Who has troubles?
blog april 14
Parents can’t visit their utterly fragile newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Young children hospitalized for prolonged cancer treatment can’t see their parents or siblings. Others who are kept alive on ventilators are lonely, segregated and isolated from family and friends.
Caregivers are essentially imprisoned with children with deep psychiatric or physical disabilities. The same impaired children and adults can no longer attend their special programs that offer them a semblance of being normal in the world.
Homeless people, often with psychiatric illnesses and already racked with despair and living in overcrowded shelters, can’t keep their safe distances. And people addicted to substances can’t keep quarantined while they are crawling the walls for a fix.
Veterans who live under the bridges have more on their mind than avoiding COVID-19. And workers earning far below minimum wage have no choice but to live elbow to elbow on mattresses with other workers, like sardines, in small apartments.
People who live such fragile existences and are in the throes of a dark depression while living in the recesses of paranoia find their life-saving connections to the world have been severed. Elderly whose spouses have died, find themselves suddenly alone and rocked by something they don’t understand.
Women are quarantined with abusive husbands and have the impossible choice of fleeing their abuser and possibly succumbing to the virus or remaining and hoping to survive the attacks.
And the children who are regularly beaten by parents or siblings and have absolutely no place to hide. Unless they become another of the faceless runaways who have little hope even in good times.
Hospitals are inundated with virus victims who cannot get the proper care because the hospitals are too inundated and unprepared. And their health care workers go home every night fearful that they will come down with the virus.
And there are the disproportionate number of people of color or people living in abject poverty who are dying from the virus.
These are the people hurt most by the pandemic.
It’s not most of us who are annoyed there is no new Netflix available. Or that the neighborhood liquor store only takes orders on line. The pain is negligible for those who can’t take in a baseball game or close the local bar.
How terribly inconvenient it is not to be able to dine Italian tonight and go for Mexican on Friday. The backyard barbecues with friends and neighbors are out, temporarily.
And how great is the tragedy for the couple who had to postpone their vacation to Scotland or just to the shore. And others who can’t visit their daughters who are studying in Spain.
Or those who can’t have their nails done or their hair cut. And those who can’t get to their favorite Broadway show that they bought tickets a year in advance to enjoy.
Oh, the pain and tragedy of it all.