A FORMER salesman has been left forced to live under a bridge after the Covid-19 pandemic cost him his job and his home.
Eric Phillip Gordon sleeps in his Ford Expedition SUV which sits parked under a bridge in Houston, Texas, after losing his job in March.
Mr Gordon is one of many people who live in a makeshift village of temporary shelters and tents in the city as the coronavirus takes its toll on the US.
“We used to see homeless people and it almost became a cliche,” he told ABC13.
“I went from a house and a job to $222 and now I live in my car, under a bridge, in Houston.
“I’m sad a lot. I’m isolated. I’m by myself.”
Eric spent his first Thanksgiving on the streets as the virus continues to run riot across the nation.
It comes as the US has been warned it faces its “darkest days” as 65 Americans are now dying every hour from Covid-19.
The crippling toll also continues to brutalise the economy in a vicious two pronged attack on the nation.
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the economic cost of the pandemic is estimated to be $16trillion until fall 2021.
And more than 11.1million Americans were unemployed in October, more than double the pre-pandemic figures from February.
Despite this, people like Eric have been bowled over by the kindness of strangers as Houstonians visit the village beneath the bridge to drop off supplies.
He said: “I’m puffy because I’ve been crying for the last three hours because of the graciousness and the wonderfulness of the people of Houston.
“When you have nothing, it’s hard to be thankful for anything.”
Sincere Phillips who came to drop off supplies, said: “A lot of people don’t understand that less fortunate people are not as blessed as we are to drive around and eat good every day.
“Just a small token of thanks for how I live.”
Pedro Martinez, who came with his family to hand out tamales, said: “We need to support our brothers and sisters. This is a way to tell them,
‘I love you, not only when the things are good.”
Texas is the worst impacted state by the virus – with 1.2million cases and 21,834 deaths – and is still seeing daily around 5,000 new infections.
Joseph Varon, the chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in the state, said that he expects cases and hospitalizations to surge even higher after Thanksgiving.
“My concerns for the next six to 12 weeks is that if we don’t do things right, America is going to see the darkest days in modern American medical history,” Dr. Varon told CNN.
Located in Houston, Dr. Varon said he has been working for 251 straight days because of the pandemic.
“My hospital is full. I just opened two new wings so that I can accommodate for the next few days because I know that a lot of people are going to get sick after Thanksgiving,” he said.
“My nurses in the middle of the day, they will start crying, because they are getting so many patients, and it’s a never-ending story.
“When they finish finally getting a patient in, they get a phone call from the ER that there is another patient getting admitted.”
US coronavirus cases have topped 13million with a record 90,000 people hospitalized on Thanksgiving.
A record 194,000 new cases were reported on Friday.
Millions of people traveled across the 50 states days before the holidays as the daily coronavirus death toll hit its highest since May.
