A liberal’s plea for normalcy
Idon’t want to get COVID. I don’t want my kids to get it, or my husband, or my parents, or really anyone. But I do want my kids to go back to school fulltime. I want to teach in person. I even miss doing my shift at the local food cooperative where I’m a member.
Wanting to cautiously wade into normality does not make me a Republican or an Ayn Rand-reading Darwinian capitalist. It makes me a realist.
When the pandemic hit in March, it blew into New York with full force. Hospital tents were set up in Central Park, morgues could not handle the overflow, people were dying alone in their apartments. The virus seemed to be everywhere: on our mail, in the elevators, on the subway. So we stayed in. We hunkered down and sang from our porches and balconies. We took long walks on empty streets and entertained ourselves by making sourdough and Play-Doh. And we cried. A lot.
When will this be over, we asked ourselves on a daily basis. When can we see friends? Grandparents? Grab a beer or a bagel?
We just needed to flatten the curve, we needed to do our part to help the health care workers in their heroic efforts. We did it. We flattened the curve. In fact, the infection curve not only flattened, it dropped. NYC went from a seven-day rolling average of 5,299 positive cases in April to 300 cases in October. Death rates have also fallen dramatically. On Oct. 16, there were two confirmed deaths attributed to COVID.
This does not mean it’s smooth sailing, that we can attend large concerts or sporting events, or that we can even eat indoors without risk. But it does mean that preventive measures work, that we can stand apart, wear masks and restart some semblance of quotidian life — with calculated risk.
We could even open schools five days a week, with lots of outdoor time, masks and open windows. This is an opinion that is unpopular among the liberal elite of my social media circle. Local moms post pictures of children returning to schools with captions like, “We are putting our teachers and all the people they have in their lives in REAL danger.” In fact, recent results of random testing in NYC schools prove otherwise: Preventive measures work — opening up the possibility that more teachers can return to the classroom if social distancing requirements are met through the use of alternative spaces such as community centers, houses of worship and unleased office spaces.
We simply cannot stay home until everyone is vaccinated. Or rather, not all of us can. I think it’s progressive, not social Darwinist, to understand this.
Those who work in professional jobs that can be done from home, those women who left their jobs to care for their children or no longer have a job because of COVID: They will be home. There are consequences for those who stay home: in lost wages, stalled career advancement and lower mental health and well-being.
And so many workers cannot stay home — particularly those that make staying home possible for a few of us. Grocery store clerks, Amazon delivery folks, health care workers, home health aides, postal employees, bus drivers. They cannot log on from their living rooms or kitchens and Zoom into meetings while wearing sweatpants. Those who have children and need to leave the house to work cannot alternate between muting their conference calls and helping their children find the password for Google Classroom.
Yet in the relatively prosperous liberal bubble that I live in here in Brooklyn, many are unable to see beyond our own circumstances. In September, 12.6 million people were unemployed — a number that has almost doubled since before the pandemic. Nor is the pain equally distributed across racial and ethnic groups; while the unemployment rate for whites is around 7%, it is 12% for Black people and 10% for Latinos.
But to speak out in favor of calculated risk, in favor of getting kids to back to school and people back to work, is to go against the party line. I believe we should open schools five days a week. Yes, we must monitor the numbers and might need to quarantine again, but to live like this until we get a vaccine is a recipe for social instability and economic disaster.
The economy is in shambles and people are hungry, sick and out of work. In my Brooklyn neighborhood, I walked by two lines last week. The first was to enter a cafe selling $5 lattes, the second was for a food pantry. One was six people deep, the other three blocks long. I don’t need to tell you which line was which.