Understanding Your Privilege During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic
/Coronavirus (COVID-19) and voluntary self-quarantine have inspired me to reflect on my privilege.
I took this weekend off, looking ahead to what may be some of the toughest weeks of my career. Across the world, millions (possibly billions?) of people are facing great uncertainty:
What happens if I get sick?
What about those who have no health insurance?
How will I keep paying my bills?
Who will take care of my children?
How long will this last?
Will the economy recover in my lifetime?
How much worse can this get?
In Emergency Management, we prepare for disasters. We do intensive planning in coordination with experts across healthcare organizations - people who lead departments and oversee hundreds and thousands of patients. We drill down details. We test and drill and tweak plans until they are as airtight as possible.
But, we don’t have any impact on the government. We have little impact on the messaging patients receive through media, government officials, and word-of-mouth.
And we have very, very little impact on an actual disaster if all of our public systems are not working together, proactively.
Which is exactly the USA was (and is) not ready to respond to a pandemic.
Bill Gate’s TEDTalk on Ebola and our unpreparedness for a public health emergency is circulating the “trending” feeds for good reason: He makes a reality-grounded assessment of our state of preparedness, compared to the preparedness of the nations and communities that were hit by Ebola. And, he lays out a plan for improving our preparedness… four years ago.
Now, I’m not insinuating that if we just listened to Bill Gates in 2017 when that talk was released, that everything would be fine.
It’s just that COVID-19 has asked me to consider my priorities, personally and politically.
Switching gears, I’m someone who has been extremely privileged through the onset of this pandemic. So, before we go forward, let me first identify my privilege and ask you to silently, to yourself, acknowledge yours.
I was born white, thin, and American, meaning I face little-to-no physical, racial, or national stereotyping.
Being born into a Black or Brown body, a body that was not “born” in America, and a body that does not fit society’s “beauty standards” has a major impact on how you are perceived, and therefore treated in times of great stress. Whether this is how you are spoken to in public, how you are prioritized for treatment, and how readily available resources are made to you -- the discrepancy is too real not to call-out.
Black and Brown communities (include Native reservations and non-American Indigenous “tourist” destinations) are at risk of little-to-no healthcare access, systemic racism being the root of lack of access to non-physical labor jobs, jobs with benefits, higher education, and access/trust of public information about emergencies.
I have a stable salaried position at a company where we all work remotely and have a conscious employer who offers sick leave and other health support.
Waiters. Housekeepers. Lawn care specialists. Baristas. Line cooks. Retail workers. So many individuals work hourly for private companies with no sick leave or paid time off. These workers trade time and manual labor for their pay, and are not able to work from home. Their income, and subsequently their home, car, health, and family safety, are in jeopardy as we close businesses.
Special note: Small businesses, freelance professionals, and artists are being hit tremendously hard right now. Markets are canceled. Stores are shuttered. And citizens are saving their cash for potential emergency purchases. This means the income of millions of Americans has evaporated overnight - and these individuals have a structured safety net.
I live in a smaller-than-average community (with minimal confirmed cases) where I own a home, car, and have access to capital to “stock up” for COVID-19.
Let me tell you how expensive it was for my small family of two humans, two dogs, and one cat to stock up for 1 - 1.5 months (food, supplies, medicine / herbal ingredients, personal care, etc.):
$1,227
I had access to capital and credit to make that happen. This is an immense privilege that millions of Americans can only dream of, usually due to disenfranchisement, systemic racism, lack of access to knowledge and education, and blatant preying by loan makers.
Consider the families that live on disability. Who participate in SNAP or WIC. Families who rent an apartment or home and pay month-to-month, at risk of being evicted after missing one payment. Or, the people who are homeless.
I have no children and no elderly relatives (alive, at this point, but my partner’s parents are over 60 and very healthy).
I’m sure this seems like a weird “privilege,” but sadly, most of my relatives are deceased and therefore not at risk of COVID-19. I don’t particularly need to worry about not seeing my grandmother.
