AMERICAN RESILIENCE

By Andre Jackson

By now, you must have heard of the term "AMERICAN STRONG" ... This is based on the strength of our national core values, beliefs, and unified culture for which we all stand together as one for all and all for one. The foundation of our nation was built on the premises of love, freedom, and stability. The underlying root of our c

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andre Jackson
• Release date: Jul 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716779763

Book preview

AMERICAN RESILIENCE

Andre Jackson

By now, you must have heard of the term AMERICAN STRONG … This is based on the strength of our national core values, beliefs, and unified culture for which we all stand together as one for all and all for one. The foundation of our nation was built on the premises of love, freedom, and stability. The underlying root of our courage and strength is our ability to endure and overcome.

AMERICAN RESILIENCE is the stamina of our national unity.

The following stories are depictions of real American experiences surviving the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. These individual experiences are just a small fraction of the millions of Americans whose lives have been directly impacted by this disaster.

Some of the personal details have been altered for privacy reasons. This book does not provide any social or medical advice. The collaborations brought forth are American voices sharing their unique situations while adjusting to life in the mist of a global health crisis.

Each entry highlights an individual’s personal perspective or experiences of how their lives, daily routines, or overall lifestyles have changed because of this global outbreak.

Table of Contents

Chapter One Six Feet Away

Chapter Two Ghost Town

Chapter Three Toilet Paper Fights

Chapter Four Canceled Concerts & Sporting Events

Chapter Five National Deferred Bills

Chapter Six Grounded Airplanes

Chapter Seven Drive-By Birthday Party

Chapter Eight Dry Watering Holes

Chapter Nine No Work, No Income

Chapter Ten Where's The Food?

Conclusion

Chapter One

SIX FEET AWAY

D

onald could not remember the last time he spent more than an entire week in his apartment since he was a kid. As a travel photographer, his life always consisted of flying from one country to another, jumping from one hotel to another, or even toasting a Vodka Cran with a bartender friend in Vacaville CA.

However, since March 2020, he has been stuck in his flat in New York, watching videos on TikTok, having meetings on Zoom, or recording his version of the #toilet paper challenge on his mobile. These were the lineup of activities; he engaged in when he wasn’t sleeping.

Staying indoors wasn't the worst thing that had happened to Donald, as a matter of fact, one of the worst things was when his best friend and drinking buddy had told him move six feet away from me as he coughed furiously.

His friend was afraid because the news on tv kept referencing coughing as one of the Covid-19 symptoms that had effected 1.8 million people in the United States. The phrase move six feet away from me hasn't just been a friend’s appeal to another; words of care to prevent one friend from possibly infecting another friend, it has become a warning phrase that is spoken audibly and expressed physically as the world struggled to understand what has been termed one of the world’s deadliest viral infections.

The Chinese people were preparing for their new year when the disease that was then described as a disease with pneumonia-like symptoms struck. As of the late part of December in 2019, when it initially struck in the relatively unknown Chinese city, Wuhan, not many people in the world had heard of Wuhan or any virus called the corona.

Interestingly, others who knew about the dreaded virus, thought it was just another infection like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and will likely only be concentrated and contained in Wuhan and disappear like any of its predecessors. For the major part of December, it neither made major news nor affect the lives of folks like Donald, who didn't live in Wuhan. Until the unexpected happened.

Even on the 31st of December when the world health organization, casually described it as a mysterious disease affecting dozens of Chinese citizens, no one knew the immensity of what was coming.

As a matter of fact, no one planned or prepared for it, interestingly, most governments either ignored or labeled it a conspiracy theory that emanated from an Asian farmers market.

Like a whack on the head, the death of the novel case two weeks after the World health Organization’s (WHO) pronouncement upended the scales, and from then it has been a game of numbers.

From the country of origin, China, in Asia to the United States of America and other neighboring Asian countries like Korea and Thailand, cases began to pop- up like zits on a teenager's face. In China, the cases quadrupled in less than two weeks and in the united states, the same happened.

China was the first country to initiate physical distancing measures as doctors, scientists, and other health practitioners discovered a rather startling reality that the dreaded virus spreads from person to person in close proximity. In a few months, the whole world adopted the same measure.

Mass hysteria and the resultant effect

People became worried about someone with the virus breathing on them in public places

For a world that is very connected, for a world that is always on the move, for a world that is constantly moving commodities from place to place, the mass hysteria that occurred as a result of dreaded Corona virus disease was unprecedented but expected.

As a matter of fact, history has it that this has not been the worst global epidemic in the world; as a matter of fact, there have been others, other outbreaks of global proportions dating back to prehistoric times. From the plague of Athens to the Antonine plague. The bubonic plague was suspected to have consumed about 11 percent of the world’s population then. Same figures were traced to the black death epidemic in the 13th century. These not only wiped out more people and caused more damage to the world than this present one is doing or has done; the only difference is that it did not occur everywhere in the world at the same time neither was the world as connected then as it is now.

In those years, a person couldn't go from America to Europe and back in a day. The journey often took months. During that period, trips from Africa to Asia were carried out in ships or by road, which means only a few folks will be infected. In those years, while the plague was affecting Asia, Europe was often free, because the world wasn’t as interconnected as it is now. Before the news of the infection spread to South America (for instance the Cocoliztli epidemic in Mexico, which lasted between 1545 and 1548) from far East Asia it took years or maybe months.

But in this case, (In modern times) news traveled at the snap of the fingers, people now travel from one country to another via superfast airplanes or go on luxury rides on luxury cruises like the many that were caught in the early Corona virus infection vortex. With this innovation in transportation and the transit of news and people came the mass hysteria. With the mass hysteria came the apprehension that rattled governments and petrified individuals.

From very populated places like new York's Time Square to the Subways of London and even the market places in Africa, many began the first phase of the social distancing revolution. From the crowded cinemas to the often-overfilled buses and coaches to the parks filled with children, a few individuals began to stay at home for the fear that they will be infected by a carrier who sneezes, coughs, or probably stays in their proximity. This hysteria was further worsened by the media, who specialized in discussing and coining terms like community infection and transfer. Terms which not only informed the populace but scared them. You may have heard about social distancing – the press coined to explain what physical distancing meant.

It was the term that the government (advised by scientists) use in describing the act of keeping apart from one’s neighbors or others sharing the same space in a crowded place.

The New York subway trains are one of the most popular means of transportation in New York. They run every hour of every day, ferrying New Yorkers from one destination to another, but as the hysteria began spreading, people began staying at home and avoiding the subways to avoid infection, incase their seatmate was an asymptomatic or asymptomatic carrier of the dreaded virus.

The subway wasn't the only form of transpo-rtation that Americans ditched. There was also the iconic yellow taxi and the MTA's (Metropolitan Transportation Authority).

All over America and in other regions of the world where the novel Corona virus was present experience a broad change (a very drastic one at that) in many ways than one.

Most of the modes of transportation that were often underused or rarely considered, became the option of choice. People hiked instead of boarding a bus; folks cycled or used the pedicab instead of boarding the subway. All these were used to avoid being in the proximity of an infected