Covid burnout: An endless series of life disruptions and shattered hopes for normalcy

“It’s kind of like a never-ending cycle with all the variants and everything,” said Gilberto Reyes-Chuela, 24, a college biology student who works at a Hispanic grocery store in Louisville owned by his parents. The mental health toll of daily life is still heavy, he said, from arguments with customers over masking to those who arrive asking for money to help bury relatives who have died.

“They’ll come in and bring like a little box, and they’ll ask for money so they could send the body back to their home country to be buried … Sometimes you recognize the people and — this is more of a mental thing — you realize that life is short,” Reyes-Chuela said. “I don’t know if we’re turning a corner or getting out of it, but I think we’re just in a rut.”

For some who have chosen to remain unvaccinated, there have been huge life changes. Toccarra Gartin, 39, the mother of a 17-year-old and 4-year-old from Floyd County, Indiana, said she was terminated in October after her employer, a health insurance company, did not accept her request for a religious exemption to the Covid vaccine. Gartin is Rastafarian, a religion she has practiced for more than a decade.

She cashed in her 401(k) to support the family but worries about keeping up the payments for the internet — especially if her kids are in remote learning — as well as the mortgage and car payments.

“I’ve been looking for employment. Unfortunately — I think it is due to me not being vaccinated — I submit my religious exemption whenever I do apply, but the majority of the time I get, ‘Thanks for trying, but we went with someone else,'” she said.

Gartin said she wears her mask faithfully and gets tested each week but has still lost friends over her vaccination status and often feels as if she is being treated as a “second-class citizen.”

“Mentally, that has drained me,” she said.

The fear of getting sick with Covid-19 recently led Diana Lopez, 38, to quit her job at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston. If she were to become severely ill, she said the virus could mean leaving her three children, ages 6, 9 and 13, as orphans in a relatively new country after relocating from El Salvador a few years ago.

“I couldn’t stand seeing co-workers who were in the kitchen with (Covid-19) symptoms talking about not wanting to get vaccinated or saying the virus is not real. I’m scared because they were just sent home to quarantine and return to work within days. There are no other health measures, like asking employees to get vaccinated,” said Lopez as she watched her children climb and run at a playground.

For the past week, she’s been applying for jobs and hoping she will be hired to stock shelves at a Walmart. It’s a job that would allow her to socially distance more than working at a restaurant, and those safety concerns are paramount to her right now.

People are ‘eager to have their freedom back’

“Sometimes it seems like people forgot about the pandemic. They are not wearing face masks at all. They are dancing close to each other. I’ve been to homes where there are zero (health) measures taken,” Campa, 49, said in Spanish as he applied his clown makeup at a mall in the Houston suburb of Humble.

“It’s complicated. … I entrust myself to God…and may it be what God wants,” he added when asked about what he does in those circumstances. “Thankfully, I’m fully vaccinated and boosted and if there’s another dose, I’ll take it.”

“They were eager to have their freedom back, eager to laugh again. Because they can’t go to the circus or go to the movies, they are bringing entertainment home,” Campa said.

Still, grim reminders of the pandemic persist. In May, Campa said a family canceled a party when a mother died from Covid, and days later, decided to host the festivities to help the children cope with the loss.

Staff members have been “frantically trying to get people tested and vaccinated,” Chen said, while keeping themselves and their loved ones healthy for months. But at some point, after many waves of the pandemic, “the resiliency of people starts to wane,” she said.

With waves of school infections, the work-life juggling act returns

Covid-19 cases cycling through schools have also created continual stress for parents across the country as warning notices from school officials seem to arrive each week, announcing new cases and potential exposures for close contacts.

The Biden administration has insisted children can remain in school through test-to-stay procedures, but school testing and quarantine policies still vary widely, sometimes with different rules for children who are vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Life right now, Golden said, “is a state of not knowing what the next week will bring.”

“I get these emails two to three times a week sometimes from their schools, and it says there’s been an exposure in the school — and if you need to take further action, you’ll get a further email,” said Golden, who has three sons in public school. “Then I breathe a sigh of relief when I see it’s not for one of our classrooms.”

Fatima Omar recently faced a nerve-wracking situation when she was told her 10-year-old son would have to stay home from his school in Houston for a week after a classmate tested positive for the virus. Her mother died early in the pandemic and she has made it part of her family’s routine to sanitize their home and get tested often.

“I was very scared. Oh my God. … It was too much,” said the 33-year-old in west Houston while waiting in the car pick up line at her son’s school. “I’ve lost a lot of people to the virus.”

“It feels like your life just becomes very jumbled. And then you have to just take a step back and say: ‘This is the situation, so I’m going to do the best I can,'” said Javid, who works for a Louisville land development company.

And for other parents, staying home with their children during remote learning and having to miss work simply isn’t an option they can afford, several Louisville residents told CNN.

Jefferson County parents were advised the district will make a “day-to-day” determination on whether classes will remain in-person, meaning moms and dads like Javid are living text message to text message.

It’s not just parents who are in a precarious position. Many told CNN remote instruction hindered their children’s school progress and had a profound impact on their mental health.

Steve Ullum, a real estate agent and single dad to his 11-year-old daughter, moved away from the Jefferson County school district to enroll his daughter into a private school last fall to avoid more remote instruction, after her grades plummeted and her stress “skyrocketed.”

“I couldn’t watch my daughter sink any further,” he added.

For parents of young children, constant vigilance and a waiting game

Lilibeth Rivas, 20, had hoped to be working in a warehouse in Santa Ana, California, this year while finishing her GED, but it would require putting her two-year-old and three-year-old children in day care. Though she is struggling to pay for food and rent, she says she still cannot bring herself to take that step after watching the near-death experiences of so many family members who contracted Covid.

“Everybody got Covid except me and my kids, the little ones,” Rivas said as the family spread out on a blanket at a Santa Ana park to celebrate her mother’s birthday. “Everybody almost died from that.”

“I haven’t worked because of my kids. I don’t want to expose them,” Rivas said, noting the park visit was their first time leaving the house for fun in nearly a month. “Even for school, I only go like once a week, or twice, so I won’t get exposed around there.”

It’s a struggle many are living across the country.

Rachel Weiss, an associate professor of medicine from Shelby County, Kentucky, who has five-year-old twins and a two-year-old daughter, said her family has “successfully navigated two-plus years now without anyone becoming sick.” Their primary goal is “to keep the virus out of our family, at least until the youngest can get vaccinated.”

“I make my decisions for our family and for my kids based on, ‘Will I be OK with that decision 10 years from now?'” Weiss said.

“If one of my kids, or myself, or family member ended up with long haul (Covid), because I was tired of wearing a mask or wanted to go to something that I knew was unsafe — but it was just easier to say yes to — would I be OK with that decision? For me, the answer is no.”