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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram. For this final episode in our series, You, Me, and COVID-19, we're really going to lean into the you. Every one of us experienced unexpected change this year.
--:-- Andrew: My name is Andrew. I am a musician slash DJ, and I currently reside in Los Angeles. I was making a living DJing around the country and throwing parties and doing events. So of course, once the stay-at-home orders in March hit, I was no longer able to work. And since then, I still haven't been able to and not sure when things will resume where I'll be able to actually earn a living again.
--:-- Andrew: In the beginning of the pandemic, in the first couple of months, I found myself just endlessly scrolling through social media and news sites all day, just trying to understand what was happening. I guess people call it doom scrolling. Just stories of just people kind of losing the veneer of being nice to each other and being in a tame society, you know, seeing people fight over toilet paper.
--:-- Andrew: Tensions flared at Woolworth's Chalora around seven o'clock this morning when three women became involved in a toilet paper tussle. I just want one half. People lining up to get into grocery stores. Long lines out the door as well as store shelves, basically emptied out as people try to stock up. People screaming at each other about wearing masks or not wearing masks.
--:-- Andrew: I have a doctor's note where I don't have to wear one. I'll show you. I'll show you. Don't touch me. You put your hands on me again, I'll sue you. and also the videos I saw in the early stages of the pandemic of right-wing, alt-right people storming government buildings carrying guns. Let us in! Let us in! Let us in! Let us in! Let us in!
--:-- Andrew: It made me kind of realize that, well, if something goes down, if society collapsed, the people that would be in charge seemed to be the ones that would own guns and they'd kind of be in control. And that really scared me, the idea that there's only one side of people in this country that own guns and they would be in full control if something catastrophic happened.
--:-- Andrew: Before the pandemic, I never owned a gun, Never thought I would be a gun owner. If anything, I kind of lean more towards the side of gun control, that we need more gun control in the country, and that guns are just a dangerous thing that crazy people owned and weirdos. A kind of troubling trend around the country these days.
--:-- Andrew: While some people are engaged in acts of kindness during these tumultuous times, others, perhaps driven by fear, are heading to gun stores. Seeing the lines around gun stores and realizing that there's a lot of people going out and buying guns. And it kind of made me think like, well, if anything, it'd be nice just to own one and then never have to think about it rather than need one and then not be able to get one.
--:-- Andrew: So that's what kind of was a catalyst for me actually to look into what it actually would take to go and buy a gun. Buying a gun in California in some ways was easier than I thought and in some ways was harder than I thought. There is a test to take in order to be able to purchase a gun or get a license to purchase a gun. You do have to actually wait a period of time, around two weeks, from purchasing a gun to actually being able to possess your gun.
--:-- Andrew: And finally, after the 14 days, I got a text message from the gun store that I was able to go and pick it up. So I was able to purchase a small revolver, five-shot Smith & Wesson. It looks like an old-timey Western gun, kind of. It's got the wheel.
--:-- Andrew: And I went in there, and they just gave me the gun. And I was like, do you guys have a box or something? I'm not just going to walk out of the store with a gun in my pocket or something. So they gave me a little cardboard box for it. It just made me feel more comfortable.
--:-- Andrew: Because I remember also thinking, how am I going to get this from my car to my apartment? I don't want anybody to see this thing. It was late at night. I went down, I grabbed the box, I put it in a backpack, and then I brought it up through the elevator in my apartment.
--:-- Andrew: And I remember just sitting there and just kind of looking at it and just being like, wow, there's a gun in my house. There's a lot of things I feel like in 2020, a lot of new experiences, and that was just one of them.
--:-- Andrew: Something I never thought I'd be doing is sitting in my house with a gun. After going to the gun range and shooting my gun and then doing lots and lots of YouTube research and online research about guns and stuff, I sort of just kind of started getting into gun culture.
--:-- Andrew: And I got so much in the gun culture that I actually ended up purchasing another gun. And now I've went from never thinking I'd ever own a gun to now owning multiple guns. And now I even go online and I'm like, I wonder if I should, this gun looks kind of cool. That'd be my kind of fun to own in the future, you know.
