Recently, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video from user @nurse_sushi that started with, “Did you guys know that Covid has a sound?” She went on to say that once a patient is intubated and sedated, one may think that the patient can’t make any noise, but they make a different noise now.

Then the screen turned black and all I could hear was the sound of an alarm going off while red text popped up on the screen explaining what the alarm means.

She explained that it is a red alarm, meaning a patient needed to receive urgent care.

She went on to something that stuck with me: “Your nurses are literally listening to you starve for oxygen, knowing there is nothing more we can do.”

Hearing that short 1-minute clip of the alarms going off was bone-chilling, and I couldn’t imagine hearing it all the time as a nurse or doctor working at the ICU.

I couldn’t help but feel sad for all the hospital employees who are risking their lives to keep their patients alive. I couldn’t help but feel sad for all the people who have lost their lives or will lose their lives to this virus. I couldn’t help but feel sad for all the people who will live with the long-term effects of catching COVID-19.

This is why it is important to continue taking the virus seriously.

I always felt as if the people at Eastern and the surrounding Charleston community didn’t take the virus seriously because we live in a small town.

Maybe the situation here isn’t as bad as it is in bigger cities, but we don’t live in a protective bubble.

People in this area are still catching COVID-19. People in this area are still being hospitalized for it.

We were lucky this past school year. I spent most of it worried that if cases rose too much, we would be sent back home again, and by some miracle, we made it through the school year.

But we can’t count on miracles forever.

If we don’t work harder to protect ourselves and those around us, we risk things going back to the way things were at the start of the pandemic.

That means we need to wear our masks, social distance and get vaccinated.

We need to work together to take control of the situation before it gets worse.

Kyara Morales-Rodriguez is a senior English major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or knmoralesrodriguez@eiu.edu.