The beginning of 2020 was the start of a new decade, with many having high hopes for the future. Unfortunately, fate had other plans for our new decade, giving us the fear of a 3rd war, wildfires from gender reveal parties, and a new disease to plague humanity. Before the start of 2020, an unusual disease was discovered in Wuhan, China, which had previously never been recorded. Named COVID-19, everyone initially thought nothing of it. After all, it was in China and assumed to stay and probably end in China. That’s what I hoped during my junior year in high school.

 For many of us before the pandemic, our schedule would be like any other: wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, eat lunch, go home and do homework, shower, and sleep. Rinse and repeat over 100 days, and that was our typical school life. On weekends, we’d be able to go outside and do whatever we wanted (as long as we didn’t break the law) without wearing a mask or worrying about a virus. However, I found myself having more fun indoors playing games, but hearing words from various social media about quarantine would affect how my school life was. Within just a few months, COVID-19 began its conquest to completely dominate humanity, leaving its home, China, to other countries.

Word spread fast across schools that COVID-19 could make its way into the U.S., spread viciously, and force us into quarantine. In just a few short days, our nightmares had begun. COVID-19 made its way here in the U.S. and spread faster than any wildfire. For, at least my school, schools did prepare for full digital learning, but teachers couldn’t move all their lessons into digital learning quickly enough. 2020 for my school was chaotic, to say the least since I’ve never done school work entirely online, let alone entire lessons online! As quickly as 2020 started, it soon ended and paved the way for 2021, with hopes that 2021 would be better and fix the mess left behind by 2020.

I’ve played quite a few games, and I’ve learned some interesting stuff from them. One game in particular from the 2012 era was named Plague Inc., a game about creating and controlling a disease to eradicate humanity. There are different types of diseases; bacteria, viruses, parasites, and even bio-weapons, all of which have their own advantages and disadvantages. One thing I remember is that viruses were unpredictable since they frequently mutated, and sometimes that would help them spread or cause them to be noticeable to humans. An interesting game mechanic and just something only in the game, right? Well, 2021 would like to say otherwise with the new introduction to COVID-19, Delta variant. The new decade just got worse when the COVID-19 virus decided to mutate, meaning two kinds of COVID exist now. Though the Delta variant is less contagious, it has a higher fatality rate than the Alpha (the original COVID), but it still was COVID-19 and more dangerous if you caught it.

Surprisingly the new variant didn’t change my life much. My family took all kinds of precautions at the start of quarantine: masks, carrying hand sanitizers everywhere, and avoiding crowded areas. I even went back to school at the beginning of my senior year, albeit with heavy mask restrictions. However, mask mandates were fine since I cherished my health and safety over freedom because you can’t celebrate freedom when you’re dead. However, what gave us a glimpse of hope was the first COVID-19 vaccine, our first hope at ending COVID-19 and ending a plague during a modern era! At first, I doubted the vaccine due to how quickly it was made and a reported death from it, but as time went on, I began to trust more into it since more testing allowed for fine-tuning the vaccine. At last, we were going to escape COVID-19 and leave behind the awful 2020 and 2021!

Omicron. A new variant of COVID-19 that sprung up out of nowhere, more effective at spreading, less effective at killing. That meant we had Alpha, Delta, and the new Omicron near the end of 2021. What made the entire year worse (and admittedly was much worse than the virus itself) was the misinformation that spread almost as fast as COVID-19 regarding the vaccine. During a time of crisis, humanity needed to work together to defeat a common threat, and we failed at that. The misinformation caused so many families to second-guess the vaccine, and many would pay the price and lose a loved one or more far too soon.

What’s worse was when my father caught Omicron, and the fear built up when I heard he was sent to Urgent Care. He was away in Florida for work which meant I couldn’t even visit him, not that I could go anyways because of the virus. However, I was fortunate that my family believed in vaccines, and in a few weeks, he was discharged; no doubt, the two vaccines he took saved his life. However, that doesn’t mean he left unscathed, as doing normal activities was now exhausting for him due to damage to his lungs from COVID. However, he’s alive and (mostly) well, and the rest of my family has so far managed to escape the cold, unforgiving hands of COVID. The pandemic still rages on, so who knows what horrors 2023 and onwards hold for us.