Storyteller: Sasha Tadajewski
Dontae lives in Taylor, about 25 minutes outside of Detroit. He works overnight as a production operator making spindles for Honda at a plant in New Boston. This is where Dontae first heard about Covid, he was at work when he heard his co-workers talking about this virus in China.
Partway through March, Dontae was laid off due to a state-wide shutdown. During this time, he got to spend extra time playing video games and talking to his girlfriend. It wasn’t all fun, Dontae could no longer go out with his friends or do things with his family out of the house. For his family, that meant his mom, two siblings, and himself were all in his house except for when his mom would leave for household needs. Dontae is happy he gets to go back to work and go out to certain places (with a mask) after his four months of quarantine.
In this man’s opinion, this pandemic went far further than it needed to, “People are dumb. If we would have just listened at the beginning things wouldn’t have gotten so out of control. If they would have just stayed at home and worn masks and stayed apart this could have been avoided”.
The hardest part of this pandemic, for Dontae, was when his best friend tested positive for Covid in April. He told me how he was worried because his friend has diabetes, a pre-existing condition which increases the fatality rate in Coronavirus. When his friend was diagnosed, he spent two weeks in the hospital and the two weeks at home, on bedrest before he was able to, very slowly, resume life as normal.
MIPandemicStory 