After the first few months of isolation in COVID, new mandates requiring masks whenever we’re out in public gave us a small glimpse of our old life. By the end of 2020, my family had integrated a new schedule in our life of the pandemic; mornings are the same, but we now wear a mask before preparing to go out, never taking it off for a moment. Anytime we touch a door, a wall, or any object in public, we’d have a small bottle of hand sanitizer to use to clean our hands immediately. Doing this so often, eventually the strong and somewhat burning scent of hand sanitizer on my hands was comforting in a way, especially when out in public. Whenever we got home, we’d always take a shower right away as one more safety precaution against COVID. Anytime we bought anything as simple as groceries, the packaging that they were in would be washed with soap or water wiped down with wet wipes. For my family, we’d integrated these new steps for doing the most mundane things into our life and we’d continue doing them for the entire pandemic.
While my family got used to our new life with COVID, the virus had a trick up its sleeve. I remember playing a viral game back in 2012 named Plague Inc. in which you play as a disease attempting to wipe out humanity. There were different types of diseases you could play as such as bacteria, parasites, or of course the virus. The most notable thing that made viruses stand out in the game was their ability to randomly mutate more often than the other diseases. Just like the game, the COVID virus mutated in late 2020, with the new variant being named Delta. New fear emerged as the Delta variant was rumored to be more fatal and dangerous than the first variant, now being named Alpha, but the Delta was supposedly less contagious than Alpha. Regardless, paranoia quickly ran through me because just like that game, I knew it was just going to mutate once and be done. Even though my family was more less the same before the Delta variant came, I still ran extreme dread.
By now the first vaccines for COVID came out but due to work my family, mainly my mom and I, weren’t able to get the vaccines yet. However, my dad was able to get all 3 shots by mid 2021. By November of 2021, both my mom and I took the vaccines to better increase our chances to survive should COVID infect us. However, things got worse by December of 2021 when COVID mutated once again, with the new Omicron variant. Though rumored to be less dangerous than Delta, it was more contagious and still was lethal to the older and more ill of our population. Eventually my fears would be justified when my dad caught COVID. Panic and paranoia ran through me for days hoping my dad would be fine, and luckily he was able to leave the hospital without having to visit the ICU. Since my dad lived elsewhere, my mom and I didn’t get COVID. Now here we are today, where COVID cases in the U.S. have no dropped very much since its introduction, and the pandemic raging on.