interview with my Grandfather Dean Wood
Item
Title
interview with my Grandfather Dean Wood
Description
The reason I chose to do an interview was to hear from the first-person perspective. My Grandfather Dean is 78 this year he is diabetic along with recovering from knee surgery. When I moved out of the UWEC dorms I moved in with him as me and him have been pretty close ever since I was a kid. I grew up without a father and having a mother who worked all the time. So it was always spending days with him and my Grandmother. They both had pretty much raised me and we were my Grandmothers favorite men in the family. She ended up passing and with my Grandfather and I being so close with her we both kind of dealt with the pain together and just brought us closer. I started to live with him since his “lady friend” lives about forty minutes away and she is pretty old too so with me being around I can help him around the house with chores or cooking food etc. He is also kind of hard of hearing of hearing so I can just help him out and reiterate whatever somebody said. With all that’s going on with COVID-19 and him being old and at risk it really shows my experiences of having to now be more cautious with my actions and making sure to realize he is the one that’s vulnerable even if I’m not. With him living through this time and then giving the facts of his life and how the pandemic has been affecting him making it his primary source of the pandemic. People can learn to take future pandemics differently with this document. He talks about how people are not really taking the pandemic seriously not wearing mask or being cautious about distancing. This just speeds up the spread of the virus giving it to the ones that are actually vulnerable such as my Grandfather. He also talks about the US government not doing the best job on discussing the virus and telling the whole truth. The government had said the virus was not that serious and that it would not stick around and yet here we are. The people who are part of the US government later should learn from this. Here we are 10 months into quarantine when if maybe dealt correctly it could’ve been handled sooner. With my Grandfather discussing his concern people should take the virus more seriously and can learn that without taking this thing seriously here we are nearing 260,000 deaths. The US now knows how serious something so small could be or how fast something so small could become something so big. By listening to this the future society could really review their plans for if and when the next pandemic is to occur. They can learn from todays society about all the wrong we had done along with a few things they could learn such as social distancing and wearing a mask. I believe they could learn about maybe having more hospitals or a space set for those infected with a disease. Most hospitals are just taking on way more than they can handle leaving some to be left out without treatment on other important illnesses. I believe we have learned from past plagues that the distancing can help keep us safe due to the speed of travel of bodily fluids that can carry diseases. The masks can also help with this as we saw that the bubonic plague was spread through bodily fluids while covid is spread through spit it is very similar with needing a face covering in order to keep the fluids from coming into contact with your nose and mouth. We also learned from the tuberculosis with it being spread the same way as covid is we can learn from that time periods mistakes just as the future can learn from ours. With this interview from my Grandfather living through this time period and the pandemic the future can learn what to do and what not to do from our current time period.
Language
English
Date
November 19, 2020
Extent
5:10
Coverage
Minneapolis, Minn., 55442
Creator
Matt Wood
Contributor
Matt Wood
Subject
Home and family
This item was submitted on November 20, 2020 by [anonymous user] using the form “Contribute an object” on the site “Western Wisconsin COVID-19 Archive Project”: http://lib02.uwec.edu/Omeka/s/C19
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