The once brightened and socialized halls I walked passed to enter the area I work at, are now completely and utterly empty like a ghost town, where people just sit in their rooms and are afraid to come out.

Working the front lines at a nursing home, I first handily have seen how much this pandemic has taken away from people, whether that be their quality of life and mental state has visitors are no longer able to visit their loved ones living long term or who are healing at the facility I work at. I have seen how this pandemic has destroyed immune systems and how families have had to pack their dearly beloved's belonging up from a lost battle.

It is unbearable to see families being ripped apart from one another and families not being able to see one another, and what hurts most about the entire thing, is that I continue to go to work and see just how this pandemic has affected so many people in so many ways. Still, many people do not understand the costs of this disease and do not understand just how crucial staying home is.

Yes, it may not affect you personally since everyone in your household may be healthy, but that is not the case for everyone, and people need to be more aware of how their actions are affecting the rest of the population, especially the autoimmune compromised and the elderly. There are lives at stake here. People are dying, and just because you do not see it first hand or it is not personally affecting someone you know does not mean it is not happening in the world around us.

Please be smart with your actions and go on with your life, but please do not continue the unnecessary travel and gatherings when people's lives are at stake. It is a bigger picture, apart from yourself and your individual life. In the upcoming years, we will be able to look back and realize we may have overreacted, but at least we will know we didn't underreact. We need to start to act as a community and take action.

Please do your part, stay home, be safe, and be careful.