And children… there are so many challenges facing families with children. Closed schools with no access to childcare. Online and home learning with no access to the necessary technology or parental supervision to assist the student. No prior training or education for home learning, which is very difficult for many types of learners. Meals missed at school with no additional or supplemental food at home. Families without health insurance who fear for their child’s safety.
Not having to work through these challenges personally has afforded me so much time and mental space to work through how my family will respond. I had bandwidth, resources, and uninterrupted time to form a plan. Millions of parents do not have this and are in a hard place.
Privilege plays a major role in the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic: transmission, treatment, trajectory.
With this in mind, I want to address how we can all acknowledge where our privilege is helping us in this pandemic, and where disadvantage and disenfranchisement are debilitating our ability to keep all people safe.
Within each of these sections are suggestions for being a good human and putting your privilege to work for the greater whole - and the flattening of the pandemic curve.
TRANSMISSION
Millions of Americans still have to go out - work, errands, medical and pharmaceutical care… other reasons I don’t even think of because of my privilege. If only essential trips were made from home, and precautionary measures were taken to ensure sanitation and reducing the spread of any germs while out, we could greatly reduce the person-to-person transmission.
If you have to go out, carry disinfectant with you and keep yourself (and your station, wherever you are), clean. Politely practice social distance and make your trips as brief as possible.
TREATMENT
There’s not much the everyday American can do to increase access to testing and treatment for the millions of Americans who don’t have health insurance. What you can do from the comfort of your home, however, is: Call your Senator to vote YES on Families First Coronavirus Response Bill. While it may seem like a definite “yes” already, remember that 40 people actually voted against this in the house.
In the meantime, you can prevent people from needing treatment by staying home, reducing transmission, and pausing your in-person contact with people over 60 and immunocompromised individuals.
TRAJECTORY
The social, political, and financial impacts of the Coronavirus (COVID) pandemic will be felt for years, if not decades to come. While Wall Street continues to panic, they’re looking at stimulus after stimulus, so fret not for your investments. Worry more about your neighbors.
Economists are predicting the COVID-19 pandemic may be worse for the world than the 2008 Great Recession. While everyone was hit hard in 2008, it was the working class (the now non-existent middle class), who lost jobs, homes, and prospects for the future. Students graduated from college and couldn’t find employment at coffee shops, let alone in their field. Those whose hours are cut may lose access to health insurance at work, and will certainly be late to their bills if - like millions of Americans - they live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Tip workers extra who are still working, especially those in the service industry and sub-$15 per hour positions (fast food, grocery delivery). They’ll need it in the coming months.
Continue to pay your housekeeper, your lawn specialist, your nanny, and whomever else you support even when they are sick and cannot work, if financially possible.
Donate to your local food bank and other community-specific social services organizations. They will have an influx of demand in the months and years following this pandemic and will need your support.
Special note: No matter your political party affiliation, please vote for the candidate running against Donald Trump.
The Trump administration’s complete botchery of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic shows that he is an unfit leader and that no Republican is willing (or able) to step forward to usurp him. We can go back to party division after we rescue America from another four years of this. Politics is corrupt, I certainly want a revolution, but more than anything, we must prevent any further demolition of our country’s future.
If you have the privilege to be working from home or at home on sick leave, please try to make the most of it:
Read those books you’ve been putting off for months.
Have a game night with your family.
Conference call friends and family during the day to mitigate isolation/loneliness.
Pick-up a forgotten hobby like knitting, crochet, macrame, drawing, sewing, woodworking, papercraft, a musical instrument, or writing.
Avoid relying on “online shopping,” even with Amazon, because actual humans are having to go to work and fill your order. Get what you can locally in as few trips as possible, then hunker down.
Take your dog for a walk, go for a hike, head out for a mountain bike ride, or set your hammock up in a park. Fresh air is important for health, so balance your time at home with socially-distanced time outside.
How are you coping with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic? Let me know in the comments below, and check out my blog post on mental and physical wellness during the coronavirus pandemic.
