US Covid Rant
I typically don’t dive too much into what my thoughts are with the US, though I don’t hide that we started looking for a new country on November 7, 2016, but good lord the US response to coronavirus is maddening. I say “response” but I should really say “uncoordinated disaster.” There is no doubt in my mind that coronavirus would’ve made it to the US no matter who was president, but the leadership right now is somewhere between idiotic and genocidal. Only time will tell where on that spectrum this administration falls.
But it isn’t just the lack of a coordinated federal response that is exasperating. It is that absolute foolishness and selfishness of even the best intentioned friends and family I speak to back home. And the hypocrisy. Right now it feels like the whole country is up in arms about what to do about the upcoming school year. There are those who are on the side of send-the-kids-to-school-I-have-to-work-and-am-sick-of-this and those who are on the side of hell-no-I’m-not-sending-my-kid-to-school-and-what-about-the-teachers? I’m really glad to see people concerned about the teachers, janitors, and administrators and their wellbeing, but I am appalled that this is the first time there is a widespread uproar about the safety of workers during the pandemic. Until it was teachers’ health at stake, the same people were perfectly fine with putting the Amazon warehouse workers and delivery people at risk to deliver their packages in a day or two. They were fine with the line cooks coming into restaurants to prepare food for their take out meals and margaritas-to-go. They demanded that the Michael’s and the libraries stay open to serve their entertainment needs without making so much as a peep about how the pandemic could infect those workers.
And these are the people who are really, really trying to do the right thing. These aren’t the people who are planning vacations to crowded beaches or Disney World. These aren’t the people demanding that bars open up so they can have someone serve them. These aren’t the people who are carrying on with life a usual because coronavirus is just like the flu and only kills 1% of the people it infects.
Sorry America, you haven’t made a good attempt to lockdown and reduce the community spread of this virus. You’ve put your need for stuff and services ahead of the health of those workers, and now coronavirus has a solid grip on you.
I don’t pretend to know how to fix the US’s covid problem (but hey! This rant makes me an armchair expert, right?) but at this point could anything other than a total, complete nationwide shutdown and stay at home order work? And I mean an actual stay-in-your-house lockdown. Send someone to pick up groceries for the house once a week, and that’s it kind of lockdown. Something that is hard, painful, but short as opposed to this long, drawn out, coronavirus-is-here-to-stay-purgatory that currently exists. The current effort seems to be - at best - full of half measures. I think the New York Times is on the right track with this Op-Ed, but I don’t think county-by-county measures would work. Too many people would simply hop skip into an “open” county, spreading the infection to new places. If there’s one thing we can all agree on, its that there is a large percentage of Americans who won’t or can’t believe that coronavirus is a real threat and are getting upset that anyone should inconvenience them.
Yes, this would be expensive. People would have to have monetary support to get through a lockdown like this, but would it be that much more expensive than the toll of a perpetual cycle of lockdown/open up/infections skyrocket that the US is currently trapped in? Not to mention the immediate healthcare costs, lives lost, and other longterm health issues from coronavirus.
I’m not in the US right now, but watching this purgatory from the other side of the world is the most deflating thing I’ve ever experienced. The infighting, hopelessness, and destruction breaks my heart. I hate to hear stories from friends about how they were contacted by their OBGYN a week before their due date because their doctor tested positive. Then my friend went to get a test and is positive as well. What will this mean for her birth and baby’s health? I hate to hear from people who are 99% sure they have covid but can’t get a test, or if they can get a test, they’re not willing to because they are afraid of getting stuck with a huge bill for wrap around services. This situation seems unfixable because as effective as a total lockdown would be, it will never happen. The US is too broken, too divided, and too self absorbed to ever be able to do the work necessary to break the chain of infection.
This sort of post that is the reason I call this my “therapy blog.” I realize it is a lot of ranting, so please humour me while I process the state of the world :)
