PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb said that Hamza has been suffering from high fever for the past three days and was shifted to the hospital after his condition failed to stabilize.
She demanded that the government take responsibility for Hamza’s medical state. Aurangzeb urged other party members to pray for the health of the leader.
Hamza is in jail on a judicial remand in a money laundering case. Earlier, his bail application was turned down by the Lahore High Court.
The National Accountability Bureau has filed a Rs7 billion money laundering and assets beyond means reference against Shehbaz Sharif and his family including his wife, sons and two daughters.
According to the data provided by the Health Ministry, India’s Covid-19 recovery has witnessed a steep exponential rise and attributed it to aggressive testing and prompt surveillance. The country’s recovery rate stands at 77.77 percent.
NEET 2020: Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal asked students to be confident and follow the Covid 19 protocol. The minister also thanked the state governments for making the required arrangements.
Like just about every airline, Delta is working to convince passengers that it's safe to fly during the coronavirus pandemic. It started off with the plane itself, blocking middle seats and spraying disinfectant on a regular basis.
Now, Delta is tackling the next part of the travel experience: the airport.
The Atlanta-based airline announced two new safety and sanitization initiatives at airports this week as airlines prepare for a stall in demand recovery between the summer and holiday travel seasons.
Delta said it would replace the air filtering systems on the jet bridges that passengers use to walk from the gate onto their planes, and announced new anti-microbial bins at security checkpoints at five of its hubs. The moves come as travel demand remains severely depressed over the same period in 2019. Airlines are desperate for demand to grow as they continue to bleed cash.
Although airplanes recirculate some cabin air, almost all aircraft are outfitted with High Efficiency Particulate Air, or "HEPA" filters, which are highly effective at removing the SARS-CoV-2 virus and other microbes from the air.
On the jet bridge, however, and on parked planes, air typically isn't filtered. Delta said that it would add MERV-14 filters to those air systems at 31 airports by mid-September, and at more airports in the coming months.
Although MERV-14 filters are not as effective as HEPA filters — they reduce air particles by 40%, according to Delta, instead of the 99.7% filtration that HEPA filters provide — it's still a significant improvement over having no filters at all. It was not immediately clear why Delta did not use HEPA filters, although those more effective products are in high demand as schools and universities reopen.
The airline also said it would offer the anti-microbial security bins at five airports: Atlanta, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Los Angeles, New York LaGuardia, and New York JFK. It has several hubs and focus cities (think mini-hubs) that did not make the list, and said that it "will evaluate opportunities for expansion to other markets following the launch in these cities."
The new bins, according to the airline, come with antimicrobial technology that "prevent[s] the growth of a broad spectrum of bacteria." While COVID-19 is a virus, not bacteria, the new bin design also "continuously minimizes the presence of microbes throughout the bin's lifecycle."
On its aircraft, Delta will continue to block middle seats on board flights and limit capacity — something shown to reduce COVID-19 infection risk by half — until at least January 2021. It has also introduced new cleaning procedures between flights. Other airlines, including Southwest and JetBlue, are also blocking middle seats, while United and American have introduced robust new cleaning procedures.
An artist is selling "Karen" Halloween masks for $180 online in a nod to the viral meme that has come to represent problematic white women.
The "Karen" meme especially took hold this year as middle-aged white women began going viral for asserting their sense of entitlement in actions that some perceive as racist.
Los Angeles-based artist Jason Adcock created two versions of the "Karen" mask: one with an angry expression and another covered in warts that is dubbed KAREN-19, likely in reference to those who downplay COVID-19.
Halloween is just around the corner and, as expected, costumes highlighting the most prominent moments of 2020 are sprouting up — including "Karen" masks.
A post shared by Jason Adcock (@jasonadcock78) on Aug 7, 2020 at 12:10pm PDT
"Karen" has become an umbrella term to describe middle-aged white women who assert their sense of entitlement when they commit actions that some perceive as racist, as Insider's Rachel Greenspan reported. "Karens" that have been in the news recently include Amy Cooper, who called the police on a Black man in New York in May, as well as a San Francisco woman who called the cops on her neighbor, who was writing "Black Lives Matter" in chalk on his own property.
