COVID and the Election

 COVID-19 has increased the likelihood of voting by mail. Many people took advantage of this during the 2020 election; however, for those who did not, we've seen a huge spike in COVID-19 cases. The video below talks about how within the days leading up to the election, President Trump has made remarks discussing a return to the time before coronavirus. This has caused COVID-19 cases to increase in 13 battle ground states.

This causes you to stop and think: when will people believe in science over politics? With the winter season coming, it's expected that the virus will have a huge second wave that will be worse than the first wave. Unfortunately, the republican party has encouraged people to not believe the headlines which has resulted in spiking infection rates. Americas top epidemiologist have stated that politicians, including President Trump, have stopped listening to their advice and have decided to put politics first. This is going to have long lasting affects on the rise of cases going into the winter. Hopefully people begin to trust the science behind the virus and return to social distancing and wearing masks. If not, the numbers of cases will not stop increasing any time soon. 

Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine

If China ended up proving to have the best COVID vaccine compared to any other country I think various things would happen. Since China is a communist country, I believe they would try to bargain with other countries in order to get something out of distributing their vaccine to other places. They would want the best deal in order to help other countries, especially knowing that the world needs the vaccine. It would almost be like countries are at China's will. I also think there would be a huge shift in power in which China would be the most powerful country in today's world simply because of the pandemic. Global politics would be immensely effected if this one super power held complete control of the vaccine. Given the US and China are in the middle of an ongoing trade war, I think China would use the COVID vaccine to their advantage. China would use the vaccine as leverage to ease international relations. However, this would involve additional issues given the US has accused China of hacking the US for insight of their COVID research. Overall, I think that if China beats the US on their race to a COVID vaccine, the strained relationship between the two countries would get worse before it got better due to the struggle of power they've been facing. One country would have to compromise more than the other, and if China holds access to the vaccine first, it looks like that country would be the United States. 

STUNT with COVID

 A while ago, I talked about the STUNT team finally getting the go ahead to start stunting. We were able to stunt for about 3 weeks, until our president received a call informing her that our stunt privileges have been revoked. During practices where we were stunting, everyone wore their masks; however, some people would pull them down once they got hot or to catch their breath. I always tried to keep my mask on due to being within 6 feet of the girls I was stunting with but it wasn't always easy especially during those hard practices. About a week and a half ago, I received the following message from a girl on my team: 

She was informing us that she tested positive for COVID. This is someone I'm actively around at practice and work closely with. I was so upset with her that I never responded in the messages. I was upset because she would always tell the rest of the girls that if they didn't feel well to stay home and not to go out and party. However, she never followed her own advice. She irresponsibly went out various times and told us she thought she had a cold, but came to practice anyway. Immediately after hearing this, I scheduled my COVID test. The second test that I've had to schedule due to those around me on this team. It was super frustrating because I don't think it's that hard to sit down somewhere especially when everyone else's health is at risk. Later this day, I received a call from UK Health Corps informing me that I had to quarantine due to being in close contact with someone who tested positive. Suddenly another load of frustration hit. Every other day for the past 8 days, UK Health Corps calls me at 8 am (waking me up super early) to check in on me during my quarantine. Luckily, my test was negative and I will be released from quarantine on Tuesday. If my test would have been positive, I genuinely think I wouldn't have had anything nice to say to her. I hope she, along with others on the team who have tested positive, have learned their lessons and trust that this pandemic is very real. When I return to practice, I plan to urge everyone to be more responsible in regards to their social life and choices when coming to practice. This was the second time in only three months that practices have been put on hold due to people getting COVID and I truly don't want there to be a third.