Today, Explained - Postcards from pandemic purgatory

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Travel around the globe to hear how disparately people are experiencing the pandemic in July 2021. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. We are conducting an audience survey to better serve you. It takes about five minutes, and it really helps out the show. Please take our survey here: vox.com/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos from the team and I are back from a little break. Some of us traveled places in the United States over our little break. We were not alone. Something like tens of millions of Americans traveled over the 4th of July holiday weekend, setting all sorts of pandemic travel records. This past weekend, some British guy took it even further, flying from New Mexico into space and back. People are moving up and moving on, but it's a strange phenomenon

because for so many across the planet, the pandemic is still very much the reality. Today on the show, we're bringing you postcards from our pandemic purgatory. Our first is from Tiffany Parks, an American living in Rome who you've actually heard on the show before. So the first time I was on this podcast was, I believe, in March of 2020. You need to stay in your homes. And it's hard to feel like you don't have any freedom of movement. When Italy was really the first Western country to be severely hit by the pandemic. It felt like the whole world was looking at Italy to figure out what they should do.

Since that time, we went through about two months of severe lockdown. It was a legally enforced lockdown. And we could not leave the 200-meter radius around our homes, which is basically, you could go around the block. The teenager, Bukayo Saka, one of the youngest players ever to play in the European Championship. He's got to score here to keep England alive. And he doesn't!

And Italy are champions of Europe! Go, go, go! Go, go, go! Go, go, go! Go, go, go! Go, go, go! Right now, life is probably as close to, again, I always say quote-unquote normal,

because who knows if it'll ever be back to normal. Most of the country is in what they are calling white zone, which means there are hardly any restrictions at all. And they recently lifted the outdoor mask mandate, which I think is a big deal, especially because it's summer. It's extremely hot here. And it is hard to be outside, especially if you're in a park, something like that, and to feel like you need to wear a mask. Since Italy has opened up a few times before, like last summer and a few other times, I feel that every single time, Italians go straight back to the mentality they had before.

I think Italians particularly are so incredibly social and they love to be out and they're very convivial. They like to be at restaurants and be with their friends that everybody is out. Everybody is just acting like nothing had happened. And that was what I said to myself at the time. I said, it feels like none of it happened. I'm Nadine.

I'm from Manila, Philippines. I feel very, very far from the end of the pandemic. Those who are fully vaccinated is at 2.65%. And that's so low because our population is at 108 million. With the current vaccination rate, we'll be able to achieve herd immunity by 2022. So yeah, that's pretty far from today. Specifically here in the Philippines, I feel like people have taken it seriously. Unlike other countries, like for example, the US, we don't have anti-maskers.

When the government started to tell us to wear masks, we wore masks. We followed restrictions. We didn't go out. So it's pretty annoying that we're still at this position right now. For me, sure, yeah, the best vaccine is the one made available to you, right? But you can't blame people if they don't have the same confidence in the Chinese vaccine as with other vaccines available in the market, especially when other countries are restricting or banning people inoculated by the Chinese vaccines. Recently, the president said something about the vaccines.

He's threatened those who don't want to get the vaccine with jail time. But with that said, there are so many people who are wanting to get vaccinated. Even people who line up as early as 5 a.m. I feel like the communication within the government here is so bad. Like last week, they announced COVID tests aren't required for fully vaccinated folks. And I feel like that would be such a good policy to roll out to drive more people to get vaccinated. But just today, they've taken back their announcement on it. So within the week, just when you think you'll have somewhat normalcy back in your life, the policy changes. And it's so frustrating how it's like we're going on a circle, not forward.

So I'm really hopeful that we'll have a sense of normalcy back in our lives. Because I miss pre-pandemic Manila. It's so, so much different. First of all, I miss seeing my friends. I haven't seen them for more than a year. I haven't eaten out for more than a year. I think I'd want to go to Japan again. And also, I'm like wishfully hoping because I booked this festival tickets to Spain.

So hopefully it opens up for the Philippines and I'll go. My name is Eugene Daniel. I'm calling from Brooklyn in New York. My name is Joaquin Rodriguez and I'm calling from Cordoba in Argentina. Joaquin and I met in a chat room way back in 2006. A gay chat room. I was about 14 years old pretending to be 18 and the story goes a long ways after that, but that was the original meeting place. In January of 2020, you know, we were going to eventually pursue a visa, very much in the middle of a long-distance relationship.