--:-- Andrew: So yeah, definitely taking a full 180 on the idea of guns and gun culture.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Marci Nelson and I live just outside of Washington D I was really surprised how the pandemic affected me and most surprising of all was that it made me want to have kids
--:-- Marci Nelson: So there was never a time where I remember really wanting to have children. Growing up, I had a lot of depression and anxiety, and I worked very hard on those issues, and they were pretty well managed. I didn't want to have children because you kind of don't know, of course, what you're going to get. You know, you can have a child that has a severe disability. You can have a child that's very difficult, of course. You just never know.
--:-- Marci Nelson: And that terrified me. I have worked really, really hard to build up a life that I'm happy with. My mental health is in a good place. And that unknown just seemed like it wasn't worth the risk to me.
--:-- Marci Nelson: I met my now husband a little over two years ago, and I told him pretty early on that I didn't want kids. and it made him sad and we had some difficult conversations around that, but it wasn't a deal breaker for him and he wasn't going to pressure me.
--:-- Marci Nelson: That was the last thing he wanted to do. And so shortly kind of before the pandemic, I decided to revisit the idea of having children. I said to my therapist, okay, you know, I want to just go over kind of one by one, all of the reasons I don't want to have kids and talk through them. And we did that. And I kind of found the door opening to the idea.
--:-- Marci Nelson: But it was really the pandemic that oddly made me realize that it is something that I want to go for and that I do want to try and have a biological kid. if you had told me before the pandemic that you know I was going to be forced to stay home all the time I would have just assumed that I would be curled up in the fetal position and crying in a basket case because I i'd kind of figured out what I thought was sort of the secret sauce to my mental health, which was exercise and meeting friends and staying busy.
--:-- Marci Nelson: And all of a sudden, all of that was taken away. It was probably about a month in where I was talking to my therapist and I was like, yeah, I'm actually doing surprisingly okay. And in a weird way, my anxiety had lessened, I think, because often I am looking for things to be anxious about. And now there was this big disaster worldwide. And so I didn't need to come up with something to be anxious about.
--:-- Marci Nelson: And it was very strange. But I felt this kind of odd calm from my apartment to where I need to take out the trash. It's like a five minute walk. And I used to get so annoyed that I would have to spend these five minutes walking to take out the trash. I was like, I don't have time for this. And now I really enjoy it.
--:-- Marci Nelson: It sounds like such a stupid thing. But I am outside and I am stretching my legs and I just like enjoy little things like that or like taking a walk with my husband now. We do that almost every day. And I hope that we continue that even when life gets back to quote unquote normal.
--:-- Marci Nelson: And so I just realized I can't control what's going to happen. I can't control if we are able to get pregnant or who this child we would bring into the world would be. But I realized I have a lot more strength than maybe I thought I did before. And, you know, if we do this, there's just so much potential for so much joy and so much fun. And that is worth the potential of things not going perfectly.
--:-- Marci Nelson: And of course they won't because nothing goes perfectly, but I could handle it. My husband and I started trying to have a kid in May. And then in August, I did get pregnant. And then at, I think, about eight weeks, I miscarried. I think I handled it pretty well.
--:-- Marci Nelson: I mean, it was upsetting. I'm 38, so I knew that there was a chance of that happening. And so we're starting now to try again. And I don't know, of course, if it'll work out, but I'm happy that we're trying. And I think we're both just trying to keep an open mind to the future. And so we're trying, but we're looking forward to our lives together either way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More after a quick break.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Chime. Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime. And Chime gets that, says Chime. Chime is a financial technology company that says they understand that every dollar counts.
--:-- Catherine Nong: I'm Catherine Nong. I'm 17, and I'm a senior at a high school in South Florida. Both my parents are originally from China, so they met in China. They grew up in China. They worked in China, but then they immigrated to America. and I was actually born in South Florida and I've lived here all of my life.
--:-- Catherine Nong: It was like early March and there were a couple of like the very first cases of the coronavirus happening in America. Tonight the CDC says the infected passenger passed through busy SeaTac Airport in Seattle, the first confirmed U.S. case of the contagious coronavirus now in Washington state
--:-- Catherine Nong: Fear seems to be spreading as fast as the coronavirus is 5 people in the U have been diagnosed with the disease And one of my very close friends was in her film class The class was having a discussion about the coronavirus. And I remember that she told me that somebody had said, everyone knows Chinese people are disgusting. They'll eat any kind of animal. They're dirty. And the discussion like kept going after that.
