23 COVID-19 Chronicles
Emelia
During the COVID-19 pandemic I was living at home in Toronto, Ontario, when the lockdown first started. I was 15 years old in Grade 10 and the most severe parts of the pandemic lasted until the beginning of my Grade 12 year.
My COVID-19 experience began with school shutting down, at this time there was still not a lot of information on COVID-19 available to the public. We were not certain about how it was transmitted, we did not have proper personal protective equipment, and we were not sure how long shutdowns and closures were going to last. At the time, I and many other students believed the school closure would only last for two weeks or so. Of course, the pandemic quickly progressed, and my family and I were in full lockdown from around April of 2020 to around August of 2020. For my family, this meant rarely going out to see friends, go to stores, or go to any public spaces or gatherings we used to frequent. We typically only went out to get necessities such as groceries. This meant much of my day consisted of being inside; online school began soon after the closures, so I mostly spent my time doing schoolwork, baking, and cooking, reading, and texting or facetiming with my friends. This was a stark difference from merely a few weeks prior, where I would go to school every day, go to tennis lessons a few times a week, and often hang out after school with my friends. Luckily, much of this full lockdown was during the spring and summer, which meant I still was able to get outside and walk my dog, hang out in my backyard, and occasionally go on socially distanced and masked walks with my friends. I also took an online course in the summer months to fill my time. When school started again in the fall of 2020, it was partially in-person but looked very different from the school days I was used to. My school board adopted the quadmester schedule, so we had two courses at a time per two months. We went to one class a day and the two classes alternated on a biweekly basis. Our school days also did not include a lunch period anymore, as we only had classes in the morning. This vastly different schedule was strange and difficult to adjust to, it was hard to fit a year’s worth of two courses within two months, and I found my learning to be very rushed. It was also hard to go without seeing friends in-person for such long periods of time, this made my lockdown experience fairly isolating, as I am sure many high schoolers felt during the pandemic.
Throughout the pandemic, I noticed a prevalent theme of blame being assigned to certain individuals or groups. There were horrific instances of anti-Asian and xenophobic hatred that was heightened during the pandemic, because of individuals seeking someone to pin COVID-19 on. This sentiment of blame and looking for an easy answer as to why the pandemic was happening has been a common theme displayed throughout our course; every plague and pandemic has come with a slew of blame and stigma for a certain group or groups that has been deemed responsible for the disease. Having experienced the COVID-19 pandemic I witnessed not only the targeting of blame to marginalized groups in the news, on social media, and elsewhere, but also the blaming of individuals within my community. These instances were much less severe than the targeting of certain groups as somehow the cause of the pandemic, but they still demonstrated how assigning blame is a common phenomenon during plagues and pandemics. For example, I remember an instance when my family and I went to Costco soon after the lockdown started. While waiting in line, I witnessed one customer berate another customer for not wearing a mask, where they told the un-masked customer that they would get them sick; although this is a valid criticism, this was very early on in the pandemic, not everyone had access to masks or had even thought to buy any as mask mandates had not been put in place. I think this altercation displays an example of people assigning blame for the pandemic or them getting sick with COVID-19 on others, without valid reason to assume they were the cause of their illness. Particularly at this early point in the pandemic, it may have been more helpful to advise this person that they should wear a mask, offer them one, or tell them where they could get them. Assigning blame to this individual when the benefits of masking and knowledge of how COVID-19 is transmitted was still widely unknown was not very effective in helping mitigate the spread of the disease. This example helps exhibit how assigning blame to certain groups or individuals during plagues often does more harm than good, and this has been a prevalent theme within our course.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a very lonely experience for me and lots of other high school aged kids. The experience of online school was very isolating, many high schoolers were used to going to school every day, seeing their friends, interacting with classmates, and likely going to after school activities and clubs. The stark and swift switch from a collaborative and social school environment to school being held over computer screens caused many teenagers to feel lonely and disconnected from their community. This isolating feeling resulted in a lot of mental health struggles for teenagers during the pandemic. The pandemic meant that it became much more difficult to confide in friends, take a break from your family and interact with other people, and to feel a sense of community and belonging. Many people my age struggled throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns with depression and anxiety because of being isolated from friends and community. I know myself and many of my friends were also upset and frustrated at having to miss so many high school experiences such as sporting events, school events and activities, and spirit days. This feeling of missing out contributed further to diminishing mental health in teenagers during the pandemic and made many people feel as though they were not getting the teenager or high school experience they were promised.