The "Karen" Halloween masks were created by Jason Adcock, a Los Angeles-based artist for hire according to his Instagram. They're made with latex and come with styled hair, lashes, and a personal paint job, according to the Etsy description.
Adcock told Business Insider that he's always worked in retail and has seen lots of "Karens" in their "natural habitat."
"I was starting on this year's Halloween projects and kept seeing "Karens" pop up in my news feed and thought, 'Damn this is the real monster of 2020,'" Adcock said.
The artist is selling two different versions of the "Karen" mask on his Etsy shop under the name kamorascostumes.
One is more in the scary realm, with the face twisted into an angry expression, complete with bulging red eyes and the inescapable blonde wig. The other, which the artist noted on Instagram is the KAREN-19, is similar but is covered in warts and looks sick. The caption describes KAREN-19 as someone who "thought she was slick calling you all sheep and look what happened," likely referring to those who downplay the COVID-19 pandemic. "Karens" sometimes sport the "Can I speak to your manager?" haircut, a bob that has become associated with the trope.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during his first re-election campaign rally in several months in the midst of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S., June 20, 2020.
REUTERS/Leah Millis
President Donald Trump on Saturday asked voters in North Carolina to cast a ballot twice, which is illegal, to make sure their vote got counted.
His tweet comes a day after North Carolina released an app to help voters monitor the status of their absentee ballots.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein refuted Trump's message, advising voters to not "do what the President directs."
A day after North Carolina released an app to help voters track the status of their absentee ballots, President Donald Trump urged people in the state to vote twice, which is illegal.
"NORTH CAROLINA: To make sure your Ballot COUNTS, sign & send it in EARLY. When Polls open, go to your Polling Place to see if it was COUNTED. IF NOT, VOTE!" Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday.
"Your signed Ballot will not count because your vote has been posted. Don't let them illegally take your vote away from you!"
Twitter flagged Trump's tweet, placing a "public interest notice" on it for "violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice."
North Carolina on Friday unveiled an online service called BallotTrax that allows voters "to keep tabs on their mail-in absentee ballot from the comfort of their home," Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a statement.
"By tracking their ballot, the voter can have peace of mind that their ballot was received by their county board of elections," Brinson Bell added.
The president, in videos that circulated on Facebook, previously urged voters in North Carolina to vote first by mail-in vote, then go to the polling station and vote again if the mail-in vote has not yet been counted. The social media platform vowed to take them down because the message violated "policies prohibiting voter fraud."
A few minutes after Trump sent out the tweet instructing North Carolinians to vote twice, the state's attorney general, Josh Stein, urged the opposite.
"NORTH CAROLINA: Do NOT do what the President directs. To make sure your ballot COUNTS, sign and send it in EARLY. Then track it ONLINE with BALLOTTRAX," Stein tweeted, along with a link to the app. "Do NOT vote twice (it's a felony), or waste your time, or unnecessarily risk exposure to more people."
The coronavirus has forced dozens of states to expand their vote-by-mail programs to help prevent the spread of the virus through in-person voting. North Carolina app would encourage voters to stay at home rather than show up in person at the polls, a press release from the State Board of Elections stated.
The election agency also released a separate statement earlier this month that listed two additional ways voters can check the status of their ballots without showing up in person, as Trump urged in his tweet.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
This isn't the first time Trump has encouraged Americans to cast a ballot more than once.
Earlier this month, Trump urged his Twitter followers to "go to your Polling Place to see whether or not your Mail In Vote has been Tabulated (Counted)" after submitting their vote by mail. Twitter flagged that some of these tweets "violated the Twitter rules about civic and election integrity."
Coronavirus in children in Pakistan has been relatively mild compared to adult patients. Most children developed a mild form of the disease and are not believed to be major drivers of the virus spread, according to the country’s infectious disease experts. Doctors now support the reopening of educational institutes with strict adherence to SOPs.
Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood announced that schools will reopen from September 15, after a final decision was made on September 7. Many parents have been anxious about the decision but doctors now say that the damage done to students’ education by delaying the reopening of schools will outweigh their risk of catching COVID-19.
