[For the Zooming in on the COVID Recession presentation at Indiana State University, April 19, 2021]
I have agonized over what to talk about tonight, how to deliver it. I’ve talked to a dozen people seeking advice. To talk about the impact of COVID-19 on this community and the ethics that surround it is a huge task.
And I think that struggle is representative of the pandemic itself. We are stuck here in the middle of a thing and we’re trying to figure it out.
And what is the first thing we do when we’re lost and confused and trying to know which way to go? We try to figure out where it all began.
The origin story
So we go back to where the outbreak is first discovered—the beginning of the story—so that we can turn around and look at where we’re headed. In other words, in the midst of chaos, we find a sense of order.
Now, what is a problem that comes from this approach? Origins don’t really tell us how to get out. And often, they just give us someone or something or some country to blame. This is called a scapegoat. I’m sure you’ve heard the word, but you might not know where it comes from.
An ancient society would take a goat and put its burdens on its back, send it out into the wilderness, taking all of the people’s problems with it. And it would go out there and die. And with everybody’s burdens gone, they would get along. For a while. Until they would fight again.
The thing about scapegoats is that they make us feel like we’re solving our problems without actually changing anything.
Sometimes we take the opposite approach. Instead of scapegoating a person or a people, we hold nobody accountable. This natural disaster or this virus was an act of God. This opposite response, however, has the same effect: nobody takes responsibility for changing our behavior.
With COVID, we’ve tried both of these schemas out and found they bring no order to our chaos. Because neither tries to deal with the actual problems directly.
Hard Truths
So I get the pleasure of helping us think about the stuff we’d rather not. The complicated, frustrating, politically divided stuff that we think should be way more simple than it is.
And the thing is, you all know this. You know global pandemics aren’t simple affairs. The problem is that the containers we put our experiences in, make us prone to certain, easy conclusions.
Here are three hard truths about our pandemic response and two things we’re doing right.
- We can’t treat a public health crisis individualistically.
- Inequality is growing.
- We must keep learning because the virus is changing.
1. We are a We.
Among the many mistakes in our global, federal, state, and local responses to the coronavirus pandemic, the thing we were most unprepared to deal with was how difficult it was for people to understand that our fates are interconnected.
So I don’t just wear a mask to protect myself, I wear one to protect the people around me.
This is an aspect of this particular virus that is very new. We have never had a virus with so many asymptomatic carriers. So from a public health standpoint, this caught the world off guard.
And yet from an ethics standpoint, this is the inevitable outcome of our hyper individualistic era.
Therefore, the problem isn’t about wearing masks. It is the idea that I can take care of myself. The great TP shortage of 2020 made that into high comedy. Sure we can all take care of ourselves. Half of us don’t even know how to wipe without paper.
In a city with communal water supply, we’re pretending we’re not connected. In a state with public roads, we’re pretending we’re not connected. You get it. The virus doesn’t care about your vision of the role of government. But it loves when people get together with other people, unmasked. More lungs to hollow out. And it loves when we don’t protect each other.
2. Inequality isn’t inevitable.
The pandemic has been terrible for the poor, the working poor, the marginal middle-class. So many people have slipped into poverty and underemployment during this time.
It has been tolerable, an inconvenience really, for the middle and upper middle-class and many retirees.
And it has been awesome for Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos, and anyone investing in work-from-home technology.
But it didn’t have to be that way.
Parents have suffered through a constantly shifting set of school priorities, with system-wide changes every other week. And with employers demanding in-person work from parents, we’ve had to decide what level of risk we’re willing to tolerate. Meanwhile, thousands of kids all over the country have brought the virus home from school or daycare.
Children all over the country are wrestling with the trauma of having unintentionally killed their parents.
Again, these scenarios are certainly tricky, but we shouldn’t pretend like this was the way it needed to be. Or that we didn’t have other options. We have chosen this path and it is one that relies on our feeling trapped, indecisive, and without recourse.
3. Relearning the Pandemic
At the beginning of COVID Year One, we used standard methods to help stop the spread of a deadly virus. By the end of Year One, our most vulnerable groups were getting vaccinated. What a year!
We have learned so much since March 1, 2020. And we’ve learned a lot about how to fight the virus, how to work together, and where we might need to go in the future.
But there’s a hiccup in this plan for year two. Variations in the virus are changing the rules.
We’ve spent nearly fourteen months worrying about people over 65—the people most vulnerable to the virus. And at the same time, it seemed almost as if small children were immune.
Right now, the British 1.1.7 variant is devastating young adults in Michigan. And those safe places to congregate: schools and sporting events? That’s where the British variant is spreading.
The virus isn’t done. Neither is our learning. Our public health demands it.
That’s the bad news.
Here’s where we can go.
You know the obvious stuff. Keep social distancing. Get vaccinated. Encourage others to do the same.
Here are a couple of other things we can do.
Help the underserved.
One bright spot in the pandemic is that the population of people experiencing homelessness, which is eternally the most vulnerable population, have the lowest rates of infection in the county.
The homeless are social distancing champs. They already live in pods of friends and avoid unnecessary contact. They are also very hesitant to receive assistance, and the pandemic has increased that hesitancy. And ultimately, they need help that they aren’t getting.
Also, daily and weekly food distribution to the underserved in Terre Haute is higher than ever. Manna From Seven, which does a weekly give away on Fridays is now feeding about 1,300 people a week.
Reach Services is now helping 476 families. And during our joint warming center this winter, they found permanent housing for five different people who came to the shelter during those two weeks.
The pandemic has increased these problems, but vaccines won’t take them away. We need bigger solutions and more help.
Be humble.
One of my go-to Scripture passages in the midst of chaos is Micah 6:8—
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
My favorite part of this is the verbs:
do justice
love kindness
walk humbly
As we have been chasing after an ethic of liberty through individualism, we haven’t done justice, loved kindness, or walked humbly.
At a time when our lives and our communities have been so overturned by this pandemic, we have the opportunity to change that. To not only be present for our most vulnerable, but committed to a humble posture. One that says WE can get through this thing.