Our engagement happened in 2021, kind of reached that point, but also I think that COVID and the pandemic did have a pretty drastic effect on the ways in which we're navigating seeing each other. Getting married was kind of like a sure shot way for us to be united in one place. I was trying to convince Joaquin that it was going to be a huge deal. And he did not believe me until a little bit later on and i really started getting worried when my friends started to get covet and i got it even the day next to my birthday and i got real sad really scared i had one friend that almost died we're almost we. We're almost, we're at July. And they haven't started getting vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna or Johnson & Johnson.

We were together in January of 2021 when we were engaged. We had to go to like a third party country is how I kind of conceptualize it. We were desperate to see each other. We had gone 11 months without seeing one another. So we met up in Mexico. That is when the vaccine rollout was really kind of taking hold. And I got my vaccine in New York when I visited. Two blocks away from my apartment at a pharmacy.

No line, no waiting. Absurdly easy in such a kind of a stark contrast to how difficult it is to get in other places like his own country. There's a lot of people that haven't been as lucky as we have, that have not economical resources to meet up, that they are struggling through PCRs and tests and vaccines in third-party countries. And I think we're paying a big price, the people that are separated. There are people with children. There are people married. There are people that had babies and haven't been able to see them or meet them.

And there's a lot of damage being done, a lot of couples breaking up, a lot of dreams being burned down because of all this. I have to say that I have been very lucky to have my partner, my loved one, Eugene, that kept me going through the darkest moments of my life. There were literally days when I did not want to get out of bed because i wasn't even allowed to go to work i was locked up for 45 days and i think that he and my family and friends is the thing that kept me going you can have a lot of money you can have a lot of property you can travel a lot but if you have no one to share it that's worth nothing the thing i love and i miss the most about eugene is sleeping with him

laying in bed doing nothing the best days we had in mexico and in new york were days where it rained and we didn't do nothing else than lay in bed and watch movies and eat ice cream and laugh. That's the most precious thing a person can have. It's love. And even though we're not having it easy, it is keeping us going. I have tears in my eyes. He always makes me cry.

He does this. He's really poetic. I cry a lot too. Don't worry. Support for Today Explained comes from ramp ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend with ramp you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained, cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. My name is Lungi Lemini, and I am in South Africa, in Johannesburg, a city in the province of Gauteng.

While we as South Africans are in a luckier position than some other people, some other countries in this continent, but also around the world, in that we have vaccine rollouts. It's still slow and it's nowhere near enough. And we have a third wave going on right now. So we're probably looking at it going into next year. I hesitate to say, just not to jinx it, but maybe the year after that. On the one hand, you want people to get the vaccine. You want things to work out. It's great. On the other, I think I, speaking for myself, a bit of frustration. I don't know if hurt is the right word, but you watch the governments actively block or at least hinder vaccine distribution in terms of vaccine nationalism and watching people sort of go back to their lives. It is it is quite hurtful to know that you're nowhere near that.

My name is Arno Chang and I'm currently in Vancouver, British Columbia. When the pandemic hit, I started to work from home like everyone else, but my thoughts also went to my family members in Hong Kong, especially my grandmother who's in her 90s. Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Things were going on in Hong Kong, especially with the pro-democracy demonstrators. And of course with the lockdown rules that came into play, it was also seen as an attempt to control the people, which really caused a division in Hong Kong when it came to COVID. Even though people were worried, people were still suspicious. In Hong Kong, the vaccine rollout, they had two choices in vaccines and that was

where the problem began. Because the two choices they had were Sinovac from China and BioNTech, which we call the Pfizer vaccine in Canada, obviously. But over there, it's not made by Pfizer or anything to do with Pfizer. It's actually made by Chinese factory. Because of the whole political situation between China and Hong Kong, there's a lot of distrust of anything coming from China. And that included stuff like vaccines, stuff that you would put in your body. And as a result, a lot of misinformation came about.

So for example, if a safety check came up with a defect in the vaccine from BioNTech, it doesn't matter if it wasn't Chinese invented, it was still considered a defect and something quote unquote wrong. Every tiny little side effect or tiny little incident has been magnified. It's very frustrating to be honest.

Most of my relatives have been very anti-vax as well. And they were never like this. My brother who lives in China, he is acting like it's no big deal and it really does concern the rest of us. And in terms of our relatives, nobody is vaccinated except for one aunt. And the reason why she is vaccinated is because she has this intense fear towards disease.