“Children make up a very small proportion of cases and most of those infected did not develop severe symptoms,” said Dr Azizullah Dhillo of Civil Hospital Karachi on Thursday.
Children have lower susceptibility to the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) compared to adults, according to the Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Society of Pakistan.
Studies from around the world have shown that children account for 1-7% of COVID-19 cases. Few require hospitalisation and even fewer (less than 0.1%) die from the virus, the MMIDSP added.
Data from the Sindh health department as of September 8 reveals that in Pakistan, children between one to 10 years made up 10,213 of the total 299,233 reported cases in the whole country. Around 22,500 cases were reported in children between 11 to 20 years of age.
“Though all hospitals had set up wards for children with Covid-19, hardly any child was admitted since the disease outbreak,” Dr Sadia Aamir of Liaquat National Hospital pointed out.
She added that children had already been put at risk when families took them to parks, malls and restaurants where no one was following SOPs. Everything else has been opened up, it makes no sense to keep schools closed, Dr Aamir said.
Children need social interaction to develop social skills, said Dr Shobha Luxmi of Dow University of Health Sciences. In-person schooling is in the best interest of students for normal development including physical and mental health, Dr Luxmi said.
The doctor added that parents needed to use this remaining time to teach their children precautionary measures such as:
Washing hands properly
Wearing a mask at all times
Asking them to limit physical contact such as hugging, hand shaking
Discourage sharing of masks
Once they get home, asking them to change clothes, wash hands, shower and then interact with the family
Masks, however, were not suitable for every child, said Dr Bushra Jamil, MMIDSP president and a professor at AKU. The WHO had advised against masks for children under 12 years, she said.
In addition to the precautionary measures mentioned earlier, Dr Jamil also suggested parents teach children how to use hand sanitisers and if possible send children with it to school with personal sanitisers. She recommended schools ensure proper ventilation according to their resources to limit transmission. If that wasn’t possible, they could consider open air classes like some schools had done abroad.
The syndrome, also known as Kawasaki-like multisystem inflammatory syndrome, is a rare illness of unknown origin found after coronavirus infection in young children which causes inflammation in the blood vessels of the body.
The first sign of the syndrome is usually fever, followed by stomach ache, vomiting or diarrhoea, red eyes and a rash on the trunk. Some children also develop an inflamed red mouth and tongue while few have swollen glands in the neck. If detected early, it can be treated.
Dr Asma Nasim of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation said even in infected children with renal failure, such as the ones admitted at SIUT, cases of COVID-19 had been mild.
“We got very few cases and no child was admitted to the ICU or required steroid therapy,” Dr Nasim said, adding that no child undergoing dialysis was admitted to the ICU.
However, adults at SIUT who got COVID-19 were serious enough to require ICU care, she said, explaining that this showed even in children with underlying conditions the disease was not alarming.
The best available evidence from countries that have reopened schools suggests that COVID-19 poses low risk to school-going children, says the MMIDSP.
About the situation in Pakistan, Dr Luxmi said: “right now, everything is a prediction. In October it will become clear what effect reopening schools had.”
Capped vials are seen during filling and packaging tests for the large-scale production and supply of the University of Oxford's COVID-19 vaccine candidate, AZD1222.
Clinical trials for the coronavirus vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have resumed in the United Kingdom after the process was recently halted over a participant's adverse reaction.
AstraZeneca's CEO Pascal Soriot said last week that despite the halt in trials, it "is still feasible" the company's vaccine will be ready by the end of the year.
Clinical trials for the coronavirus vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have resumed in the United Kingdom, the company said Saturday in a press release.
The statement said the UK Medicines Health Regulatory Authority approved trials to resume after an independent review of data "triggered a voluntary pause" on September 6. STAT reported on September 8 that the company had paused the Phase 3 study after a "suspected serious adverse reaction" in a UK-based participant and The New York Times cited a person familiar with the situation to report that the participant was diagnosed with an inflammatory condition that affects the spinal cord and is "often sparked by viral infections."
The company did not acknowledge reports of an adverse reaction in its statement on resuming trials, but said "the UK committee has concluded its investigations and recommended to the MHRA that trials in the UK are safe to resume."
