Covid-19: Voices of the Unemployed

The report was dated June 16, 2020, and read, "There are currently twenty-one million unemployed Americans but around thirty million Americans collecting unemployment benefits." Patrice Myers stared at the information she had googled out of curiosity and tried to imagine what it would be like or feel like to be unemployed--to live every day with escalating bills, the threat of being homeless, no medical insurance, and no means of transportation. Yet as indicated by the staggering and heart-wrenching number of those unemployed, this is how millions of people were living as COVID-19 relentlessly and mercilessly claimed its victims, causing millions to be out of work and the world to yield to its destructiveness. Unbeknownst to Patrice, she, too, would soon become a victim of the deadly virus, forcing her to fight to stay afloat in the ocean of the unemployed.

Patrice Myers, a thirty-two-year-old attractive woman and manager of the MaCarthy Nursing Home is a compassionate woman who loves her job and craves the daily interaction with the elderly ones she feels privileged to care for and protect. Her job affords her, being single, a modest income--an income that allows her to pay her rent, buy groceries, pay bills, and to put gas in her reliable although very much used Honda Civic. Suddenly, due to COVID-19, her life is thrown into disarray and uncertainty when the nursing home where she works is shut down and terminates her job! The deadly virus that was sweeping the globe and causing millions to be either left unemployed, furloughed, fighting for their life, or dead had now claimed her as one of its victims.

Unemployed and relying on enhanced unemployment payments, part of an act passed by the 116th Congress to assist those unemployed, Patrice realized this assistance had an expiration date. July 31, 2020, was the day the enhanced unemployment benefit of an additional six hundred dollars per week was scheduled to end. She sat and listened intently to a reporter who reported on the arguments of some members of Congress who were either for or against the extension of enhanced unemployment payments. "Failed discussions, no agreement" were the words that stuck in her mind from the reporter and would significantly impact her ability to survive for the next few months that were quickly progressing toward maybe even years. She thought, Members of Congress get to have their voice heard, but what about the voices of the unemployed?