Welp...
I honestly have no idea why I'm here, here as in this website updating this blog with that old email address. I realized I hadn't updated in a while, and I feel like that's how I always start these posts. It's been a few months since our second wave, and now we're into our third. Hat trick! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, welcome back! I have some tough news for you and you may want to sit down but please do so at six feet away.
The pandemic has left me feeling...laughably defeated. In one week it'll be a year since IBM sent us packing. Well, not packing, but they sent us home not knowing when we would return. In the beginning, there was a lot of optimism. We'll ride this out the best we can and be back in the office by September! It's currently March and I'm still very much isolating in my home, and it's because the situation in the Czech Republic has become a catastrophic failure.
We've had rules and restrictions against covid in place the entire time, but last September folks began scratching their chins no longer covered by masks and pondered why our once very good numbers (which only occurred when we followed the steps of every other country in Europe) were now quickly becoming very bad numbers. The Czech Republic at one point was actually the last country in the EU without a covid-related death. Pretty impressive for people who don't give the flyingest fuck about regulations in place or enforcing them. That public Prague dinner send off after the first wave really caught us with our pants down, probably because no one was wearing pants anymore.
When the second wave started to gather strength in mid-August 2020, I was sheltering myself before any restrictions were in place. And honestly my situation hasn't changed because I still don't have a choice. Regulations didn't need to be active for me to observe proper social distancing protocols and limiting my interactions with others. I didn't renew my tram pass because I hardly ever take public transportation enough to justify getting one. I wore my mask indoors and outdoors. I had opportunities to leave and go be social and frolic or whatever it is we used to do, but I didn't. My new normal was having each day be exactly like it was the day before. Around 5pm each day, I switch to my personal computer from my work computer and stay in the same place, typing at the same speed and visiting the same websites.
While many new regulations have been introduced, they largely haven't affected my day-to-day Liz stuff. I'm still indoors, I still show up to work on time, I still need to tire Gossamer out around 11pm. I did get a blender in January and that was a real game changer diet wise. I got new glasses on a wild crapshoot spawned from an Instagram post I saw at 3am. I bought an obnoxiously loud Hawaiian shirt I definitely don't need. All this was orchestrated from the same table in my same apartment with the same movie on in the background.
However, the third wave regulations are fierce, fierce because we can't afford to fuck this up again. We had two pretty good chances, but we burned that bridge during the public dinner on the literal bridge to celebrate "the end of coronavirus." Each county border is patrolled by police and/or the military. To enter the adjacent county, you need formal documentation from your employer. The curfew was mostly abolished as our freedom of movement is extremely limited anyway and we're not supposed to be out unless we're gathering supplies. Pretty much everything aside from grocery stores, mini marts, pharmacies, medical facilities, banks, and the post office is closed. You need to walk your dog within 1km of your home. We also need to wear ffp2 respirators. No more cloth masks, and if you don't have an ffp2, you can wear two surgical masks at the same time. Again, all these changes by and large don't affect me as a health-conscious person. What does affect me is the covid vaccine and when I can get it.
The vaccine rollout in the Czech Republic has been horrendous. The first inoculated were citizens over the age of 80 and healthcare workers. Supposedly my group of "high risk" was also supposed to be included in that starting 1 January. But it's 5 March. We didn't purchase enough vaccines and we don't have the capability to store them. Other European countries are even donating vaccines to us. If Trump was still president he probably would have thrown paper towels at us. The Czech government is in talks with China and Russia about procuring some of their vaccines, and of course there's been a lot of push back from the Czechs. Russia anything is bad, and like...I get it. You don't just become a Soviet satellite state overnight (well, actually you do). This trend of dismissing the Russian vaccine because it's Russian seems silly. Some could argue science has taken the place of god in the Motherland over the last 100 years, and time and again they proved it, you know with that whole moon thing or whatever. There's also a crazy amount of xenophobia increasing above the usual levels here because the Chinese vaccine is Chinese, home field advantage for racists and coronavirus. But our hospitals are maxed out. High school kids are doing shifts in hospitals and doing on-the-spot training because our healthcare system is exhausted. Poland, Germany, and Austria have offered to take in Czech patients because there aren't enough people here to care for them, and you know you're fucked when Poland is the one offering to lend a hand. Acute procedures are getting cancelled in hospitals and clinics across the country, and we still can't wear our fucking masks right.
A friend took this TODAY. TUH. DAY. We are one year into this thing and this woman, not only is she sporting a nose dick, but she's almost going out of her way to not wear it and is refusing to observe the structural purpose of the metal piece in the bridge of the mask. That's the point of the mask. One time use! More effective! YOU'RE SO CLOSE.
Of course none of this is enforced. Obviously enforcement means money and money means...something here, I'm almost sure of it. Maybe a bribe would work instead... I'm not trying to insinuate this woman will kill people by nosing around while on public transportation. It's the careless, lazy attitude that's easily in view and adopted by others is what will kill more people. This is why I don't have a tram pass. This is why I leave my home once, maybe twice a week if it's absolutely necessary. I know what I can't be around, and it's been like this for one year.
The good news (hahahahahaha) is that the vaccine registration website has recently been updated with information that may prove to be factual! Supposedly I can have a GP or a care specialist register on my behalf as they're more official than me. Imagine that, a doctor being more official than me, the woman who bought a Hawaiian shirt in January for no reason at all. I emailed my diabetologist with the information on the website in both Czech and English to nullify any translation errors. I realize I did this on Friday at 6pm, and I have inadvertently created a minimum of 48 hours of waiting time for myself, but it's the first step.
And that's all I can do. A lot of times I feel ultimately helpless. A couple of weeks ago I entertained the idea to fly back to the US to get the vaccine, but after some reflection on the logistics of what would be needed for this to work seamlessly (vacation time, no missed appointments, appointments happen as scheduled, open and available airfare, crossing borders, going through layovers and transit points not in the Czech Republic and abiding by their rules and restrictions, getting the negative test to travel and hope that will get me all the way through to Seattle, waiting the weeks between the two doses, isolating between doses in a safe environment) was really overwhelming.
I know it's absolutely not healthy, but I caught myself doing the "man if times were normal and I had a lot of money, what would I be doing?" imaginary thinking that makes us immediately depressed. And while it was very escapist, it was pleasant to take a momentary break and think about owning a ranch in New Mexico and having one or two horses and some really big dogs and Gossamer, a wraparound Roche Bobois Mahjong sofa and a big telescope on the extended porch, an art studio set up for photography, painting, welding, and sculpture, a kiln, sprawling carpets, only wearing caftans with big glasses and no shoes except for cowboy boots, amateur archeology, huge windows to watch the thunderstorms in June, roasting pinion and maybe marshmallows, writing in front of a fire all year round, trail riding after breakfast, sometimes owls hide in the eaves, collecting arrowheads, roasting jerky in the smoker...
...or something like that.
In this alternate fantasy where Liz has her shit together, I can never tell if I'm alone. I think it's because it's very selfishly me and it doesn't take anyone else into consideration. There's a difference between self care and being selfish. Is collecting arrowheads selfish? The jury is still out and very socially distanced on that one. I'd like to not be alone, but in this fantasy I'm alone.
The part that hurts is that even if all of this was available to me, I'd probably still be doing what I'm doing right now: typing on a computer wishing I wasn't alone.