I visited my cousin Rachel this week as she studied abroad in Paris and wrote this on the plane ride back –
There is nothing quite like waking up in Paris at 3am to your cousin telling you that your parents, thousands of miles away, have been calling, and you need to answer and the president has essentially given you 48 hours to get back to the United States.
Of course, this wasn’t actually the case – but it was extraordinarily unclear when us and her roommates gathered in the living room and listened to the 30-second clip on Twitter of Trump’s address. Articles about the travel restrictions in the New York Times or the Washington Post were merely 10 minutes old and extremely vague, not helping our anxiety. (We learned later in the day that this didn’t apply to US citizens, which would have have been helpful to know at the time of announcement.)
Before leaving for this trip, I was not worried. I knew I was healthy, there were minimal cases in France, and I would only be there for a week – how bad could it get? I arrived Sunday, and by Monday afternoon, my cousin and her roommates were questioning when they would get the inevitable email from KU saying they needed to come home (within a week, they anticipated, not in a rush like this). By Tuesday, we were all tracking the numbers in France and comparing them to the numbers in Italy, frequently during the day.
Wednesday was the same, with the girls deciding to make the most of the rest of their time and fit everything in on their bucket list. There was a group dinner with the entire study abroad group, already planned but entirely coincidental that it would be their last night all together.
Thursday morning we got the announcement and one of her roommates was on the next flight out by 10am, with all of us packing the room and figuring out what was truly essential to fit in her suitcase so she could get to the airport in time. I feel like the last two days of my trip were spent in a little bit of shock and a lot of uncertainty. I already had planned to leave on my Norwegian Air flight to LAX Friday afternoon, but not on these terms. I can’t imagine exactly how Rachel and the other study abroad students feel, having their time unexpectedly cut short.
As I said before, I went into this trip thinking it would be totally fine and thinking the whole coronavirus was overhyped a little by the media. Being in France those last couple of days, I was surprised by how everything basically operated as normal. The Louvre and a few other museums limited their entrance to pre-bought tickets or only 1,000 people in the building at a time, but public transit ran as normal and you only saw a few people wearing masks in the city. I feel that France may not be taking it as seriously as it should be; conversely, America is taking the proper precautions – but the people are not.
I’ve seen a lot of jokes about cheap flights abroad and just taking that trip just for fun anyway, because “you’re young and healthy and won’t get sick.” But if you look at Italy, which had the same mentality, they are now being totally overrun in hospitals and their healthcare system is struggling to manage all the patients. I believe the biggest thing to remember here is it’s not about you in this situation. It’s about you potentially bringing back the coronavirus, asymptomatic, and spreading it to the shelves of the grocery store or the workout class where someone is immunocompromised, that doesn’t have the capabilities to properly fight the coronavirus.
I am not saying people should just quit their lives. But if you have the capacity to work from home, and socialize a little less, and not travel into high-risk areas, it would help to be kinder to your community.
I can’t say I haven’t been shocked by the almost immediate impact the virus has seemed to make in the last week on sports – it was jarring to read that the tournament is canceled – but I do think the precautions are necessary. I also think it’s important to note that your feelings are valid about your athletic season ending early, the potential of graduation being canceled, etc – you’re allowed to be upset about the things that matter to you without invalidating the impact of the coronavirus.
I wish I had an answer to the questions we all have right now. All I know is all we can do is have compassion for one another and be conscious of how our actions can affect our neighbors.
Stay safe,
Hannah