Everyone’s way of life has changed a little bit lately. Schools, jobs, and sports have mostly gone down the drain, and some of us are barely keeping it together. Cabin fever, restlessness, and stress are coming out a little more in lots of us, and we can’t be blamed.

   However, we aren’t the ones who have it the worst. It’s not the essentials and “essential” workers, either. As obvious as it seems, healthcare professionals have it the worst. Not only do they have to deal with protests and rallies, which spread dangerous and ludicrous ideas, and a far more worrisome virus.

   They have to deal with not seeing their families.

   Working with the virus all day, or even in the same facilities as it, is a gigantic risk factor. Doctors and nurses are risking exposing themselves to the disease, as well as taking it home to their loved ones. So, to deal with half of this, they made an altruistic and expected tough call.

   Our heroes are taking social distancing to a new level. They’re leaving their families, sleeping on cots at hospitals or sending children to safer relatives. If such extreme measures aren’t taken, intense deep-cleaning routines are taken. 

   Pradeep Natarajan, a physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital, has taken up a sanitization process so intense it would normally be done once a week for houses that have a paid cleaner. For Natarajan, it’s daily mopping, vacuuming, double-doing laundry, and showering before they get to say hi to their children for the night.

   My point is simple. If these people, who do hard work all day and can come home to more work, can stay sane and safe, we can do our little part. We’re being asked to do next to nothing, to stay inside. If you can’t do that, you should be ashamed. You’re hurting people.