Yesterday we put our daughter on a plane, heading back to the midwest for her final year of college. She was nervous, we were (and still are) nervous. And if you’re a parent looking into the abyss of the upcoming school year, and you’re not nervous, you haven’t been paying attention.
We, collectively, haven’t been this uncertain about schools reopening since the middle of March. Which means in the five months since COVID-19 surged across the country and the rest of the world, we really haven’t progressed much, if at all.
When students came home for two weeks that turned into five long months, this was a virus with an unknown quantity. It seemed to spread quickly, the victims could have no symptoms, mild symptoms, become deathly ill, or die.
So what has changed?
We know more about how it’s spread, but we can’t gauge who will get sick and ultimately die, although because of the longstanding healthcare inequities baked into our for-profit healthcare system, the Black, Indigenous, brown and other marginalized communities have been disproportionately affected with the worst outcomes.
We still don’t seem to know as much about this novel coronavirus, but we are learning a lot about ourselves, our characters, and our priorities. And right now, it’s not a good look.
About a month ago, I finally started catching up on some of my network programs from the past season. Now, that’s a whole other story about how I get so far behind (I’m still two years behind The Blacklist), but as I zipped through those commercials during the early days of COVID, I saw all the network stars with the PSAs on how we’re all in this together, encouraging us to stay home and stay safe.
In light of all the uproar and noncompliance over people wearing a face covering to keep from spreading this deadly virus, those ads seem quaint now, like a Norman Rockwell painting of small-town Americana.
Because we’ve gone from being all in this together, to it’s every man for himself.
Facemask noncompliance/harassment/threats is the new internet sensation and political theater.
No matter how much it’s explained that this is to help everyone, that the surges could be slowed down if everyone was just a tad less selfish, we’ve shown we’re not all in this together.
Some people have decided if they’re not sick, they don’t care if others are vulnerable.
Our priorities are no longer stopping, or even containing the virus. Tests are not as easy to come by as they should be by this point, and if the lag time between testing and results is too long, contact tracing is useless.
Our priorities apparently are getting back to normal, pretending the virus just isn’t there any more, getting parents back in the workforce, and getting kids back in school.
We all want to go back to some semblance of normality. But we can’t just ignore the death toll which is rapidly climbing toward 200,000, with more than five million people infected in this country alone. We can’t watch our elected officials pass legislation giving more tax breaks and tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires who have managed to thrive during this awful time, and try to force vulnerable people back to work (if their job even still exists) by cutting unemployment benefits to starvation wages. And we can’t sacrifice the lives and health of our children with haphazard safety guidelines (I’m looking at you, Georgia school system).
Yes, we need to start living life again. And our children will need to have the social-emotional learning that comes from a classroom setting. But we also need to start caring for and about each other again. You know, like we did in the olden days — of March.
Cheryl Charles can be reached at [email protected].
