The causes and affects of Covid-19 from the past to where we are today.

The year is 2019, it is around Christmas time, a time in which people spread love and joy. News breaks that a new virus orchestrated in China was created in a laboratory, called Covid-19.

Fast forward to March 2020 when the world just stops and seems like it is going to end.

Government shutdowns were at their peak back in March and April of 2020.

Many people were forced to stay home and quarantine, while the Covid-19 outbreak was starting to gain traction in the US.

Today there are over 103,000,000 total confirmed cases and 1,125,000 deaths in the United States alone.

Though, the impact left many people in the dark and made many people scared of what was next to come.

Ishan Bhattacharya is a current Kent State International student, who faced many different challenges during the pandemic. Ishan is from New Delhi, India, and started college in France to pursue an engineering degree.

“I was in Paris sitting in my dorm room and was about to do some homework when they started to lockdown the entire country,” he said. “I was frightened because I was going to be stuck in a foreign country and had no way of getting back home.”

France was getting hit hard by Covid-19, especially in 2020. Ishan was stuck in France for months and had little to no contact with his family back home.

“The hardest part of this entire situation was the fact that I had to sit around and not hear from my parents and family back home,” he explained. “The airports were shut down for a while, and I had to get home somehow.”

Finally, Ishan was able to get back home towards the end of April after he got a one-way plane ticket to India. However, the story did not end there. Ishan landed in Southeast, India and was hundreds of miles away from his hometown.

“Honestly, I had to do whatever it was just to get home even if that meant riding on buses full of about a hundred people, and people hanging off the bus by a thread,” he chuckled.

 These buses were packed with many people, and some of these people were sick. In America, it would be illegal to have people hanging off buses, not the case in India.

After a long hard journey, Ishan made it back home in one piece.

“It felt like I traversed the entire universe, but hey I made it back home,” he said.

The United States had established a mask mandate across the entire country, not the case in India.

“We did not need masks our government was not as worried as they were in France and the US,” he said. “You know what is funny, we were not as impacted as the United States and you guys had mask mandates and we did not, just saying.”

As one person shares his major experience with the start of the pandemic, another first responder shares her experiences with working for hospice.

Leslie Savage, a current school nurse for Banneker Elementary School in Leonardtown, Maryland, worked for hospice during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

During her time as a nurse, she had to deal with heavy amounts of patients with the virus and had to take very cautious measures to keep her and her patients safe.

 “When the virus hit, it hit us hard,” she said. “I was scared and worried about what was yet to come. The numbers kept going up and I had to see more and more patients, some of whom I had to go to their houses.”

Nurse Savage was placed on critical training to prepare for the new cases and the uprising numbers of Covid-19.

“During my training, I had to go through rigorous precautionary measures to prevent more spread of the virus. We had to wear certain gloves, masks, headgear, and other protective equipment,” she explained.

This training included how to prepare someone who is experiencing extreme symptoms and how to save their life if needed.

“One time I was pushed to help out the first responders in saving a middle-aged male’s life by giving him CPR,” Savage said.

This was her most severe intense where she had to jump in and save someone’s life.

Overall, the impact of the first responders was viewed as an enemy to the public. The health services were not liked and many criticized their ability to help people.

“We were viewed as the enemy. My patients would tell me how to do my job, or even that I was doing my job wrong in every way,” Savage explained.

Now that the virus has been going around for over three years, the toll has seemingly reached its demise.

However, the impact has for Nurse Savage and Ishan, it has changed their lives forever.

“I would say if it was not for Covid-19 I would more than likely not be in America,” Ishan said. “I would probably be in France or even back home, maybe I would be elsewhere.”

Ishan had high hopes for his future after Covid-19, though the pandemic made sure he would take a different pathway.

Nurse Savage could not handle the pressure of working in hospice anymore. She had to take her talents to a new group of patients.

These patients are way younger and have more energy.

 “I could not handle it anymore, Covid-19 made me hate my job. I had to start elsewhere and work in a field I was passionate for,” she said.

Nurse Savage became the lead nurse at Banneker Elementary School. She says she loves her job and loves the children that are her new patients.

“I enjoy these students; I enjoy my new job. I am happy that I was able to quit hospice and move into a field that not only helps others but helps our next generation,” Savage said.

If it was not for the virus, many people’s lives would be completely different. Some would be in France; others would be working in first responders’ health services.

What can be true is the fact that our lives were completely flipped upside down, and we survived.