Covid 19 Bunker
The coronavirus pandemic is plugging our world into an amplifier. The best of humanity has gotten louder, but unfortunately, the same is true for the worst. Cruelty is even crueler, selfishness even more selfish. Protesting for the right to get sick and get others sick after just a few weeks of sacrificing for the greater good is stunning in its privilege and arrogance. I want the businesses reopened and people to go back to work, too, but not at the human cost of thousands more lives if it happens too early. The amplification of so much ugliness has been overwhelming, and too often, hope has never been harder to find.
I’ve spent most of these last two months worrying that I’m quarantining all wrong. Not working hard enough or being productive enough to save my job, not helping others enough, not working on improving myself enough. I work as a lawyer at a firm that advises businesses; the impact of shutdowns on workers has forced me to wonder whether I’m next. But as insecure as the work life I’m used to has become, I know of friends and millions of others who have had it even worse, so who am I to complain? The rush to reopen, when we still do not have widespread testing, still do not have a vaccine, and still have many thousands more who the statistical models tell us have yet to die, is a disturbing reminder that for far too many, money is more important than people. The self-proclaimed greatest country in the world can’t even get its act together — with a two-month head start! — to adequately safeguard basic public health, and its economy has been brought to its knees seemingly overnight. With our wealth of resources, shouldn’t we lead the world in preparation for foreseeable disasters like this?
“The strangest thing about this pandemic is how invisible the lives lost have seemed. Aside from a couple dozen celebrities reported to have passed on from COVID-19 or related complications, there have been very few tributes to the dead. We don’t know their names or their stories, which makes it easier not to think about the institutions, ideologies, and leaders who failed them. Labeling healthcare and frontline workers as “heroes” and “warriors” further distracts from the fact that their deaths were preventable and unnecessary. Leaders at the very top levels of government knew this was coming and instead of obtaining and distributing necessary supplies and implementing public health measures, called it a hoax and wished it away. They weren’t even willing to copy off other countries’ more successful papers. Instead they did nothing, and are proud to take credit for it.
The White House, and its daily testing only for themselves (but refusing to wear face masks at hospitals because freedom, for God’s sake), is never going to change, but as I watch hours of repetitive speeches from other politicians, airing live on television every day, I can’t help but wonder whether the wiser decision would be leaving the briefings to epidemiologists, scientists, and doctors instead. (With that said, Los Angeles County has wisely ceded most of its screen time to Dr. Barbara Ferrer, one of the most accomplished public health experts in the country.) Are we being well served by Governor Gavin Newsom’s “in real time,” “in this space,” and “meet this moment” catchphrases being repeated ad nauseam at noon every day? Or should he be making more of the good, evidence-based decisions he’s rightly been getting credit for?
It will take months for this tumult to settle, and possibly months longer for us all to make sense of it. Maybe I should only speak for myself: it will take months to sort through everything that has happened in just two short months. The one takeaway I have found is that cruelty is winning the battle against kindness.
Making Waves has been a refuge in the midst of this storm. Reconnecting ourselves to our humanity has helped me find that missing hope, and it’s reinforced that we should all be a lot more kind to one another by the time this is all over. Here’s hoping Making Waves, and projects like it, continue on after we’ve re-emerged to whatever the world that remains will be.” - Zacahary Spear : @climbandmaintain