That's literally the only reason. And that's so frustrating looking from Canada because we're getting our cases under control really, really quickly because we've been vaccinating. We're ready to reopen many things, but Hong Kong is kind of in this limbo. I did make a bit of a in my circle, or I had a lot of people in my circles here in Canada who were anti-vax and I cut many of them out of my life. And I finally put my foot down and said, I don't want to interact with anyone who's an anti-vaxxer. And this came before all this stuff in Hong Kong happened. And I am normally someone who makes good on those vows. And it's weird

because if my relatives in Hong Kong are all anti-vaxx, then it doesn't seem to make a lot of moral sense for me to see them. And quite frankly, I would not feel safe around large gatherings in Hong Kong with many, many extended relatives if none of them were vaxxed. My name is Rania and I am calling from Texas, Austin, Texas. My parents are retired in Lebanon, Beirut. I have a sister in London and I have a sister in Canada. In the U.S., there's this feeling that it's almost over. Like people are celebrating. They went out for 4th of July. But at the same time, I see my family in Lebanon where it just feels it's never ending with these variants, right? So today it's Delta, and then now it's Delta Plus.

And tomorrow, I mean, there's all kinds of alphabets coming afterwards, right? And in the richer countries where my sisters and I live, we have access to these medicines. But in other countries like Lebanon, it feels like it's endless and people are on their own. So I don't know. It seems like it's going to be forever. My mom got the virus. And this was at a time where the vaccine rollout was happening in Lebanon, but it was very slow. And you needed, it was kind of like you needed what we call an Arabic wasta, or you needed to know someone to get ahead in line.

And my parents are 74 and 75, and they registered with the government, and yet they weren't getting scheduled for it. And then my mom got sick. And we're talking about lack of medicine as well in Lebanon. Like we were passing around among my friends from back home on what they could take. I have a list here. So for instance, it's like a make sure she takes zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, gargle with Listerine. And then there was this drug azithromycin and then ivermectin. But I know for a fact, one of the drugs, ivermectin, my husband, like he's into this stuff and he's like, don't let her take that, you know? Because we give it to our dogs. I'm Tim Maidment and I live in Auckland, New Zealand. My name is Jackson and I'm in Australia, Melbourne.

I don't want to say that we haven't been affected by it. New Zealand obviously relies a lot on things like tourism and also education. But, I mean, when I think about my personal life on a day-to-day basis, definitely I've been much less affected than my friends around the world. We were in like a level four lockdown

for like 100 days, which is the only reason you leave your house is to get groceries. So it was quite intense. So I think that's why when these small snap lockdowns are happening now, which is what they're calling them, it's like three-week lockdowns here and there. I think that's why they can be so intense and triggering for everyone. Australia having an outbreak is definitely

a concern for New Zealand. We currently have a travel bubble with them, which means that we can travel freely without having to quarantine when we return to New Zealand. Yeah, it definitely makes it a bit of a worry for us. When we finally got out of our lockdown, it was incredible because we returned to what we would consider normal so quickly. And it felt really rewarding because you knew you would put in the effort. We felt so lucky because this is when we were looking around the rest of the world and everyone's still deep in it. Australia and New Zealand, we've been pretty similar along this whole thing. We were kind of like looked at in the world of how to handle it. And now we're both being looked at at how to not handle it. There's just a huge disparity in vaccines.

We didn't really, we didn't get any. And however many we do have and however many are on order or whatever is being kept secret for national security. I saw that the New York Times ran a story about how Australia is the place to not model your vaccination run after. So we've gone from being put on a pedestal to falling pretty hard. It's a difficult thing because to compare us to the United States isn't quite fair. You're a nation of 350 million people. We're a small nation of 5 million people down the bottom of the South Pacific.

I understand that sort of internationally we do get held up on a pedestal. Is that fair? I guess there's more to it than that. It's more sort of complicated than that. Life in Melbourne at the moment is good. It's good. But you just don't know if in two days from now, you're going to be in another lockdown. And if

we treat lockdowns like the only solution, then obviously we're just going to be going back into them all the time. And it's just the unknowing. We don't know. There's no dates of when more are coming and our quote-unquote plan has no deadlines or anything. They call them horizons. And obviously you can't reach a horizon. Thank you. you