What we can’t wash off
The Coronavirus outbreak reveals the gaping holes in the safety net
A little while ago, I got sick. Sore throat and fever. Light cough. The Scary Symptoms of Coronavirus. I stayed home. Rested through my limited sick leave, trying desperately to feel better before it ran out, so that I could make up for lost paychecks without infecting my coworkers.
Simultaneous fear of both not being able to pay rent and going back to work and spreading The Sick weighed heavy on my mind. When I entered into the dark realm of “leave without pay,” I went to a clinic to get tested.
I tested negative for strep, all types, which, outside of a worldwide health crisis would normally have been welcome news. I told them one my coworkers might have been exposed to Coronavirus.
They couldn’t test me. They said only certain locations have test kits, and my fever had been gone for 24 hours, so I could legally return to work.
I’m young after all. For most young people hit with the virus, it looks like a cold. Most people without health complications or below are certain age are fine. They recover. Nevermind that I had colleagues as old as 75. I’d be fine. Even if I was the vector that infected a coworker.
The next day, my work, like many public institutions at this time, closed down. To slow the spread of the virus. To slow the spread of the fear. But for me, and others like me facing “leave without pay,” fear is only accelerating.
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I think, when Tom Hanks announced he and his wife Rita Wilson were sick, he intended to use his condition to raise public awareness and initiate a call to action for people to take responsibility for their health and get tested if they weren’t feeling well. They’ve even set the example of isolating themselves to slow the spread to others, something the WHO recommends everyone should do.
These are positive examples to set, if you have the means and access to get tested, and can forego work for three weeks until no longer contagious. But if you can’t?
Around us, the world is starting a slow shut down. Sporting events at the collegiate, professional, and international level are being cancelled. International travel is being banned. Canned goods and toilet paper and emergency rations are flying off the shelves as fast as people can buy them. School districts are closing. Millions will be left without childcare and the school meals their children and families depend on.
People with means are retreating, hoarding, and sequestering themselves, hibernating until the threat is disarmed.
Young, broke, working people are living like it’s the end of the world, taking advantages of the lowered prices of everything, flying places they wouldn’t have opportunity to otherwise, attempting to live life before the crisis’s far-reaching affects takes everything they know.
For working class families, however, life is much the same, if with a new threat looming in the air, in the crowded spaces they visit or work or live. They will either be at work, putting their health and safety and that of their loved ones at risk, or, if their job is compromised by Coronavirus closures, they will be looking for new work, because without it their health and safety and that of their loved ones is at risk.
Who are they to be responsible for — those they care for and support, or the general health of the larger population? And why are we in a situation where this is a necessary question?
What we have, as usual, is a call to individual responsibility for what is a worldwide pandemic. Individuals can, and should wash their hands frequently. If you are able to, you should work from home. There are precautions individuals can take. But without the institutional safeguards to protect our constituents, without the testing necessary to identify and quarantine those who have been infected, without laws to protect health-impacted people from eviction, without guarantees of food and supplies for those who no longer have a means of supporting themselves, the contagion will continue to spread amongst those who have no other course but to keep going with business as usual.
The impetus to protect ourselves as a state, as a country, as a world, cannot be placed on any one individual. It requires a broader, systemic, comprehensive response. And if people’s health were valued at least as much as a stock market bailout, I think, somehow, we’d find the money to do it.