142. A year and a half

The news today is that Covid has been with us for a year and a half. It’s been over a year since I did my 14-day quarantine, and hard to remember now that it was pre-vaccine, a scary proposition in those long-ago days.

 

The vaccines—even though only 65 % of us are fully vaccinated—have slowed but not stalled the pandemic. Many of the vaccinated and most of those opposing vaccinations are loosening up on masks and social gatherings. Covid keeps creeping around, primarily striking the unbelievers, but we the vaccinated are also susceptible and some of us are getting sick and a few are dying. Nevertheless, most Americans are approaching normal in their day to day lives.

 

The headlines look for the not-normal, and inflation, worker resignations, supply chain failures, and jobs going wanting are what they find. But behind the headlines other things are happening. One such is a big uptick in domestic violence. 

 

In Bend, Cassi MacQueen, director of Saving Grace, Bend’s emergency shelter, said that “From July to September of this year, Saving Grace saw a 20% increase in the need for its emergency shelter services,” and that “survivors have reported marked increases in the intensity and level of violence.”  MacQueen said that the pandemic has created great financial and personal stress on families and disrupted support structures. 

 

Those stresses and the “disrupted” support services—day care, distancing from family, —have led to overall increases in depression and suicide, especially among children. Women have been more likely than men to leave jobs for child care, and nurses, primarily women, have been worked to the bone and many are leaving the profession. 

 

And, of course, most of the abused are women. 

 

Even in Pandemic times, it’s a “man’s world.”

 

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