Tag: covid-19

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Rocky Road of Spring 2020

The spring of 2020 has been a crazy time; this isn’t my usual one topic/essay post, but I thought it was worth mentioning some important events from this unusual spring: covid-19 first wave, black lives matter protests and an historic Supreme Court ruling for gender equality.

For starters, happy Juneteenth! I look forward to a day when our racist war on drugs ends and our racist justice system (including policing, trials, sentencing, imprisonment) is restructured for equality and emancipation can be more fully realized.

I support the Anti-Racism & Black Lives Matter movements, including (but not limited to) the recent protests sparked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor & Ahmaud Arbery, as well as the weaponization of police by white woman Amy Cooper against Christopher Cooper. These problems, along with so many others are caused by structural racism (aka institutional racism or systemic racism), which many white people are unaware of, but for which a great deal of statistical evidence and personal stories by people of color demonstrate as a significant societal problem. See also: unconscious bias (i.e., implicit bias or implicit association).

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There is No War, There is No Cure

I’m talking about Covid-19 circa March-April of 2020; as of now, there is no war, there is no cure. Aren’t we getting a little tired of MEWA (Make Everything a War Analogy)? There’s no “War on Christmas” and there’s certainly no war against an unbeatable micro-zombie (virus) that’s literally eating humans alive.

We do not have a vaccine; health experts say an effective, safe vaccine is 12-18 months in the future. Even when we do get a vaccine, that’s not a “cure”; a vaccine doesn’t help anyone who is already sick. I don’t understand how anyone can imagine a “war” where you have no effective weapon against the enemy, where the best you can do is run and hide/avoid (which is basically what “social distancing” is).

Americans, or maybe the world, loves to analogize/masculinize everything into a violent altercation, where all conflict is “fighting” and the deepest insult possible is “cowardice.” This is epidemiology, not war, and our best option is preventative practices, which can mitigate the spread. Such practices are borne of concern and caution, not “bravery”; here, the brazen and fearless are not “war fighters,” but instead will be carriers who catch and spread the disease.

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