The coronavirus, commonly known as "corona" and COVID-19, was just recently declared a pandemic by WHO.
It has taken a hold of not just America but quite literally every other country.
As it has begun to take over the United States, it has only left one state untouched and has forced the suspension of sports, large gatherings, and moved many universities to put classes online.
America is at a standstill.
If you are in a college town or a place where the virus has spread the most it seems as if the only thing that is moving is the virus itself. You open your newsfeed on any social media outlet, or a news source one minute and ten minutes later the number of cases has doubled. That's how fast it is moving.
For a while it was "just a cold," then it became something that only affects the older generation, but how sure are we of any of this? My generation has made it into memes and has taken the fact that people are bulk buying toilet paper and turned it into a comedy. We've joked and joked, but as we've thought about it more this virus is taking everything away from us.
Because of the coronavirus, I may not get the chance to tell some of my most impactful professors goodbye.
I may not have the chance to walk across a stage at graduation. I will never get to see my university's basketball teams play in March Madness as a student again. Because the thing we thought was "just a cold," my final memories made as a senior are limited to frozen dinners and spraying disinfectants on everything I touch.
My last spring break as a college student was interrupted by the constant urge to check and see what my university's president was going to decide would be safest for the students.
I was given harsh looks for sneezing in a Chipotle. When I drove through the toll on my way back home no one was as cheery as they were just four days earlier and they definitely weren't as willing to say hello.
It has changed every aspect of my life and the worst part is, we hardly know enough about it to even control it.
Never in a million years would I have thought that a "cold" would keep me from shaking my university's president's hand at graduation. I never thought that I'd have to finish my last semester of college on a computer screen, but here we are. I am currently reading email after email from my professors, all ending in a "wash your hands" and "try not to touch people." I don't know when or if I will see any of my classmates again and that breaks my heart.
A week ago my professors were telling us to not text and drive, but now their focus is the fact that we could become a number in our current pandemic.
I have watched the change in how people interact and how we can't quite love people the way we could just a week ago. The truth is, the coronavirus isn't just a cold. It's a disease. A disease that is killing thousands of people and taking away the memories people could have made.
That's what diseases do, they destroy things, not just people.
