America, Covid-19, and a Lack of Common Decency

Do you remember when Betsy DeVos, the billionaire Donald Trump picked to be the Secretary of Education, defended the presence of guns in some schools by saying it could protect against “potential grizzlies”?

This absurd comment, made during her Senate confirmation hearing in January 2017, displayed her ignorance, but fifty Senators, all Republicans, voted to confirm her anyway, with Vice President Pence casting the tie-breaking vote.

Do we have a single competent person in a decision-making position in the executive branch of the federal government?

Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and others are demanding that schools provide in-person education, five days a week, emphasizing the fact that COVID-19 is not as dangerous for children as it is for older people (like their parents and grandparents). There is some risk to kids, and some will die, but the Trump Administration doesn’t think that’s enough of a reason to keep the school buildings closed in favor of online learning.

Many parents are also demanding in-person school. They need reliable child care; their children need school lunches; they worry their children don’t learn as well online or don’t have adequate access to technology; and they worry about their children’s socialization. 

These are valid concerns, but in my opinion, while the virus runs rampant in our communities, the risks of in-person school outweigh its benefits. Would people advocate for in-person school if, instead of an invisible microbe, we were talking about a rabid grizzly bear running through our schools on a daily basis? Some children would die, but the risk to any individual child isn’t high, depending on how big the school is and what precautions they have in place. I wouldn’t want in-person education under these conditions, and I don’t want in-person education while COVID-19 cases rise in my community.

How well would my kids learn in-person anyway, wearing masks and staying six-feet apart from their teachers and friends? How would they feel when teachers and classmates start disappearing because they are sick? How would they feel if they bring COVID-19 into our home? There are real concerns about online learning and the ways it contributes to the achievement gap, but any spread of COVID-19 due to in-person learning will disproportionately harm the same children, who are Black and brown and more likely to be living in poverty. That is the impact of white supremacy. 

Thankfully, my school district’s superintendent favors a full virtual experience this fall, but other area schools are still planning to open their buildings. This is especially true of private schools that are unwilling to prioritize safety over money without an order from the federal or state governments.  

The Trump Administration demands in-person school while failing to control the virus. My state’s Governor and Secretary of Health have done a better job. For example, in Pennsylvania, everyone must wear a mask in public, something the Trump Administration has refused to order at a national level, and our Governor continues to encourage telework while the Trump Administration insists on re-opening the economy in a reckless manner. But, so far, my state government hasn’t provided anything more than recommendations for schools planning to reopen this fall. Pennsylvania is not a coronavirus “hotspot” in comparison to many states, but cases are rising.

In March, when my kids’ school closed a few days before the governor ordered a shutdown, I had hoped the pandemic would be over in time for schools to open as usual in September. I didn’t know what to expect, and I’ve been struggling to make sense of this pandemic—and my country’s response to it—ever since. 

I turned to Albert Camus’s The Plague, which my father gave to me as a birthday present shortly after we went into quarantine. This book has been flying off the shelves these days for obvious reasons. Many people see it as an allegorical or philosophical tale, but while reading it in the context of a pandemic, it feels very real. 

Camus writes:

Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

We are several months into this pandemic in my area, and I am still surprised by it.

Camus writes:

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

Stupidity is certainly a contributing factor to my country’s failed response to this virus.

Camus writes:

Throughout December, [the plague] smoldered in the chests of our townspeople, fed the fires in the crematorium, and peopled the camps with human jetsam. In short, it never ceased progressing with its characteristically jerky but unfaltering stride. The authorities had optimistically reckoned on the coming of winter to halt its progress, but it lasted through the first cold spells without the least remission.

Remember when Trump surmised the virus “goes away in April with the heat”? He has repeatedly said that the virus will just “disappear.”

Camus writes:

[O]n this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.

Yes, we cannot join forces with the virus, behaving in ways that fuel its spread. Camus reminds us that there is more to admire in people than to despise in them, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that while watching friends and neighbors act as though the pandemic doesn’t exist, demanding hair cuts, vacations, and open school buildings at all costs.

The people I admire are those who have chosen to fight the virus and its effects, those who, as Camus describes, “refus[e] to bow down to pestilences [and] strive their utmost to be healers.”

I look to the medical professionals who treat COVID-19 patients; the researchers developing treatments and vaccines; the school administrators choosing not to jeopardize the lives of their students and staff; the teachers developing plans to teach virtually, and in some cases, in-person under dangerous conditions; the people who try to make sure no one goes hungry; the caretakers and parents struggling to bring a sense of normality to the people they love while keeping them safe; the people wearing masks, practicing physical distancing, and limiting social activities; and everyone who is finding nuggets of joy in the midst of darkness. 

According to Camus, “There’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is–common decency… I don’t know what it means for other people. But in my case I know it consists in doing my job.”

In the United States, our federal leaders do not have the common decency to do their jobs, and as a result, COVID-19 is surging and people are suffering. These national-level failures make it harder for state and local authorities, school administrators, and everyday people to do their jobs and to live their lives, and yet, so many of them are doing the best they can. Under these conditions, these decent people are indeed heroes.