We’ve all been affected by this pandemic. People are telecomputing, taking bicycles to work instead of busses, and avoiding meetings to see and greet each other and work together. Things have been canceled that I was very much looking forward to. Virtually every step we take invites a calculation of how to do it safely. I found myself in Boston recently at a funeral for a nephew with people I really care about, everybody calculating whom to hug and whom to elbow bump. Many of us have been making frantic trips to the grocery and the drug store for needed supplies we think may go out of stock or just trying to buy things before the virus spreads any more widely.
I understand that the U.S. refused an offer of a test for the virus from the World Health Organization that has been used in a number of countries, and I gather others are annoyed that we apparently offered to buy a company that was preparing another test to make available worldwide. Unfortunately, there no longer seems to be a good solution to the health care crisis.
I completely understand the logic behind closing the schools. Children often become carriers of disease. They gather in large numbers in school where they pick it up and bring it out to parents and others. Shutting down schools like shutting down theaters can help slow the spread of disease.
But few of us are hermits or live on subsistence farms that can operate without contact with the outside world. Closing the schools leaves teenagers to their own devices, leaves homeless children on the streets, and leaves health care workers with no good places to leave their children.
It’s easy to think that we can take care of ourselves if only we keep everyone else off the street. But we aren’t islands. With schools closed lots of children will be on the streets unsupervised. Many parents will have to work anyway. Even if cities figure out how to care for the children of essential workers with a new system instead of the schools, aggravating an economic disaster on top of a health care disaster creates problems of its own. We need the groceries and drug stores and many other essential services. How many will our governments classify as essential and how quickly can they get it done?
We also need to take care of everyone else so their illness doesn’t threaten us. This illustrates why it’s mutually important that everyone have a right to health care and access to it. And it’s an example of why childcare and senior care have become fundamental. None of us are islands unconnected to the rest of society. My dentist just rescheduled for a month later. What do I do for exercise? Cabin fever isn’t fun.
By the way, this epidemic has not been infecting the poor and saving the rich. It turns out that the rich depend on the poor but are just as likely to infect them as the reverse. The only way to fight this epidemic is to defend and protect each other. None of us is an island alone by ourselves.
I wish you and yours all come out of this well.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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