3/20 Covid-19 Update: "How can I breathe at a time like this?"
I started working on the covid response team at the foundation a few weeks ago, and today was the first day I rage cried. They were maybe the hottest, angriest tears I've ever cried in my entire life. It was uncontrollable anger just finally reaching a boiling point (I'm sure sleep deprivation played a part in it too).
I've tried to keep politics out of this newsletter, and I promise to keep trying again after today. Everyone I know is feeling frustrated, and sad, and scared, and in my experience since the 2016 election, talking about politics doesn't do anything to diminish those emotions for any of us.
But this doesn't feel like political pettiness.This feels like moral outrage.What is happening in Seattle right now was preventable. What is happening in America right now was preventable. What is happening in our world right now was preventable. South Korea and the United States both had their first confirmed covid cases on the same day - January 20th. On February 29, the same day the number of cases started going down in Korea and the same week that Trump called it a hoax, i wrote an email to friends/family about the fear I was starting to feel. I had read this quote by the guy who wrote the definitive history of the 1918 flu pandemic and this was his main takeaway:
“The most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth. Though that idea is incorporated into every preparedness plan I know of, its actual implementation will depend on the character and leadership of the people in charge when a crisis erupts.”
Apparently he was right. How else do you explain the differences in these graphs other than the decisions made by the people in charge?
There's so much that could have been done. Listening to experts. Adequately funding epidemic preparedness. Accepting the WHO's covid test. Working with the international community on containment. Using every resource of the federal government to surge testing capacity once we realized how quickly this was spreading. Clear, coordinated federal guidance on what kind of social distancing was helpful/necessary. NOT CALLING IT A HOAX.
I'm sure we're all tired of looking at growth curves, but I'm including one more.
Some people might think this isn't a time for finger pointing. But I have talked to so many friends in the last few days who are genuinely scared for their health, and their finances, and the state of the world. Friends who don't know how they're going to pay their bills. Or where they're going to live. Or how to take care of their grandparents. Or how to balance their solemn oath as healthcare workers with their desire to stay alive and see their kids grow up. An hour ago the guy trying to manage Seattle's public health response to the pandemic posted on twitter asking any person or business who can help make emergency medical masks to to help. The situation here is dire, and getting worse quickly.
And I don't know how to reconcile these conversations with the fact that 55% of Americans apparently approve of the way Trump is handling the covid outbreak. How is that possible? This administration continues to make decisions, currently, right now, that are going to cost people their lives. At least in Washington, we all know someone who is going to die from this, and it didn't have to be this way.
I know that rage is only useful if we can channel it into something productive and life-giving, and so I'm going to try to turn myself back toward those things.There are so many acts of hope and kindness and goodness and beauty taking place right now as I hate type on my keyboard, and I promise that tomorrow I'll try to get back to those (and include at least one cute animal photo). But today, I think rage might be all that I'm capable of.
So in the absence of anything inspiring, I leave you with a photo of the sunset I took from my window last night, and some hopes for a collective deep breath for all of us.
Alison
Breathe
Breathe, said the wind
How can I breathe at a time like this,
when the air is full of the smoke
of burning tires, burning lives?
Just breathe, the wind insisted.
Easy for you to say, if the weight of
injustice is not wrapped around your throat,
cutting off all air.
I need you to breathe.
I need you to breathe.
Don’t tell me to be calm
when there are so many reasons
to be angry, so much cause for despair!
I didn’t say to be calm, said the wind,
I said to breathe.
We’re going to need a lot of air
to make this hurricane together.
-Lynn Ungar