Covid-19 and the Changes It Has Brought About (In America)
2021
INT. HOSPITAL – DAY
Camera tracks along a hallway, following the path of a nurse who hurriedly walks to the front desk, holding documents. We get glimpses of the people in the rooms at the hospital – patients lying in their beds, families next to their loved ones.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. STREETS OF TRIBECA, NEW YORK – EVENING
The streets are empty. Any person walking is rushing home, with their masks on. Very few cars pass by, making the whole area seem somewhat like a ghost town.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
30 January 2020 was the day Covid-19 was declared as an international concern. 11 March 2020 was the day it was declared as a pandemic.
CROSS-DISSOLVE
TO:
INT./EXT. A HOUSE – NIGHT
Montages of news reports and newspaper headlines regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. The voices from the news reports overlap with one another. The voices slowly fade out as the scene cuts to a house. The camera slowly zooms into one of the windows where we can see a family of four watching the news together.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
By late March, 32 out of 50 states in America had ordered their citizens to stay at home. With the sudden lock down and added precautions, the lives of many people were impacted.
CUT TO:
INT. ANANYA AND SHREYA’S LIVING ROOM – DAY
Our first and second interviewees, ANANYA (21) and SHREYA (18), are sitting side by side on a sofa.
In the background is their kitchen which at the moment is empty. In front of them is a table with two glasses of water.
The first question is superimposed on the bottom right of the screen.
“WHAT PRECAUTIONS WERE IMPLEMENTED IN THE AREA YOU ARE CURRENTLY LIVING IN?”
SHREYA
We live on campus so everything, all the precautions that we had on campus are basically the ones that are mandated by the state.
Shreya murmurs something and nudges Ananya.
ANANYA
And um… wait (mumbles question to herself) Okay well at school, I know that before moving back to campus they told us all that we had to get covid tested twice a week
SHREYA
No every two weeks
ANANYA
Or every two weeks… yeah every two weeks, sorry not twice a week. But that… was like unrealistic in the sense that cause here, getting a covid test is not easy, especially when it was really bad. Like last fall, cause the numbers were super high, and you would have to wait like 6-7 hours just to get confirmation to get a test before even getting the test so they would want us to get tested every two weeks but like it was realistically impossible because everywhere was super full, you would… it was hard to get a test, it was hard to find a place that does testing, it was hard to find a place that gives back results in time. So that was one precaution that was implemented but it wasn’t really… like followed, I guess Yeah.
CROSS-CUT TO:
INT. JAYSHREE’S DINING ROOM – DAY
Ananya and Shreya’s mother, our second interviewee, sits on a wooden chair at the dining table. In her hands is a cup of warm water. She is given the same question to answer.
JAYSHREE
Um, some of the precautions… let’s see, social distancing, for sure. We stopped visiting friends and neighbors, we stopped visiting each others homes. Anytime we had to go to the store, whether it was a grocery store, hardware store… any store, we had to have a mask on… that’s another change.
She pauses for sometime before continuing.
JAYSHREE
Frequent hand-washing. Every time we went out to the stores, even for a simple thing like a walk around the neighborhood, we come back, we still do, we come back and make sure we wash our hands. Those are all changes in behavior since the pandemic began.
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EXT. UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK CAMPUS – AFTERNOON
Long shot of of students walking across campus to their classes. Camera pans around to show the campus.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
The transition from physical to online classes was tough for many students and it had mentally affected them, to the point where some students had little to no motivation to complete their work.
CUT TO:
INT. ANANYA AND SHREYA’S LIVING ROOM – DAY
Ananya’s drinking water while Shreya adjusts herself on the sofa. She has a pillow on her lap.
SHREYA
I think that adapting to the online school was kind of hard for everybody. For me especially because when corona first started, I was a senior at high school so we were actually out of school for a month because the teachers didn’t know what they wanted to do, and how to transition to online, so I didn’t even have classes for a month. And then when classes started again, I only had classes for two more weeks and then it was over and that was the end of my high school graduation. So I think that was kinda weird like it was a weird stage in my life and now for college everything being online, um… I feel like everybody talks about how college is the most important time and how it’s so fun, but I’, not really experiencing the fun part of it because I”m just doing all my homework and everything online.
