What was your experience with the pandemic?

My experience with the pandemic has taught me to appreciate the small things and to enjoy an economy with lower prices for common necessities. During the pandemic, I spent long hours sitting behind a desk as a 911 dispatcher. It was a very hard time for the EMS industry. The lack of PPE really made it difficult and increased the amount of stress, as if the job before didn't cause enough of that. As 911 dispatchers, we are taught how to give life-saving information over the phone. Every call that comes through, is screened by asking for medical information. At the time of the pandemic, we were blowing through PPE. Many of the questions and the symptoms that were present regarding COVID-19, also represent questions and symptoms of the flu. This small factor led to a lot of PPE being used, just for the uncertainty of the symptoms favoring one another. I can recall sitting in dispatch and being asked to use a stapler to fix old N95 masks that were down in the basement of the station. I can just remember thinking, we are forced to wear these masks, with staples in them to hold the straps on our ears, because the shortage was that significant. It was a scary time to experience this. It revealed a lot of vulnerabilities for that ambulance service. There was a weak point in the system that needed to be addressed and a plan implemented for risk mitigation measures. As the book, "A New (Ab)Normal: Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19" states, politics caused the information to not be relayed and in turn, people were infected, and some died. Risk mitigation measures were delayed for months, as health and political officials dismissed the risk presented.