Page 20 - COVID Consortium Journal - An Edited Collection of Student Art and Writing

Trapped By Our Own Will

Daliyah Abdel-Rehim, East Side Community High School

It started out as an article I saw was present in someone in New York
on the internet, and I questioned its City. But even then there was no panic.
severity. It’s on the other side of the Looking back it’s scary how calm we
planet and it won’t affect me. The were, how unaffected. But there was a
amount of times I repeated that say- virus that ended up in New York and
ing over the first couple of weeks was was shut down in less than a month.
completely insane. It spread like wild- For example, I remember when there
fire which is really ironic considering was one case of Ebola and it felt like
the fact that on the same side of the the whole city was on lockdown,
planet there were massive wildfires that case felt like the government’s
soaring through Australia. It spread priority. This is the same scenario,
from China to Italy almost instantly, I thought, so I mean they should be
and then Italy was soon on lockdown. able to control it, right?
Italy was completely shut down,
citizens were not allowed to leave In less than a month, there were
their house, and if they did, they had cases popping all over the city, and
to have a government pass allowing there was at least a couple hundred
them to be outside. It was shocking a week after the first case appeared.
because this isn’t something that we We sat there and waited, waited to
were expecting to see in our lifetime, see what would happen next. We were
it’s something you read in a history reassured that schools would not
textbook. We all sat there glued to our close. That everything would be fine.
phones seeing the updates around I mean just a week prior our biggest
the world, waiting to see what will worry was how we did on the SAT, and
happen next and whether we would now our worry is if we will even see
end up the same as Italy. each other tomorrow. The state made
absences automatically excused, and
Soon the first case appeared in we were ecstatic. We could skip school
America. It was on the other side of and not get in trouble! Within our
the country, so it couldn’t hurt me, excitement we forgot to pay attention,
right? President Trump assured us so many people began to take advan-
that this would not be a big deal, and tage of this.
he did not impose any regulations
early on. I was genuinely sick on the
Monday of that week, but it wasn’t
In less than a week the virus surprising or scary to me that I was

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