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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

<strong> Coming home from errands around town yesterday (hardware store, grocery) : I say to myself "We are never going to get this pandemic under control because of ignorance or malice. We are a failed state--with repercussions of that failure killing us."</strong> <strong> Scenes: at the hardware store</strong> --an obviously ill sales clerk--underweight perhaps from chronic malnutrition, feverish, coughing, mask failing off his nose gives me directions to aisle 10. He is probably part-time (to save store from sick leave), making a low wage, and at work because he cant afford not to be. A friend refers to "Plantation America." <strong> I think of Dickens, Bleak House, death of Jo, the lowly crossing sweeper, by smallpox that also infects his "betters".</strong> Then there are always one or two enraged customers barreling into the store mask-less, daring anyone to cross them, and the sales clerks making too little money to enforce store policy or state ruling. So I head home, masked, slathered in hand sanitizer and wonder<strong> will I now end up intubated in 14 days because I needed a carton of milk and a bag of potting soil?</strong>

January 1, 2021

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