Worth Going Out For
You have already heard about it but it’s still worth noting the historic nature of the Coronavirus pandemic the world is facing right now. For a long time it felt like a concern of a distant land, but in the span of about two weeks in early March, it crashed the economy, pushed Emergency Rooms to their limits, and changed the lives billions across the world.
To absorb the initial blow people had to make immense sacrifices, starting with the frontline healthcare workers who kept the aforementioned Emergency Rooms open and saved as many lives as they could. They worked long hours separated from their loved ones while constantly witnessing deaths they could do little to prevent. Many of them even lost their own lives — something that could have been prevented with better pandemic preparedness. In fact, once this is all over, we will need a comprehensive audit to determine how many of those deaths were preventable, because unless that truth is known, such a failure will happen again.
The next, arguable equally important blow, was absorbed by all essential workers — grocery store employees, cooks, transit workers, delivery people, warehouse workers, truckers, pharmacists, farmers, meat packers, journalists, electricians, plumbers and many others. They risked getting ill but kept working, often not by choice, so that society wouldn’t collapse. It is not hyperbole to say that; recall the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of April 2020.
The rest of us have faced varying degrees of discomfort in our lives. Millions of workers who’ve lost their jobs, day laborers forced to walk several hundred miles back to their homes, teachers struggling to continue their lesson plans, students who’ve left campus to return to dysfunctional homes, parents trying to hold on to their jobs with no child support, people watching their small businesses fail and life savings melt away, people stuck with abusive partners, people with disabilities finding it even harder to get basic supplies, and of course, families who have lost a loved one to COVID-19. This is the biggest shared tragedy we have experienced in decades.
That is why for those who are relatively unaffected, for whom the biggest inconvenience is their favorite bar being closed or a canceled birthday party, it is of paramount importance to just stay at home. It is not that much to ask for.
Leaders across the world have invoked the war metaphor — that we are in a war with virus and we need ordinary citizens to enlist —to convey the gravity of the situation . I live in the United States, and war making here is qualitatively different from most other countries. For decades now the biggest burden of war is held by an ever shrinking portion of society, and general misery and destruction is just outsourced (see: Iraq). This time, however, the war feels real. The pandemic experience, in my opinion, has been a lot closer to what war is than any war America has waged in the last four decades. It starts with those in the front lines losing their lives, those in support roles without whom the enterprise falls, millions who are but mere spectators to the destruction of their lives and livelihoods, and the privileged who have the means to ride it out, and will possibly even come out of it better off.
All of this is to say that if you can stay home, stay home. It’s the best thing you can do to win this war.
However, sometimes you need to break this rule. Sometimes staying home is not an option. Sometimes there is an act by those in power so heinous, so criminally callous, cynical, dangerous, destructive and offensive to the sensibilities, that you need to get out.
In mid February 2020 while I was still looking for a job and reading news on the Coronavirus, I felt an unease that I didn’t want to put in words. What if the virus comes here and there are no jobs left? At the time I was living with a Chinese grad student in a small dorm-style room in a student cooperative in Los Angeles. His family back in China had been under lockdown for several weeks by then, and the seriousness with which he took the situation was not in question. He wore masks everywhere and carried an ample supply of hand sanitizer. He even planned to move out as soon as he could to a place with fewer person-to-person interactions. He often talked about his peers calling him an alarmist, and he joked about how America had too much freedom to maintain a lockdown. A joke about cowboys storming city hall seems particularly prescient now.
The message that underlied those jokes is perhaps more important than the moment of levity it brought my anxious, unemployed soul. A society that has become so unequal, so uncaring of those it leaves behind, so cartoonishly divided — a parody of itself — is incapable of mustering the strength and the collective sacrifice required. Under the phony jingoism that is the brand of this country’s Federal government and the popular political movement it rode to power, mask requirements is tyranny and your right to live ends where my right to get a haircut begins. That is the backdrop against which we saw George Floyd get murdered.
The mass protests sparked by that incident in several American cities has raised concerns about how it would further spread the virus. It is a genuine concern, and raising that concern doesn’t preclude you from calling for Justice. However, I would argue that this is the tyranny many were afraid of. This is the government that feels like it can do anything because the citizens are locked down at home.
Can you say with certainty that Derek Chauvin, in the nearly 9 minutes he spent pressing down on Mr. Floyd’s neck, didn’t consider how a quarantine will help him skirt responsibility? Or that had mass protests not broken out, the Hennepin County DA would be in any rush to press charges? What if those passers by who recorded the incident were at home locked down? Would you even know George Floyd’s name or know that he had died or that he never really resisted arrest?
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
This quote has been attributed to many over history but it is a lesson every political operator is well aware of. From the Chicago Boys in Chile in 1973, the Oligarchs in Russia in the 1990s, Neocons in the US after 9/11, disasters — both natural and man made — have provided opportunities for bad actors to accumulate power and impose their destructive vision for the world. I had hoped this time would be different. While we are all distracted from the pandemic, a lot has gone unnoticed. A lot of good has happened too and I will talk about it soon, but right now we need to be focussed on not losing what we have.
There are countless actions being taken worldwide to crush democracy and human rights, and the rule of law is under attack. Hong Kong losing the final vestiges of its autonomy, Hungary losing its checks and balances, Israel moving towards annexation of the West Bank, Brazil quashing anti-corruption investigations, the US moving towards an ever-expanding surveillance state by trying to ban end-to-end encryption, Tanzania suppressing free speech and crushing its vibrant civil society, Indian police receiving an authoritative mandate to enforce lockdowns on citizens without any recourse, and probably a dozen other countries about which I know nothing.
While we want to do the best for the most vulnerable to the virus in our communities, we cannot and must not allow our voices to be left unheard. Wear a mask, and social distance as much as possible — the virus is a serious threat and the consequences can absolutely be deadly. Take every precaution. Self-quarantine afterwards to protect your community. But don’t be silent. If you can, get out. It is worth going out for.