Temporary halts are common in vaccine trials, but the pause on the front-runner for the coronavirus raised eyebrows earlier this month as at least 176 ongoing research efforts as medical leaders in countries across the world race to deliver a vaccine to get a hold on the coronavirus pandemic.
AstraZeneca's CEO Pascal Soriot said last week that despite the halt in trials, it "is still feasible" the company's vaccine will be ready by the end of the year.
Soriot said Thursday that AstraZeneca is "on track for having a set of data that we would submit before the end of the year," Business Insider previously reported.
NEET Exam Full Guidelines: Keeping in mind the apprehensions of students and parents amid the Covid-19 pandemic, certain changes have come up in the exam protocols. Below are some important lists you must check before leaving for exam centre.
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro adjusts his protective face mask at a press statement during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Brasilia, Brazil, March 20, 2020. Picture taken March 20, 2020.
Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Some political figures, athletes, and celebrities didn't take the COVID-19 pandemic threat seriously, refusing to wear face masks or publicly joked about the virus.
But despite dismissing claims about the threat of the virus, they ended up getting it themselves.
Scroll down to read about the 9 different public figures who didn't take COVID-19 seriously, and then got it themselves.
Since the onset of the coronavirus crisis, some politicians, athletes, and celebrities either didn't take COVID-19 seriously, dismissed it, or even blamed it on gay people.
They refused to wear face masks, joked about the virus, or threw large parties despite health safety restrictions. But it was the infection that had the last laugh, and several of the high profile doubters, deniers, and anti-maskers ended up getting ill.
Here are nine public figures who tested positive for COVID-19 after they didn't take its threat seriously or even denied it.
1. Tennis player Novak Djokovic tested positive for COVID-19 after hosting a controversial tennis tournament in June.
Novak Djokovic attends a press conference during an opening program of the Adria Tour, a charity exhibition hosted by Novak Djokovic Foundation, on June 12, 2020 in Belgrade, Serbia.
Indeed, Djokovic revealed that he does not believe in vaccines in April and would be reluctant to take one for COVID-19.
"Personally, I am opposed to vaccination and I wouldn't want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine in order to be able to travel," the world's top-ranked male tennis player said, according to The Guardian.
"I have my own thoughts about the matter and whether those thoughts will change at some point, I don't know," he added.
In his autobiographical cookbook "Serve To Win," Djokovic previously expressed his faith in the form of alternative medicine known as "applied kinesiology."
2. Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who had been skeptical about wearing masks, died after contracting the virus.
Herman Cain, CEO, The New Voice, speaks during Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority event in Washington.
The day before Cain was hospitalized, he tweeted in support of the Trump campaign's decision not to require masks at an Independence Day celebration at Mount Rushmore.
Cain said in a now-deleted tweet: "Masks will not be mandatory for the event, which will be attended by President Trump. PEOPLE ARE FED UP!"
Cain suggested that vaccine skepticism was justified in another tweet because the government and the media had "incinerated their credibility."
It is not clear how Cain contracted the virus.
3. Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, who repeatedly belittled the threat of coronavirus, tested positive for the virus on July 8.
Jair Bolsonaro removed his mask after announcing he had tested positive for coronavirus in a TV broadcast, on July 8, 2020.
TV Brasil
From the onset of the pandemic, Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro downplayed risks of what he called the "little flu," according to the BBC.
Bolsonaro opposed local lockdowns, accused the media of spreading panic, and continuously railed against "dictatorial" measures, such as wearing face coverings.
Before testing positive for the virus on July 8, the Brazilian president attended several public events without a mask on and was shaking hands and hugging supporters.
Bolsonaro said he was taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria medication that was also championed by President Donald Trump. The drug has not been proven to be effective against the virus.
4. Leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Filaret, tested positive for COVID-19 after saying the virus was God's punishment for gay marriage.
The honorable patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Filaret, after a meeting of the Synod in Kiev, Ukraine on Friday, May 24, 2019.
Danil Shamkin/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Patriarch Filaret, who leads the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, tested positive for COVID-19 on September 8.
The religious leader sparked outrage in March after he told a Ukrainian TV channel that the coronavirus was God's punishment for the "sinfulness of humanity; first of all, I mean same-sex marriage," according to the Independent.
