed could result in 6 months jail time) and we went deep into how this is impacting our mental health.
Number of confirmed cases in NYC skyrockets past 12,000. Canada pulls out of the Olympics. The individual cost of the Coronavirus to uninsured Americans makes me feel sick to my stomach. Andrew Cuomo reminds us that we will get through this and we'll be better for it. I round it all out with some silver linings I'm feeling amidst the pain.
Let's kick today off with an audio recap of President Trump's response to the coronavirus over the last two months. A quick recap of some news stories paired with a deep dive into how this is feeling in NYC given the dense population and small size of this city.
I've decided to do this a bit differently. In this episode I recap the numbers and I chat with my friend James about how this feels in London, England.
Today was the hardest day I've had so far. Emotionally and mentally I feel very raw and exhausted. I know there is power in where I put my focus and my energy, but today it felt really hard to control.
Canada has closed its border to the US, Italy has a record number of deaths in one day, and the most unfortunate news comes from 'spring breakers' in Florida who are experiencing the harsh reality of their party plans are being derailed (insert eye-roll).
Things are feeling heavy. The reality of a serious NYC lockdown is looking more and more likely. My friends are asking how I'm feeling, and the main emotion I have right now, is anger. I'm trying my best to balance those feelings out by putting the same amount of energy and attention towards self care, but I'd be lying to myself (and anyone listening) if I didn't admit how hard that feels right now.
Feels like 3% of my mental health is starting to deteriorate so I want to spend most of this episode focusing on how to pre-plan moments of joy over the coming days/weeks/months.
Audio journal for Sunday, March 15. I went on a bike ride to central park, watched a pianist play in Washington Square Park (keeping 6ft distance from others, of course), and was rattled by the music coming from a local bar.
daily audio journal. This is not fact checked, I just think it might be interesting to have audio records of day to day changes