New York woman shares her “new normal”

By Roxie Murphy, Staff Writer
Posted 4/22/20

NEW YORK — While the novel coronavirus COVID-19 has affected everyone’s life in some way — Jade Beetle and boyfriend Rod Borges of Amityville, New York, have been impacted in a way …

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New York woman shares her “new normal”

Posted

NEW YORK — While the novel coronavirus COVID-19 has affected everyone’s life in some way — Jade Beetle and boyfriend Rod Borges of Amityville, New York, have been impacted in a way they won’t soon forget.

When asked how things have changed, Beetle initially said she felt like most things are still normal, adding that in her line of work, she had an inclination that something was happening.

“Our business caught on to the virus early because we do a lot of work with overseas companies in China,” said Beetle, who has no connection to the Owensville area. “We were dealing with it on the business side of things early.”

Beetle has unique connections in the world due to a forward-moving gaming world of which she is an active member. It was through those connections that Warden Publishing Co. was able to contact her and ask about her experiences with COVID-19.

Beetle said her company in New York typically works with China, and knows that production of products slows down before and during the Chinese New Year.

“We were preparing for that,” Beetle said. “Normally our factories open right after the Chinese New Year — I’ve worked here for years, it is a yearly thing.”

However, the virus shut down China about the same time as employees were released for two weeks to celebrate the New Year. When China was supposed to reopen, Beetle’s company received news that the country would be closed longer.

“I started to be a little worried because I saw it happening,” she said. “It’s a ‘not-in-my-backyard’ kind of thing. China is a distance away, ‘we are okay, nothing is wrong here.’ But business-wise, we were already seeing it.”

Noting that changes could be coming, Beetle said she sent her boyfriend to the store to stock up.

“While we didn’t buy 77 packs of toilet paper, we bought rice and beans and he made fun of me a little bit,” she said. “Now the stores are out of everything, and that is what strikes me the most. Walking into grocery stores and not seeing shelves full. Around here, it is very weird.”

While there is food, it is not the variety or maybe not the same brand she usually would buy. Many people are using food delivery services, but those services are so busy they have a week to wait once they have placed their orders.

“I still go out food shopping because food delivery services around here are overbooked,” Beetle said. “Out of the people I know, 75 percent of them have food delivered.”

Many people are having their groceries delivered and then have to go to the store anyway to get the food that wasn’t available when the order was fulfilled. Many grocery stores are offering delivery service, but other companies such as Best Buy have also caught on to the trend.

“Best Buy is doing same-day delivery. Order online and they deliver to your house,” Beetle said. “I don’t know if Target is doing it, but a lot of places have adjusted to deliver services,” she said. “Restaurants are adjusted to delivery or curbside pick-up. You park, call, and they bring it to your car.”

Everything is as much hands-off as possible. New York state’s 19.5 million residents have been under a stay-at-home order by Gov. Andrew Cuomo since early March. It was supposed to expire on April 26. However, due to the continuation of the spread of COVID-19, Cuomo has extended the stay-at-home order through May 15.

Beetle works for a company that supplies advertising goods with printed company logos — usually the freebies that businesses hand out to potential customers. The company was forced to layoff most of its 50 or so employees.

“We are down from fiftyish people to seven — it’s two people in the office and five people in the factory — another two or three work from home,” Beetle said. “The only reason I am working right now is because we have been using masks and gloves.”

Cuomo’s initial order specified essential businesses only would be allowed to stay open. Beetle said her company met that qualification because they sell bottles of sanitizer, one to two ounces each, as part of their promotional stock.

“I don’t know what will happen in the long run, but I know my boss is worried,” Beetle said.

The company sold out of their hand sanitizer products early in the pandemic. Beetle added that unlike several other companies who raised their prices on sanitizers, her boss did the right thing and kept it the same. Still, she is surprised by the animosity of some of the customers.

“I can’t guarantee the product in the next three days,” she said. “Now it is natural. We are doing the best we can and so many people, because they are worried about their money or don’t have as many orders, are demanding. They don’t understand we are out and about, getting things done for them.”

She added that because of the decrease in employees, she is doing much more work on her own. Meanwhile, their two household income is down to one.

“Someone at Rod’s work got sick, and they wouldn’t tell him who,” Beetle said. “He works for a large company, and is now out of work until April 22. Once they found out someone was sick, everyone was out. They didn’t have a choice.”

Beetle added if someone in her immediate vicinity is sick, she would be expected to quarantine for two weeks. She worried that would be the case when Borges was sent home, but her boss asked several professionals how they should proceed, and told her to keep him informed since Beetle didn’t have direct contact with the sick person.

She added that conversations that used to be mostly about work or idle questions now seem to mostly revolve around health and family.

“That is first part of conversation, ‘are you ok? family ok? how are you doing? do you need toilet paper?’” she laughed at the last question. “I never would have thought a couple of months ago I’d be asking someone if they needed toilet paper!”

In rural areas like Owensville and Belle, the scarcity of toilet paper seems to have eased, but in New York, Beetle said, “we still can’t find toilet paper, and we are okay with it.”

When they do find it, the prices have gone up exponentially, paying as much as $8 for a four-pack. When they do go out in public, masks and gloves are a requirement, but Beetle says while many are taking the virus seriously, plenty of others aren’t.

“Everyone should be wearing (PPE), 90 percent of people are, but many are not wearing them correctly,” Beetle said. “They don’t realize it. A lot of people who are wearing surgical masks don’t realize there is a piece of metal at the top they should squeeze around their nose. People are not doing it. The most amusing are the ones who wear the masks looped around one ear.”

Her commute to work has dropped from a 30 or 45 minute drive to just 10 minutes, and everything is quiet — yet neighborhoods like where her apartment is are booming with activity.

