Being White during COVID

In the past few weeks, life felt pretty normal. A stroll on Stinson, Sunday hikes with friends, a few dinners at local restaurants. Things I've done throughout the decades I've lived here.

You could almost ask, Did we even have a pandemic?

Of course we did. Actually, we're still in it. Some high-level politicos recently tested positive, as did a few of my friends, and we're seeing spikes in cases overseas as well as in the States. But with mask mandates lifted in Marin County and elsewhere, glorious spring weather that is enticing us to be outdoors as much as possible, and second boosters available for those 50 and older — mine is scheduled for later this month — it's easy to think we are over COVID.

But the truth is that for many people, OK, many White people, the pandemic was never anything to really worry about.

The focus on how many have died, however, ignores the much bigger threat — how many will end up being disabled from the virus.

A disturbing new study indicates what I was observing the past two-plus years in the county, which is more than 80% White — once White people discovered that COVID was more likely to sicken and kill people of color than White people, they were less fearful about the virus, less supportive of COVID protections such as mask mandates and lockdowns, and, most disturbing of all, were less empathetic toward people most vulnerable to COVID.

Shocking, not shocking.

Even though we loudly and frequently praised our essential workers, they were dying at disproportionately higher rates even after vaccines became available in California. That speaks volumes.

Under almost every local COVID story the IJ ran, including some of my past columns on the virus, and in emails directly to me, the comments literally could have come straight out of the study. Marin “only” had 187 deaths from the coronavirus at the time — clearly not enough to disrupt people's fun. Now, we have 243 dead loved ones.

And so many more have been impacted. Every American who died of COVID left an average of nine close relatives behind — that's nearly 9 million Americans. Thousands are children

who will grow up with a mom or dad. That people aren't more upset by this is quite astounding.

But like with some many things, we blame and judge people for their lifestyle choices instead of seeing the structural inequities often in play.

“Like gun violence, overdose, extreme heat death, heart disease, and smoking, becomes increasingly associated with behavioral

choice and individual responsibility, and therefore increasingly invisible,” says Richard Keller, a medical historian.

The focus on how many have died, however, ignores the much bigger threat — how many will end up being disabled from the virus. We're just learning how it impacts the brain, even in people who had mild cases of COVID. And as science journalist and author Laura Spinney notes in her research on the Spanish flu, pandemics have historically left lots and lots of people disabled.

We're really not prepared for how this is going to impact society for decades to come. And, amazingly, not enough people seem to care about what's ahead in their rush to have life be “normal” again.

We are not ever going to have that “normal” again, for better or worse.

Remember how the HIV/ AIDs crisis started? It impacted gay men at first, and so people who were not having sex with gay men didn't worry. It also devastated IV drug users, but very few people have compassion for drug users.

The disease was callously dismissed in the early days even though thousands of men were dying. San Francisco alone lost almost half of its gay community Then we learned hemophiliacs were susceptible to the disease and, finally, that's when people suddenly started to care. Fear, stigma and ignorance drove societal and government response and while a diagnosis of HIV today is not necessarily the death sentence it was in the 1980s and '90s, an estimated 680,000 people around the world died

from the disease in 2020 alone, according to the World Health Organization. The reason why is clear: “HIV disproportionally affects people in vulnerable populations that are often highly marginalized and stigmatized.” Sound familiar?

There are lots of things we can do right now to curtail more COVID infections and deaths and be better prepared for future pandemics in between draconian measures like lockdowns and doing nothing, which is basically where we are at, science writer

Ed Yong writes in the Atlantic. We should be out in the streets demanding paid sick leave, universal health care and more equitable access to COVID treatments.

As long as White people continue to be callous about COVID's racial disparities, don't hold your breath waiting.

Vicki Larson's So It

Goes opinion column runs every other week. Contact her at vlarson@ marinij.com and follow her on Twitter at OMG Chronicles.