--:-- Catherine Nong: And I think my friend was like upset by that. And she was like also upset because nobody like countered what the student was saying. And like the day like kept going, I guess. I had this idea to pitch to the New York Times, a written op-ed about how coronavirus was increasing xenophobia in schools and why it was important to address.
--:-- Catherine Nong: And we ended up making a video together. Having this experience encouraged me and motivated me to think more about issues of race and think more about my identity. Just like being Chinese American, sometimes I felt like I wish I wasn't Chinese American, or I just felt ashamed at some points of my own identity.
--:-- Catherine Nong: And I think through this experience, I kind of had to defend my culture. And I think challenging myself to do that made me internally be able to feel a lot more pride. Coronavirus may have originated in China, but the disease doesn't discriminate in the way that people do.
--:-- Catherine Nong: It's extremely important that people have accurate information on how to stay safe so we can kill this virus without spreading another one.
--:-- Ethan HD: My name is Ethan HD. I'm a professional wrestler and I own a comic book shop in Tacoma, Washington called Destiny City Comics.
--:-- Ethan HD: I grew up in Lakewood, Washington, which is right outside of Tacoma. It's mostly just famous for being on cops a whole lot. I was born to biracial parents. My mother's white, my father's black. He left right before I was born. So I was primarily just raised by my mother's family.
--:-- Ethan HD: I was never made to feel like I was an outsider being like the only brown one. There wasn't a whole lot of, you know, you're the black sheep or anything like that. But it was very clear in, like, family photos that, like, I wasn't like everyone else, I guess.
--:-- Ethan HD: Growing up, I never really talked to my extended family about race. I guess they just felt like it was a conversation I don't think they wanted to have. And I feel like I didn't want to have that conversation either.
--:-- Ethan HD: I would say it probably wasn't until I was in high school. I really started learning a lot about Black history and Black heritage and things like that. I guess just kind of learning more about people like John Lewis, people like Frederick Douglass, and all these kind of like racial and social injustices that kind of eventually all trickled down to my life and my existence.
--:-- Ethan HD: I would say the point where race really became an issue, or I guess my feelings about race and how I was treated and how people of my similar race were treated, really picked up when Colin Kaepernick started to protest. And that became a real hot button topic.
--:-- Ethan HD: Overnight, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand during the national anthem again. This time, he took a knee right behind hundreds of service members being honored on Military Appreciation Night.
--:-- Ethan HD: I had posted on Facebook basically being in support of Colin Kaepernick, and my cousin from Arkansas commented on that, basically just saying that I'm being disrespectful towards my grandfather who served in the military and other family members who had served in the military, and that by supporting Colin Kaepernick, who's standing up for my rights, I'm disrespecting our family who served.
--:-- Ethan HD: and it was very insulting and definitely hurt. But I guess in my head, I was still thinking, well, she's family. You don't have to get along with your family, but you have to love them. And I wasn't trying to necessarily cut her out of my life, but I definitely didn't want to have any more discourse with her than necessary.
--:-- Ethan HD: Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!
--:-- Ethan HD: I would say probably around the time of George Floyd's death, I started becoming very outspoken about police brutality towards African-Americans, how there's very little accountability for it. And black people are just kind of being told, like, well, this is how it is. And just being very outspoken about the lack of accountability towards police.