“During the day at home, you hear all the kids outside, open a window and see people and dogs walking by,” Beetle said.

In the industrial area, near where she works, the police were going through businesses and even closed a few because they didn’t consider them to be essential.

“There were five to seven cop cars out there at one place, and I am in the middle of the block,” she said. “They waited until everyone left.”

Her company has had to order its own sanitary masks and gloves so people can work inside, but even product shipments has been interrupted by the virus.

“We had a shipment of hand sanitizer from Canada, we have been buying from Canada or the USA, and our production manager waited for the shipment to come in,” she said. “The driver wasn’t there yet around 8 or 9 p.m., so the production manager arranged to meet him out front of the business at 7 a.m. and the driver said he would sleep in his truck outside.”

Between the production manager going home and the driver meeting the next morning, the state of New York ordered all outgoing shipments of hand sanitizer from the Canadian Company and asked that all shipments in route to other businesses be delivered to state departments immediately.

“The driver gets a call from dispatch ordering him to reroute our order to the state — the truck sitting outside our building, with paid goods, was rerouted to the state of New York. I agree hospitals should get sanitizer first, 100 percent, but what struck us as surreal was that a truck was rerouted with our goods.”

She said the manufacturer did replace their goods, but it took longer for them to get it.

When asked if she felt the state of New York was going too far with the stay-at-home order, Beetle said she felt the opposite.

“We have talked about it and a lot of us believe that it should have been shut down immediately,” Beetle said. “Everything. Just stay at home two to three weeks, and it would have been over. But people like me, even though I am providing a service — I am going out in the world, getting groceries, gas, because I need to go to work.”

She said the United States didn’t pay enough attention to China in the beginning.

“China — I won’t say they were lucky — but the virus started sparking off right before their Chinese New Year where everyone goes home for two weeks,” she said. “If you look at their time frame, a month-and-a-half, and now look at us — going on two months and already saying it is going to be longer. I think we should have shut down quickly and sooner — so what if I can’t buy Frosted Flakes on the shelves? I am willing to not have a few things short-term.”

She said she tries not to be scared, and checks in on her 87-year-old grandmother in Colorado regularly.

“She can’t leave the house, she lives alone, and is going stir-crazy,” Beetle said. “If everything had been shut down, this would be over by now.”

She knows and works with people who have been directly affected by the virus, including one individual whose mother and husband were both hospitalized and have since died of the virus.

“Still, they are only taking you if you are having trouble breathing,” she said. “If I thought I was sick, I’d call the doctor, they would ask me questions. I did that after having pneumonia in January and the flu in February and still had a cough. They say I am fine, I don’t have the symptoms, and they don’t think I am sick.”

If someone does have to go to the doctor, they have to call first, then wait in their car once they are there until someone comes out to get them.

“It is very strange to me, someone coughs and you look at them,” she said. “One of the guys at work, his mother got sick and ended up in the hospital. When she was released, they had a hard time finding someone to pick her up. A healthy person can’t pick her up, if they get exposed, they have to stay with her for another two weeks.”

She said someone else she works with knows five or six people who have had COVID-19. Her boss’s son and his other son’s pregnant wife both have had COVID-19.

She added that her boyfriend’s brother who is in his last year of nursing school was removed from doing clinicals at the hospital. Other homes are in lockdown, no one in or out, because an at-risk person could be infected.

At work, some of the companies in China that used to sell them electronic items have converted to making masks and sanitizers.

“My boss bought masks from people who we have already dealt with and we market them with the eight ounce hand sanitizers,” she said. “That is what we do now. That is what is paying the bills.”

She said the company still gets an order here and there for their regular product, but not like before.

“It has been stressful, not the COVID, but having to lay off 50 people in one day, and ones that have worked here for over five years,” Beetle said. “I have worked here for 18 years. People who have worked there as long as I have were laid off.”

Some customers don’t care that they aren’t fully staffed, others are sympathetic.

“I really wish I was home right now, safe, even if I am not making money, but I am also thankful to have a job and want to make sure that everyone else has a job in one or two months.”

With her boyfriend off work though, Beetle said they can’t afford to lose their income.

“My mortgage company, the way we understand it, is if you ask for forgiveness you have to pay it all back after three months is up,” she said. “With Rod not working, it is tight and if I do lose my job, I won’t be able to pay the mortgage long-term.”

Some companies furloughed employees while others out-right laid them off of work.

“No one knows when they are coming back. It is a worry of mine and I try not to think about it every day, driving myself nuts.”

She worries it will get worse, worries states will reopen and get sick, forcing supplies to be redirected from her state where it is needed right now. She worries Washington and California may return to normal and spark the virus again.

“Will people die because we are pulling resources?” Beetle asked. “It just takes one or two idiots, one or two sick people. It worries me with them opening other parts of the country.”

She sees the possibility of infection, and it’s a big deal.

“I was upset with someone in the factory for taking deliveries without wearing masks,” Beetle said. “We get a lot of deliveries from truckers, USPS, Fedex — drivers not wearing masks and if they are wearing a mask, they aren’t wearing them properly.”

She thinks it is silly not to wear a mask when a driver could get everyone sick. The precautions aren’t enough.

“It’s too late to close everything, but just opening everything again is not the answer either. I think we are two steps beyond that,” she said. “I think what we need to do would hurt. To say ‘everyone stays home, the only places open are grocery stores.’ Nothing else.”

Beetle said she doesn’t know what the answer is, but she thinks the country is reacting to the problem instead of getting ahead of it.

“‘Not in my backyard,’ it is very easy to think that,” she said. “You know I said to you - that it’s not changed that much. Reading over this it HAS changed. I guess it has already become the new normal for me.”