The 91-year-old discovered he had COVID-19 during planned testing and is said to have "satisfactory" health, the Independent reported.
5. Rep. Louie Gohmert had been walking the halls of the US Capitol without a mask on before he tested positive for the virus.
Rep. Louie Gohmert waits to speak during the markup of the articles of impeachment on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on December 12, 2019.
Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Gohmert later suggested that he might have contracted the disease because he was wearing a face covering.
"I can't help but think that if I hadn't been wearing a mask so much in the last 10 days or so, I really wonder if I would have gotten it," he said, according to The Daily Beast.
Following his positive test result, the congressman reportedly didn't isolate immediately and returned to his office instead because he wanted to inform his staffers about his diagnosis in person.
6. Similarly, GOP Rep. Tom Rice also contracted the virus after refusing to wear a face mask.
Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., listens during the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on President Trump's budget proposals for the fiscal year 2018 on May 24, 2017.
Rice later said that he had no regrets about not wearing a mask in the Capitol.
"My understanding is that a mask doesn't really protect you as much as it protects other people," Mr. Rice said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
"I don't think it would have made much of a difference. That is, if I caught it on the House floor...I doubt that had anything to do with it," he added.
7. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in March that people would be "pleased to know" that the virus would not stop him greeting hospital patients with a handshake. He tested positive two weeks later.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, visits the headquarters of the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust on July 13, 2020 in London, England.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the prime minister held a press conference in which he said he had visited coronavirus patients in a hospital and that people would be "pleased to know" that the virus had not stopped him from shaking their hands.
The British government has been accused of acting too slowly in its initial response to the pandemic.
8. Usain Bolt tested positive for the virus a few days after throwing a big party for his 34th birthday.
Jamaican Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt poses during a photo session as he launches a new brand of electric scooters named "Bolt" in Paris, on May 15, 2019.
Videos and pictures on social media from the party showed Bolt dancing in a big crowd of people, most of whom were not wearing masks or social distancing.
9. Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert joked about the virus at a press conference before becoming the first NBC player to test positive.
Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz reacts after their loss to the Denver Nuggets during the 2020 NBA Playoffs on September 1, 2020, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Four months ago, the NBA season was suddenly suspended after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert became the first player to test positive for COVID-19.
Days before his diagnosis, Gobert had joked about the virus and at a press conference, touched every microphone and recorder in front of him.
Later, the French basketball player released a public apology on Instagram in which he wrote: "I have gone through so many emotions since learning of my diagnosis ... mostly fear, anxiety, and embarrassment."
"The first and most important thing is I would like to publicly apologize to the people that I may have endangered. At the time, I had no idea I was even infected. I was careless and make no excuse," he added.
A mother with her two daughters wearing masks to guard against spreading COVID-19 on a walk, May 9, 2020 in Salerno, Italy.
Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images
During the pandemic, I've been trying to be a good role models for my children. Telling them to social distance, limit contact with others, and wear masks.
But many of our leaders have been terrible role models and our fellow Americans have been flouting the rules. This makes it harder to teach collective responsbility to kids.
People need to realize that our actions affect not just us, but the population at large.
Kathi Valeii is a writer living in Southwest Michigan.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
I can overhear my third-grader on a video chat with her friend: "What?! A party? You know you're only allowed to gather with 10 people.... Did you all wear masks?.... Did you stay six feet apart?"
For an 8-year-old, the pandemic restrictions are unpleasant but make sense. She feels it's her job to not only adhere to the rules but to encourage others to, as well. If I were only parenting a rule-following third-grader, my job would be pretty straight-forward. But, I'm also parenting a teen, and with the conflicting messages from health authorities and national leadership, it sometimes feels impossible to teach my kids about collective responsibility during a pandemic.
When health experts say one thing and the president, some governors, and sheriffs, contradict that information and downplay the impact of the virus, who is a kid supposed to believe? Aren't the people running the country supposed to protect us?
Spot the lie
As my kids have come of age during the Trump presidency, I've been talking with them about propaganda and how to recognize it. Never, in my wildest dreams, though, could I have imagined how I'd have to use those talking points during a global pandemic. I would never previously have considered how a virus could be politicized. But, here we are.