ANANYA
So for me school… okay, so classes used to be in person and for me it affected my school and my work life because the way my schedule was last year, I would have classes and then I would have like two hour breaks in my schedule and I would work in between my classes, but everything shut down so in terms of school life, it made school 20 times harder because my classes also, I’m a- like- I’d do a lot of lab work in my classes and that’s not something that can be transferred online so I remember… there’s one class I took and usually we go to a lab once a week and we do experiments in the lab so we’ll like grow cells or like we’ll do some chemistry experiments, but that’s not something that can be translated online, so one of my professors, what he did was that he did the experiment and he recorded himself doing the experiment and our homework was to just a watch a 15-minute video of him doing the experiment which was really useless, like I didn’t learn anything from that. And he’d try to keep up with that, but eventually he got so tired of people not engaging because obviously it just looked liked I was watching a really bad movie. But he got so tired of people not engaging he just stopped doing it and he just have us all As because he was like there’s no way I can teach you guys to do a lab without you guys actually doing the lab, or some of my other classes they just became a lot… harder. That’s the only word I can really use
Shreya looks at the carpeted floor, nodding.
SHREYA
Yeah.
ANANYA
Because in person, I feel like, you know it’s a lot easier to walk up to your teacher and ask questions or like if you’re confused, you ask someone who’s sitting next to you like, do you know what we’re supposed to be doing right now but that, was taken away but, I know for me I have a lot of group projects in school, and like when you’re in college, realistically you don’t know everyone in your class. Like my classes, range from 50 people to 200 people, so I’ll know maybe 1or 2 people in there but when we have group projects online, we’re still strangers and it’s really hard to get a gold of them and it’s harder to get things done because I don’t know you, I don’t have you phone number, I’m not gonna see you in class, so it’s hard to get a hold of you to work on this assignment that we have due so it just made school a lot harder because of a lot of, just like resources were taken away… in a sense –
SHREYA
And I think for a lot of people, including myself, I used to be very
studious and very on top of my academics but once everything transitioned to online, I kind of lost a lot of motivation to keep up with everything, like my grades started slipping a little bit because I just didn’t feel like it was the same anymore and especially now, like when school was in person, you’d have to force yourself to keep up with a schedule, like wake up, get ready for school, but now you can go to class from your bed, so I think that kind of makes everybody feel a little bit unmotivated.
CROSS-CUT TO:
INT. JAYSHREE’S DINING ROOM – DAY
Middle close up of Jayshree as she sips on her warm water. The screen blurs as the question “HOW HAS YOUR WORKPLACE ADAPTED TO THE PANDEMIC” is superimposed”. The sound of the cup coming in contact with the wooden table can be heard as the screen focusing on Jayshree again.
JAYSHREE
Well, I think the biggest change is that all of our work now is, remote or telework and we are using tools that we probably wouldn’t have used if we were in the same space because there wouldn’t have been any need to, so we rely heavily on, tools like, teams switches for meetings and we rely even more on emails now so we rely on the network being up and available at all times. Whereas earlier we could just walk down to a colleague’s office or cubicle; can’t do that anymore so we really rely o the network being available and email being up and available throughout the day so… yeah those are some of the changes. Very heavily reliant on emails, texts and Microsoft teams for meetings which we weren’t earlier.
FADE TO:
EXT. NASA GODDARD CENTER – AFTERNOON
Camera arcs around Jayshree as she stands in front of the NASA Goddard sign.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
Many parents around the world found it tough to balance home and work life during the pandemic. Jayshree was no exception to this. Between her work at NASA Goddard Center and home, she found it tough to find a middle ground between to two.
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INT. JAYSHREE’S DINING ROOM – DAY
The screen is blurry with the question – “WAS IT TOUGH TO MANAGE WORK AND HOME LIFE UNDER THE STRESS OF THE PANDEMIC?” – superimposed in the middle of the screen for about half a minute before focusing on Jayshree.
JAYSHREE
Yes, definitely. Simply because, when you’re working from home, home life tends to encroach on your work because it’s all around you. When you’re at work, there’s not much you can do about things at home because you’re not at home. But when you’re working from home, things around the house are always withing reach, even if it is small stuff like “Oh yeah, maybe I can load the dishwasher”, “maybe I can unload the dishwasher, “Oh let me wipe this counter before I get to the next task”. So, things around the house encroach on your time, in a way they wouldn’t if you were at work.
FADE OUT TO:
EXT. PARK – EVENING
Camera pans around park, showing the few kids at a park playing with their masks on. Parents sit at the side, smiling at their kids.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
It’s been over a year since the first Covid-19 case was recorded. Now the pandemic rages across all countries and mutants of the virus have popped up.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. COLLEGE DORM – NIGHT
Close up of a college student calling their family via Zoom. The student is smiling and waving at them.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
With all this uncertainty in the air, it’s crucial to ensure that we take care of ourselves and our loved ones.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. OUTSIDE A HOSPITAL _ AFTERNOON
Camera tilts from the top to the bottom of the hospital, panning towards the entrance.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
The changes brought about by the pandemic have been tough, with new precautions and rules in place to make sure that each and every one of us is safe. There’s no doubt that until the pandemic is over, our world will change in order to adapt to this virus.
FADE TO BLACK