Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[SvennoJ]

Some anecdotes of what essential workers are going through.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/the-stigma-is-real-front-line-pandemic-worker-says-her-child-was-shunned-by-neighbours-1.5027121

When a group of kids were invited for a playdate last month in six-year-old Gaby Munshaw’s neighbourhood, she was told she couldn’t join the fun. The Ontario girl had been out riding bikes with friends on June 16, when the parent of a different set of children invited the young cyclists over to his yard. But Gaby’s mother said that because she is a front-line pandemic worker, her child was excluded.

“He told her that she wasn’t allowed to play because the kids were afraid of her,” Crystal Munshaw told CTVNews.ca over the phone on Thursday. “Because her mommy is a COVID nurse and she might have COVID. My daughter came home in hysterics and hid behind a tree.”

Munshaw, who has since taken a leave from work at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, to be near Gaby more, hasn’t hugged her daughter in months. She has been living in a trailer parked in the backyard of the Midland home where her parents live with the girl. Only a handful of her colleagues have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, she said, and all were believed to have contracted the virus in the community, not at the hospital.



Gaby may not be alone, according to a new Statistics Canada report. Of more than 4,000 respondents in Canadian Perspectives Survey Series, about one in five said they fear being exposed to COVID-19 stigmatization as public health restrictions lift across the country. About one in ten said they feared stigma associated with their work at a hospital or other health-care facility.

The social consequences felt by health-care workers has been evident throughout the pandemic, including reports in some countries of nurses being “assaulted, abused and ostracized.” In New Brunswick, a doctor gained international attention when he was blamed for causing a cluster of COVID-19 cases after crossing provinces to pick up his young daughter because the girl's mother had to attend a funeral in Africa.



And I've got to admit as well that we are more careful as well who our kids can play with. A mother with underlying conditions is more safe than a family with a truck driver :/ This virus sucks, why not eliminate it instead of this "new normal", "have to live with it", re-open shit before it's gone since people can't be bothered to work together anyway.