There have been complaints about how the crisis has been handled, from the seeming impossibility of getting straight answers to when quarantine restrictions should be relaxed to the progress (if any) made on cures. People who work outside the home are often without a paycheck. People with kids don’t know when the kids are going back to school and that leads to uncertainties about the whole family’s scheduling.
The twenty-four-hour news channels keep up continuous coverage, trying to account for every fluctuation in illness and death levels, policies and procedures, and unexpected and unfair incidences of collateral damage caused by the lockdown and the disruptions of products in the supply chain.
Add to that the fact some of the COVID-19 symptoms match what people experience with seasonal allergies, chronic sinus problems, colds, and low-grade flu-like symptoms. One wonders am I getting it? And, if so, getting tested is an apparent crapshoot, and then if there’s no cure, what good does it do to know you have it when medical aid is limited?
In one respect, I’m not impacted as badly as most people because I’m semi-retired and work from home. On the flip side of the coin, my age and my wife’s age put us in the group of people who are the most at risk.
The bottom line for many of us is the tidal wave of uncertainties, including the rather hopeless opinions from many that even if the virus were snuffed out tomorrow, “normal” is a long way off.
In many ways, it seems as though the emotional damage caused by the pandemic and our response to it might be worse than the virus for most people. Though, as the death tolls increase, more and more homes will experience the virus first hand and/or will know friends and close acquaintances who died.
Plus, everything’s up in the air: sports, concerts, beach time, flying anywhere, getting back to work, eating out. . .
Some editorialists wonder if we’ll ever get back to “normal” or even if we want to get back to “normal.” They suggest some things might be changed forever, while other things might need to be re-invented in new ways that are better.
I have no answers for any of this, but my sense of things is that COVID-19 is the biggest disruption to our way of life since the flu epidemic of 1918, World War II, and perhaps the Korean War. It will be hard to recover from this, I think, even when the virus is gone.
My 2₵. I’d like to hear yours.
Malcolm's Round Table 
I’m stressed out by the way the U.S government is handling this and by how the American people are responding to it. Most people are in favor of the government forcing people to quarantine. It’s so un-American. We’ve never been a country that places safety above freedom. And now we are.
People who are high risk should quanintine themselves, and I’m all in favor of schools being shut down. But the government is punishing business owners who choose to open up. It isn’t right. This is setting a scary precedent.
As a former liberal, I’m really disappointed to see so many liberals willing to hand their freedom over to the government in exchange for safety.
I have similar concerns. Some say that the quarantines haven’t been as effective as expected, Plus, I worry about the people whose businesses were labeled “essential” that had to lay off workers who are now without a paycheck while the company also faces potential bankruptcy. This is all part of the concern a lot of people are facing.
Here, many who work for businesses that haven’t been able to open for 7 weeks now have been ‘furloughed’ – being paid a basic stipend by the government. It is costing a fortune. Some self-employed people fall through the government’s net. Benefit payments have notionally been extended to cover others laid off, but of course the system has fallen over under the strain. As with testing.
I don’t think there is any better way forward than for everyone to be sensible and circumspect and wait for the numbers of infected and dying to drop. This is certainly going to change the world. Hopefully for the better. Some believe this virus was released on purpose, I know. Some believe it was exacerbated by 5G. Personally, I think Atlas has shrugged. We might do very well to take a moment (we have plenty of those, currently) and think about why this should happen when we have torn the planet to shreds.
We got stimulus checks one time. They help, but aren’t the same as earning the income people are used to. And yes, it costs a fortune. Everything’s under strain and that adds to people’s stress.
Will we end up stronger as a people? Maybe with more sensible priorities. We’ve already made a mess of the planet. Now the mess has enlarged to include more and more people.