By Perly Viasmensky
The situation with the coronavirus is getting worse rather than better; every day we see more cases of people infected with the virus all over the nation.
My friend just came back to Las Vegas from the state of Florida and she tells me that the situation there is one of panic. People have no consideration for others, they don’t keep social distancing between each other and it came to the point where the state governor had to close the beaches once again.
Here in Las Vegas, casinos are trying to get back to normal, but people have no common sense. Everybody is asked to wear masks, but then they sit at the bar and of course, to drink their drinks they remove those masks and continue talking to each other without thinking that they are spreading the germs from left to right to others that have nothing to do with their group of friends.
When it comes to small businesses customers are showing total lack of consideration and respect for others. They have a sign at the door saying they must wear a mask. After coming in, they remove their mask and start checking all their text messages on their cell phone.
This COVID-19 is making all of us very rude, because you have no option but to tell the supposed customer, “Sorry, you cannot be here cooling off in the air conditioning, checking your messages and with your mask off spreading only God knows what kind of disease.” They get upset and many times they leave slamming the door behind them in an act of aggression.
Standing on the socially-distanced checkout line in a grocery store is no different. It happened to me just two days ago. Every time I took a couple of steps, a man behind me would take them, getting closer and closer to me. I looked at him, but apparently, he didn’t get the message. I had no choice but to turn around and tell him, “Everybody knows we need to keep our ‘social distance’; if you are in a hurry and would like to go ahead of me, go ahead but stay as distant from me as possible. I see no reason why you need to be practically on top of my back.”
He didn’t like it, and apparently neither did the cashier who gave me a dirty look while she was ignoring the rules of the store and the signs on the floor stating the distance to keep between people.
On the other hand, everybody is pushing the governor to reopen all schools because students are subject to academic failure.
What all of us are suffering now is not normal and children are now subjects of getting infected. They need to think accordingly. What failure are they talking about? The failure of going back and forth to school? Academically, they have been a failure for years. I know several high school graduates who have no clue how to spell certain words.
People are now between the rock and the wall. If they don’t go to work, they are facing the possibility of losing their right to unemployment compensation; if they go to work, they have no idea if the co-worker next to them is already infected with the virus and they come home to infect the elders in their family and probably the children too.
The situation is drastic; many have been off work for months, but few people are taking into consideration that many have not received a penny as compensation from the State Unemployment Department for as many as four months (the waiting period is supposed to be only six weeks). Those people need to pay rent, electricity, gas and other utilities. More than 50,000 have been denied their unemployment benefits.
The bottom line is that if we don’t die from the virus, we will die from anxiety for lack of funds to pay necessary expenses, but state employees continue to collect their salaries at our expense and are comfortably working from home.
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Perly Viasmensky is the General Manager of the Las Vegas Tribune. She writes a weekly column in this newspaper. To contact Perly Viasmensky, email her at pviasmensky@lasvegastribune.co
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