When I was about 8½ months pregnant with my now college-aged daughter, I remember one day looking in the mirror, then back at my husband and jokingly (I think) asking, “have I always been pregnant?”
It just seemed to me that this was the way I had always looked — surely I must have always been shaped like a VW bug, with legs sticking out of it.
My point is, of course, it doesn’t take that long to forget what we used to look, act, sound, or live like.
Here we are, a little more than two months into a global pandemic, and even though we’ve started making tentative steps back into the more familiar world, it’s almost as if we’re thinking, “have we always existed in a global pandemic?”
It took awhile, and it didn’t take long at all. Things went from small to moderate concern, to full-blown scary in what seemed a matter of minutes. No wonder some are in a rush to get back to work, to a life not feeling so incredibly frightened — while others cautiously tip-toe back into the world like the Munchkins after Dorothy’s house crushed the Wicked Witch of the East.
Count me in the second camp.
Yes, as I’ve said before, I also would like to see the dog groomers, hair and nail salons get back to their businesses. I have friends who are independent contractors in different vocations, and it does bother me that while I can work from home, they can’t do their jobs without customers or students.
I would also be more sympathetic to those who are stridently harassing the governors of their respective states to open up the economy if they showed those affected and afflicted by this virus the respect they deserve. If you’re an independent contractor, restaurant worker, gig worker, I hear your desperation in wanting to keep from becoming homeless and your need for food. But I’m not moved by those carrying Nazi and Confederate flags (both symbols of oppression), assault weapons, and signs such as the one depicting an African slave wearing a muzzle and collar that reads “Muzzles are for dogs and slaves. I am a free human being,” while screaming about your rights. Racist and privileged much?
In the end, this is as much an issue of socioeconomic class as it is of liberation.
Those who are most at risk, the first responders of medical personnel, EMTs and police and firefighters, are taking precautions. But those caregivers you don’t think about, the grocery store workers, trash collectors, mail carriers, delivery drivers, janitors and cleaners in high-risk places such as hospitals and nursing homes, are also essential as we ride out this first wave of COVID-19. When you whine and cry and refuse to wear a face mask because it impedes your freedom, you’re spitting in the faces (sometimes literally) of those essential workers, who you’ve also apparently decided are expendable.
Or maybe you’ve decided that this virus is a hoax. If you’re one of those, I won’t even bother trying to engage with you — if the deaths of almost 100,000 of your fellow citizens in a few months’ time can’t convince you this is real, nothing will.
But I do empathize with those who aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from because that stimulus check either didn’t go far enough, or they didn’t qualify for it.
Economic anxiety is no small thing.
Even before we were all told to go home and stay there, there were far too many of us who were living paycheck to paycheck, and about 80-85 percent whose life would be upended by an unexpected $400 expense.
Does this mean those who are in the lower income bracket are just bad with money? Well, no. Some studies have shown that if adjusted for today’s inflation, the minimum wage would be more than $20 an hour.
In the meantime, while this country has waited far too long to actually address the economic inequality, our lawmakers in Washington are telling us that we can’t afford $15 an hour minimum wage and those who rely on tips to get by are told they are worth even less.
I can’t dismissively say it’s only been two months, when I’m one of those who is able to continue working.
What I can say is we’re fighting the wrong enemy. And I don’t mean just the inept policies and decisions that put us all in this pickle, either stuck inside for the better part of the day, or risking our lives to keep the world going as best we can.
If wearing a mask feels like oppression to you, tell it to one of your friends and neighbors who lost a loved one to this illness. If you don’t know anyone, you’re lucky. But chances are you will before this is over. This isn’t going away “like a miracle.” Fifteen cases won’t miraculously go down to zero. The economy won’t bounce back the same way it was before all this started, and because this pandemic exposed so many of our country’s inequalities and inequities in healthcare, housing and job opportunities, maybe it shouldn’t.
While we tentatively step out of our homes and peer around cautiously (I hear Glinda the Good Witch singing “Come out, come out, wherever you are”), let’s change the mindset about policies enacted in the interest of safety. Even if you don’t agree, it’s still not an us vs. them — it’s us and them, which means it’s we. And we have to get through this pandemic and come out the other side — together.