--:-- Ethan HD: And my cousin, the one I had issue with earlier, is married to a police officer. she responded to a post I had made that was very critical of a police officer and basically came at me saying that by posting these videos you know I'm encouraging people to come after him and I'm making his job more dangerous
--:-- Ethan HD: I basically explained was like that's not what I'm trying to do what I'm trying to point out is that like police are beating up people of color all the time and there's no accountability for it and that my life like is in danger because people like this know that they can get away with it
--:-- Ethan HD: and again like instead of siding with me basically just told me you know like i'm disrespecting her husband and that i'm being anti-police and at that point i understood like you're not going to see where i'm coming from you're not going to acknowledge my blackness it's only a burden for you and is an issue with you and it's like and i can't stop being black and i can't stop the way people feel about black people and so at that point i just i just took her off facebook blocked her and and ceased contact with that kind of that whole side of my family out in arkansas
--:-- Ethan HD: in a weird way it felt like removing like a gangrenous limb in the sense that you're overall better off not having it than having it be a part of you i mean i don't think as a kid or even a young adult i ever thought that something about as far as race specifically my race ever would have been something that would drive a wedge in the family and it definitely feels like there's a bit of like a burden that I am a bit of a burden driving this wedge in my family for sure but I never would have guessed that if I was defending my ethnicity or that people were coming for for people that look like me parts of my family wouldn have my back
--:-- Ethan HD: I guess I always assumed that what family does
--:-- Ethan HD: And it was definitely a wake-up call that your family doesn't always necessarily have your back.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: My name is Maria Ligarda and I was detained in ICE Detention Center in Adelanto, California, May of 2019 after serving 14 years in Central California Women's Prison.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: And because of my aggravated felony, it was mandatory for me to report to ICE to immigration because of my conviction. And because I'm not a citizen, I have to go to ICE immigration. And so I spent 11 months total in Adelanto.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: And it was during my ninth month in Adelanto when the pandemic first hit. We knew it was serious, but it still wasn't explained to us exactly what we were dealing with. There was not a lot of preventative measures. They wanted to adhere to the social distancing, and so a lot of women were getting released on bond. And I was already up for my bond hearing as well. So with that, I too was given a number to call and I called a group of doctors, attorneys. And so they filed a writ.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: A number of members in that class action was granted pretty much a medical release because of their medical conditions that they have, that they are more highly susceptible to contract COVID. And with my asthma and my high blood pressure, April 17, I was released.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: And it was very strange to be out. And my friend was waiting for me. She picked me up. She was wearing a mask. And my friend took me to Target. It was weird because it was actually a lot of people. And I was panicking because, okay, so I am supposed to be six feet away from the next person. And this person is just right next to me, a few arm's length away.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: And so I had to move. And I remember distinctly, like, really panicking because you are very near to me and you're less than six feet apart. What do I say? Do I say something or what? And so finally I said, excuse me, can you please move because you're too near to me? And she just looked at me like, what are you talking about, lady?
--:-- Maria Ligarda: I just look at my friend, just laughed at me, but I had to do what I had to do, you know. And because I came from, you know, from prison, I went straight to ICE. following the rules because this is what I was told six feet apart. I'm just used to it.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: So those were the moments where, no, I do my part. Now that I'm back into society, I'm going to do my part because this is what I said while I was inside, that once I reintegrate back into society, I will do my part in every way to ensure the safety of the people around me.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: If I can't hold myself accountable to ensure the next person's safety during this pandemic, then what kind of productive citizen am I? There's a lot of changes that happened, you know, that transpired within the last year. But I think the one thing that really affected me was I was at a transitional housing in Los Angeles. And I overheard one of the ladies saying that she started being cooped up in her house and stuff. And just, you know, complain about how horrible life is because of COVID.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: And when I heard that, I said, you know, I said, I've been locked up 16 years. I said, and I can't find something to complain about today. As I stand here under the sun, I said, and just letting my sisters know that there is hope.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: And so when I said that, I think it came from a place of there's so much to be grateful for in life. I could think of a lot of things to complain about, but really I couldn't think of anything to complain about. I may not be with family, but I'm safe. I'm breathing fresh air. I'm doing everything I can to stay healthy.
--:-- Maria Ligarda: In the midst of the pandemic, am I happy? I'm very blessed. I feel very blessed. So that's what it was for me for 2020. It's bittersweet. I'm not totally free-free, you know, but it's, you know, it's something to be grateful for. And it's the small things. That's it for our series, You, Me, and COVID-19.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find out more information on this series or check out the other episodes at vox.com slash you, me, COVID-19. Also in your feeds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks so much for listening. And thanks for listening all year. It was a long one and a tough one. And we hope we helped you through it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tomorrow, we're going to sing about it. And then we'll return in 2021. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's. Fall is right around the corner, and that means layering season is too. Macy's Fall Fashion Guide can help you get a pulse on all the latest trends and must-haves.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Try a romantic look with a sheer top from INC. Or mix it up with some fun textures, like a faux fur bomber jacket from Karl Lagerfeld Paris. No matter your vibe, you can explore the Macy's Fall Fashion Guide and find the perfect look for you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Shop in-store or online at nacy's.com.