Since local, state, and national leaders aren't consistently interpreting data through a lens that relies on science, I can't, as a parent, simply point to the mandates and say, "Here's why we're following this rule: it's because everyone is, and it's for the collective good." Instead, when I talk to my kids, I have to lay out the information from all sides and discuss with them what influences one or the other.
In Michigan, Governor Whitmer has been harshly criticized by Trump and his supporters for her strict protocols. Even so, as the state began to slowly re-open, more than two months after the stay-home order was issued, I dreaded the renewed conversations with my kids. I quickly learned that to some of their friends' families, the re-opening, as many worried it would, signaled the worst was over.
My son's friends were soon playing video games in each other's basements, shoulder-to-shoulder. We had to start all over again discussing how, while the virus might not be deadly to him, it could be to others. We had to rehash how long a person can remain infected without symptoms, and why that made it particularly dangerous to everyone they interacted with.
We stopped eating at the dinner table in March. The table, transformed to an impromptu school station, was constantly covered with school books, papers, markers, crayons, tablets, and laptops.
But, the real reason we took our dinners to the living room and turned the TV on to "Community," is because we needed a distraction to keep us from arguing with each other. We needed moments of levity and belly laughing. What was there to talk about at the dinner table besides the things we couldn't do, the friends we couldn't see? And ultimately, it often circled around to being our fault. After all, their friends were still hanging out, why couldn't they?
While we try not to make the pandemic a focal point in all of our conversations, we do point out how things are trending and what health officials are saying, and compare them to how they stack up against Trump's delusional picture of the state of things. Trump's repeated, illogical assertions that the US has more cases because we have more testing and his bizarre Axios interview, where he claimed the US is containing the virus well and shrugged off the hundreds of thousands of deaths with, "They are dying. That's true. And it is what it is," offer examples of how the president lacks compassion and bends and twists information to shrug off responsibility and deny reality.
These pieces of information offer my 15-year-old valuable context for the parameters that we're establishing in our household. Our kids have mostly moved away from anger, lashing out, and blame, to resignation and understanding. I suppose it's somewhat like stages of grief, considering the immense loss teens must feel in terms of their social activities being taken away.
It's ridiculous that families have to have this added stress at all. Instead of being able to simply rely on accurate, consistent information from federal leaders, families like mine have to weed through outright lies and conspiracy theories. Because the government doesn't share a message of collective unity and responsibility, it's up to me to teach these lessons to my children against a backdrop of misinformation and the assertion that those of us taking precautions seriously are nuts.
The collective burden
When Governor Whitmer released her Safe Start Plan, I printed out the chart of the phases and hung it on the fridge. When my son asks when he'll be able to hang out with friends in the ways they're accustomed to, I pull the chart down and look at it with him. We look at what phase we're currently in, talk about what's happening with cases and whether it seems like we'll soon be sliding up or down the scale.
Ultimately, the chart is just one tool, and in the end, none of us knows for sure when our lives will return to some semblance of normal. Instead of wondering as we all did back in March if it would be weeks, or, god-forbid, months, we're now looking at a year from now with hopeful optimism.
It's maddening for kids, whose social networks are their lifelines, to make these kinds of sacrifices and watch so many grown adults throw temper tantrums about putting on a simple mask to get groceries. As an American, I can't even fathom what it must be like to have a society that collectively agrees to sacrifice for the greater good.
Americans are whole-heartedly committed to rugged individualism and the so-called "rights" that accompany it. Wearing masks, staying home, and social distancing aren't fun; but, it's frustrating that we can't see how those collective behaviors get us to an end goal more quickly. If we'd have had the same aggressive mandates across the entire country from the very beginning, maybe it could have been safer to open schools this month.
While a portion of the population goes on trips, plans "social distancing" parties, or just goes about life as usual, for the past five months, only some of us have been holed up at home, carrying what should be a collective burden. The discrepancy between our adherence to mandates and others' complete disregard for them makes the job I'm trying to do to protect my family seem futile and never-ending, and it undermines the collective work we all should be doing to protect each other.
