Has the pandemic "portal" closed?
I am an extrovert, perhaps to a fault. But starting in the middle of March 2020 I spent about six weeks completely alone.
It came at a time in my life when I was already reflecting a lot on the human need for other humans. My therapist had been pushing me to rethink my concept of self-care, and had been teaching me about the concept of collective care.
And then I was suddenly alone.
Except that’s not true at all. I spent hours of each day talking with third graders and my fellow educators. I started talking on the phone almost every day with my parents. I took long walks around my neighborhood, and occasionally stopped at the window of the first floor apartment of some beloved friends. As Passover approached, I felt a tightness in my chest and fatigue, and I worried I had caught COVID. Someone who loves me very much went to the store for me, and brought me two bags filled with my groceries. We stood in the backyard of my building, and looked at each other with masks covering our faces for the first time.
“This is weird,” I said.
“Yeah, it is,” she agreed.
Nonetheless, in my apartment, where I spent about 23 hours of each day, I felt very alone.
I also felt scared and angry as I watched the pre-existing inequities in my city and my country grow even wider. I looked for opportunities to do something, anything, that might be considered helpful. I curated these opportunities - calling elected officials about an eviction moratorium, donating to food banks, signing up for mutual aid efforts, calling elected officials about releasing elderly people from prison - into an “interdependence to-do list.” I felt a little better.
As overwhelming and terrible as the world felt, I also hoped the utter brokenness might open up a new world of possibilities. “I think we might at least get some socialism out of this,” I joked with friends when the Republican controlled government of the United States of America suddenly mailed money to people.
Around that same time, Arundhati Roy articulated this moment of coinciding despair and hope beautifully:
“Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality,’ trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
It is almost two years later. Two years, and at least a million deaths of friends, neighbors, and loved ones later, since the portal opened. What happens now?
I have watched with sadness, anger, and confusion as the portal seems to be closing. The Build Back Better Act promised so many things - it was woefully inadequate and still transformational - before it died ignominiously in the Senate.
It feels like I’ve been trained to expect so little from our government. But, resigning ourselves to this expectation is more than soul-crushing; it’s deadly for millions of vulnerable people.
Millions of immunocompromised people, elderly people, and people with unvaccinated children are begging for us not to “return to normal.” They are not asking able-bodied, vaccinated people to mask and avoid indoor dining forever. But they are asking for policies that account for the range of risk in our society. Paid sick leave, a robust and free testing apparatus, permanent remote work and schooling accommodations, and priority access for certain treatments could save lives. These are also humane policies that would make sense when the pandemic truly ends. Sadly, I’ve seen many shrug their shoulders. “What do you expect?” they say. “Do you really expect our government to get anything like that done?”
It appears that even a basic federal COVID response is ending too.
There isn’t anything “normal” about this. And yet I notice myself shifting back to my pre-pandemic behavior. As I’ve reconnected with friends and loved ones in person, I’ve withdrawn from many others. I may not know them, but I know that our ability to thrive is interconnected.
Last Saturday, I went out dancing with five dear friends. I was in a crowded bar without a mask. It was pure joy. I don’t think our disabled and other at-risk neighbors are asking us to abstain from these opportunities. But, I do hear them asking not to be forgotten and left behind. Those of us ready and able to live our lives more freely, owe a debt of solidarity of those who cannot. We need to lend our voices to the disability justice movement demanding adequate protection.
It’s also worth noting that even for many able-bodied people, a “return to normal” is also out of reach. Families that experienced deaths have been hurt emotionally and financially. Kids who were already receiving substandard educations lost a year or more of consistent instruction. Incarcerated people, elders, and many others are in danger of being left behind.
I feel the portal closing. There is a bit of joy in this because it means we are not in the darkest depths of the pandemic. But there’s also a lot of grief. Because even after a million-plus United States’ residents have died, I worry we have refused to learn necessary lessons. I worry I have refused to learn some necessary lessons.
This is not intended as another self-flagellating confessional or an indictment of my fellow U.S. residents. I know that I generally act out of self-interest, because I’ve been conditioned this way.
But, it doesn’t have to be like this. We can remember and honor what we’ve lost by nurturing our interdependence. We can hope that the pandemic ends quickly, but fight to keep the portal of possibility for a new world open as long as possible.
Other recent writing:
[History Daily] The First Space Walk
[Is Our Children Learning?'] What I remember about March 2020
Other recommendations for listening/reading/watching:
The Millions of People Stuck in Pandemic Limbo
"I'm a Black Woman in Education. I Know Exactly How Ketanji Brown Jackson is Feeling."