Prompt 5: Not the Same COVID Pandemic

        The COVID-19 pandemic had a detrimental effect on me as well as my family and not only did it affect us economically but also impacted us mentally as well. My family runs a small convenience store in the middle of our town where most cross when either going to work or going back home. Lots of people from around the town come to get food in between their lunch breaks and buy other necessities as well. There would be some parts of the day when it would be busy, and many people were in our store at once. We considered this to be beneficial and never saw it as something that was a problem for us. But when COVID-19 cases started to arise in our town, everything changed. Since nobody had any information about the virus people were frantic about it, as well as my parents. My parents were afraid of how would they monitor who does come into the store and who doesn’t. They were also concerned for their safety, employees’ safety, and the safety of their customers. They had to change the whole structure of the store, where people stood, the requirement of masks, creating certain rules not previously there such as buying in bulk. When the number of COVID-19 cases started to rise, fewer and fewer people started to come. 

        There were many negative impacts and less positive impacts that occurred during this time. This obviously started to affect our business and not as much money was made as we used to. There were days when we closed our business earlier than usual and parents were usually upset about it. During the pandemic, my family, and the employees all somehow got COVID-19. Because of this, we had to close the business down for 2-3 weeks which impacted us a lot. We were all quarantined and my family made sure that everybody in the household was good as well as the families of the employees. Since nobody could go out, we were careful what we ate so our conditions didn’t get worse and everybody was taking the proper medicine that was needed. There aren’t as many positive impacts as there were negative but there were a few. The first is that it gave us a break from the world. My family took a step back and was able to relax after working for so long. Sure it wasn’t the best type of relaxation, but they were able to finally take a break from work. The other positive impact was that it bought us together as a family more than before. We would all be busy with our own schedules and because of quarantine, we bonded more, and I think that’s why we handled it better than before.

        One of my friends felt even harder economic and physical extremes than I did. One of my close friends struggled to deal with COVID-19 more than I did because his grandparents also lived with his family. His grandparents were more susceptible to getting COVID-19 and since they had diabetes, the virus could have caused major problems for them. Because of this, his family worked fewer hours and they all stayed at home to make sure that would not occur. There were times when his family was stretched thin, but they were able to pass COVID-19 without anyone being sick.