This pandemic has outstayed its welcome

“We’re still in a pandemic, you know….” The check-out clerk said to me in a sarcastic and contemptuous tone. I was trying to find an opening to cut through in the Costco check-out area with my five-year-old daughter, who so badly needed to use the washroom. Apparently, finding the spot with the most open space is not the ideal or appropriate way to get through a barricade of somewhat densely-packed people. This rude person continued to lecture me that by cutting through that spot, I was intruding on her personal space—which she is entitled to— while trying to do her job safely. I’m pretty sure the irony was lost on this person, that she spent more time in close proximity to me and my child by stopping and pointing out how wrong my actions were, then by ignoring my “indiscretion” and continuing on with her work. Read: Dr. Ginevra Mills: Vaccination's unwilling and unable Inside, I wanted to scream ... right there in the checkout line at Costco. “Do you think I have forgotten that we are in a pandemic?!? Do you think that I don’t actually see all the masked faces of people around me? Do you think that I haven’t been living in the same world as you have for the past two years? Would you like me to tell you about all the ways mine, and my friends’ and colleagues’ lives have been put at risk or ‘intruded’ on in as we go into the third year of the pandemic because of the choices the people around us have made?” And, what exactly did this little display of derision accomplish? It certainly didn’t prevent me from getting through the crowd to take my child to the washroom. Nor did it provide me with a better or alternative solution to navigating through the labyrinth of bloated shopping carts, bodies, and checkout stands. All it did was remind me—and perhaps her as well—that we are all sick, tired, and weary of living our lives in a way that is eroding our sense of personal, physical and mental wellbeing. After this incident, I started reflecting on why I was so angered, not just by what this person said to me, but also how she said it. Every day that I work, I see patients who are unable to receive the best level of treatment or care because of current restrictions and pandemic fallout. I see our colleagues in hospital-based settings, truly working “front line” to not only offer the best non-COVID related care possible, but also stepping beyond and providing professionally and medically sound care to COVID-positive patients. I hear about our community-based physicians who are working overtime to combine the demands of necessary in-person medical visits with the new challenges and (often unrealistic) expectations placed upon them because of virtual medicine. So, no, I have not forgotten that we are living in the middle of a pandemic. And I certainly do not need someone packing groceries without their two-metre buffer-zone to remind me of that. Especially not after I just debriefed with a distressed friend over their recent call shift that had them coding and intubating a very sick, COVID-positive patient. And definitely not after I finished telling a patient that she can’t proceed with her fertility treatments until she has that “elective” surgery done—the one that has been put off for the past three years because of this pandemic. Believe me, even if I wanted to forget that we are living in the middle of a pandemic, I can’t because it isn’t even possible to go grocery shopping without the reality of our current world crisis slapping me across the face. Even with all this pent-up anger and frustration on my part, I can’t help but try to understand why this random person feels justified in talking to another person, in their place of work, with such disrespect. Is it because of an intense, fervent fear of contracting the “novel” coronavirus, a now virtually endemic virus? Or maybe it’s something even more distressing—like the possibility that a very sick, COVID-positive person recently coded and intubated in a nearby hospital is her parent. Or perhaps she just spent the morning trying to comfort her distraught daughter who has been waiting three years to start her family—all because we are still in the middle of a pandemic. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t justify how unkind we, as a society, have become since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are all tired, weary, sick and longing for the end to come. Our patience is running thin, we are running on the fumes of a tank that was empty many months ago. And sadly, we are all acutely aware that our old way of life is not coming back any time soon. Certainly, no one has forgotten that we are living in a pandemic. I suspect, however, that too many people have forgotten how to be kind. Let us not forget that ever important advice; to Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.

This pandemic has outstayed its welcome

Register for free access or login.

More Blog Posts in This Series

Saving this time

Physician of the future

From doubt to delivery

Blog Author

Ginevra Mills

Related Topics