Going on 18 months after California’s initial statewide stay at home order, SLO County is seeing record numbers once again. As I write, 54 SLO County residents are in the hospital with COVID-19, 18 in the ICU. Across the United States, the daily average for hospitalized COVID-19 patients is now more than 100,000, nearing the same peak of January 2021. But the difference between today and 18 months ago is not just vaccines, it’s also our commitment to one another.
I remember the early days of COVID-19, watching closely as our ICU numbers rose day by day. Nationwide, we took action to distance and mask, we learned to homeschool, nurses and doctors carried our communities, businesses scrambled to adapt, and resource agencies dug in to provide desperately needed relief. The first deaths were recorded and we collectively grieved the loss. During those days, even with stay-at-home orders, communities sprung to action to redefine what was possible in building a culture of community care and collaboration for the global good. And tuning in to the needs of our neighbors simultaneously opened a door for deeper understanding of the voices who have long spoken to the racial inequity and economic disparities that have long plagued us. Our differences and inequalities were harder to ignore. And our essential mutual responsibility to the belonging and survival of one another was more evident than before.
But 18 months later, we have seen the return to rugged individualism that Americans so love, and a “business as usual” political posturing that has families suffering, hospitals bursting at the seams, and the same classist, racist policies deprioritizing the health and safety of people of color and marginalized groups. As we resume school, teachers are holding it all together, and children too young to be vaccinated carry the risk where our communities have fallen short. While hospitalization and death from COVID-19 are still considered rare among children, children of color who disproportionately suffer from chronic health conditions and lack of access to health care, are being disproportionately sickened with COVID-19, too. As cases climb once again across America, non-white children were hospitalized three times more often than white children according to the CDC. In every way possible, people of color are being battered by the racial inequity of COVID-19. Meanwhile, county leaders only went so far as “we strongly recommend” masking indoors (that changed on Sept. 1, after I wrote this), our cities and leading organizations struggle to prioritize actually taking action on equity and inclusion, and a segment of the population took to meetings to demand schools “unmask our children!”
The hope we found in one another in the midst of the chaos of 2020 is turning into the apathy of 2021.
When the work of bringing our communities together gets messy and uncomfortable, when our obsession with exceptionalism is threatened, and our systems programmed to covet capitalism begin to suffer, the default has been to return to normal. To a normal where privilege dictates progress and individual gain trumps communal collaboration. A daily life that prioritizes whiteness and that same old comfortable feeling of “normal” that white America is so bound to.
That moment in 2020 when community care rose for the sake of the global good was a window into what is possible when we collectively rise for the sake of others. This is not a time to tread lightly, not a time for moderate leadership or placating self-interested decision makers, not a time to walk away from each other. This is a time to rise together. As Roxane Gay says, “Now is not the time for half-measures. Now is the time for grand gestures and innovative thinking. Now is the time for remembering the social contract and recommitting to the idea of a unified country where we understand how intimately we are all connected. Now is the time for understanding that empathy is infinite if we allow it to be.”
We need political will in every seat of leadership, and active participation from neighborhoods and board rooms and bakeries and book clubs. There are no seats for bystanders now. No time to allow our past to dictate our future. No time to wait for someone else to sway a vote or another neighbor to meet the need. When we are waffling and stuck in inaction, fear about what may be can be paralyzing. Stepping into participation, getting off the sidelines and into the arena is the only way forward. One small step, one small but mighty action at a time. Community care is about bringing all that you have got to the table, heaving it up there in the most imperfect and messy way and staying at the table to give and receive and clean it up and do it again tomorrow, together.
If we can’t show up for one another now, in the midst of a raging climate emergency, economic crisis, racial reckoning, and a global pandemic that has taken 4.5 million lives worldwide—what exactly are we waiting for? Δ
Quinn Brady (she/her) is a community advocate, organizer, and mother on the Central Coast. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sep 2-9, 2021.
Quinn Brady’s myopic view of society means people must choose between all evil or all good, with her side, of course, being the all good side. Now that Harmon has resigned amidst the FBI investigation, does Ms. Brady go with her?
I’m not sure “community care” collectively rose to the occasion in 2020. I’ve seen nothing but refusal and denial among mostly Repuublicans since the beginning of the pandemic. I thought the images of children in hospitals fighting for their lives would change the anti-vaxers into vaccine adocates. But no, so-called “freedom” must come at all cost, even if children have to suffer for it. Mandates are the only answer now.
It appears the virus is now permanently established in the society. No amount of hiding in our basements will free us of the threat. Like the Asian flu, this virus will be very dangerous to people who are in bad health, presumably in perpetuity.
In contrast to the severity of this pandemic, the Spanish flu was roughly 10 times as deadly on a percentage basis. It did not disappear by any medical solution provided to the society.
I suspect we will need to develop a new attitude in our responses to this problem.
Do the Liberals not remember Newsom and the other West Coast Governors undermining the citizens comfort of the vaccine because Trump was pushing it to market? Newson et al were going to have their own approval process before the vax went to market, but, that disappeared when Biden won. I disagree with the anti vax movement, have my vaccine and even the 3rd shot but this it seems many don’t understand government’s role here or why the distrust. Additionally, some of us also have learned history about government’s trustworthiness in such matters. Remember the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis?
Tony Ventimiglio “Newson et al were going to have their own approval process before the vax went to market, but, that disappeared when Biden won.”
Nonsense, if you want the TRUTH most people said they’d trust Fauci and the doctors, NOT TRUMPS PEOPLE!!!
July 16, 2020- New poll reaffirms that most Americans don’t trust the President, but they do trust Dr. Fauci
” 30% of America’s registered voters say they trust the information that President Trump is providing about the coronavirus.”
October 21 2020- Newsom says California will independently review coronavirus vaccine: ‘We won’t take anyone’s word for it’
Oct 27, 2020 – Western States Join Californias Scientific Safety Review Workgroup to Ensure Safety of COVID-19 Vaccine
Dec 13, 2020 – Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup Confirms the Pfizer Vaccine is Safe and Efficacious for Public Use
Biden says he trusts vaccines and scientists, not Trump
“Kamala Harris says she would not trust Trump alone”
I’m sick of quin brady
I wish he would just SHUT UP !!!!
After the biden disasters…border.. afghanistan…the so call homeless disaster…why would anyone pay any attention to a left-winger?
I was walking my dog at wilderness area close to high st and freeway ….I came across a large human crap…with a dirty rag laying next to it….discusting…then a bum on a bike disappear ed.into the under growth…is this the kind of city you want?