A Death Count And A Dive Bar — The Apathy Toward COVID-19 Lockdowns
When COVID-19 lockdowns became a stark reality, my girlfriend, family, and I made the decision that we were going to take every precaution we could to stay safe until the perceived situation blew over. With grandparents in their 70s, multiple high-risk individuals (including myself and my girlfriend), and family members whose jobs require daily face-to-face interaction, I came to the conclusion I wouldn’t be seeing friends and family until it was deemed profoundly safe to do so again.
It was difficult at first given that I considered my social life quite active prior to covid. I had also just returned from a Disney trip with the family the prior month and enjoyed going into the office most days. But I kept solace in that my friends and family members were all in this together as well. We were playing video games over Zoom call, occasionally making socially-distanced food drops and eventually giving each other advice on quarantine haircuts,
But at some point, that all just changed. It seemed like myself, just a select few family members, and Kumail Nanjiani were the only ones following hardcore COVID-19 guidance.
I get it. An endless amount of time inside with no clear end date in sight can make the stir-crazy, down-right rabid. Maybe if my girlfriend wasn’t immunocompromised and had higher risk factors myself, we would’ve ventured out ourselves.
Prior to March 2020, we tried to see a new movie just about every week. We loved discovering new restaurants together and my girlfriend’s ideal vacation always seems to be some variation of a Disney trip. But we made the conscious decision to be as cautious as possible for our own sake and the health of those we knew.
Regardless, at some point, my social media feed transitioned from friends discovering Tiger King and TikTok to rediscovering their favorite dive bar. Gradually, more and more people just started to say “fuck it”, and went out; exposing themselves and others to unnecessary risks and failing to help “flatten the curve”.
I’m not here to crucify people who have to physically show up to their place of work every day. I’m never going to blame someone for trying to earn a living while our government bodies threw literal chump change at us in comparison to the rest of the developed world and continue to fail to support those greatest affected by the economic ramifications of the virus. It’s also hard to expect someone to work for below a living wage and then have enough mental and physical fortitude at the end of the day not to want to blow off steam doing something reckless.
But the thing I’m struggling with most, a year on from the pandemic’s origin, isn’t the amount of weight I’ve gained, it isn’t the amount of training my codependent puppy will need once she starts interacting with more people. It isn’t even the fear of another sudden layoff or economic collapse; It’s that I don’t know what to think of those people, that large sum of people I consider my friends and family, that just gave up caring about people like my girlfriend and me.
How do I address and view my extended family and the majority of my friends, who had every resource and option to stay home and stay safe, but didn’t?
Throughout the year I’d see Facebook status updates, tweets, I’d even receive calls and texts from friends
“Got tested today. Positive for COVID…”
“Yeah? You spent the entire year putting yourself at risk when you were explicitly told how to avoid that risk, what did you expect was going to happen!”
I can’t start every conversation like that. Especially with my grandmother, who traveled despite having pneumonia earlier in 2020 that sent her to the hospital. She later got COVID after gathering with others for Thanksgiving.
I can’t say that to colleagues from my professional career, who after being laid off just as I was earlier in the year, spent time traveling and vacationing at notorious hotspots for the virus.
I’ll have a difficult time acting that way around my friend who works in a peer-to-peer environment every day, expresses their concern about contracting COVID, but eats inside restaurants every night.
Won’t I? Am I doomed to be a cynical asshole about everyone I’ve come to know?
I mean, it could’ve been worse. They could have claimed COVID was a hoax like so many believed after falling down the misinformation rabbit hole. They might have just been utterly confused, with each city, state, and local municipality having different mask rules and covid guidelines overall.
The Governor of Florida lifted the lockdown, that must mean we’re all in the clear right? The fact that he fired and subsequently arrested a data analyst for the Florida Department of Health who had been publishing accurate COVID statistics, no biggie. Can shrug that one-off like the case of the flu so many compared this to.
Yeah, it could’ve been worse. But 500k+ dead in less than a year is atrocious and hundreds of thousands, if not millions more having to deal with the long-term medical effects of this disease says a lot about how terrible this pandemic has already been.
It could’ve been a lot better too! Look at New Zealand, South Korea, Australia. Dammit, look at China even! Our country had a literal playbook to work with. The game-winning drives were already drawn up and yet we elected to fumble every chance we got to carry ourselves forward.
It’s hard to place blame on anyone individual for the way things have unfolded (normal/average individual or citizen that is. The 45th president and leaders across government in the United States share a large burden for their consistent mishandling of this crisis). But we could have played our part better as people.
When we’re all finally re-engaging face to face with one another, catching up on stories of the past year and the intricacies of our lives that unfolded; at some point, it’s going to come out who stayed home when they could, and who stopped caring. That date is fast approaching and I’m unsure if I’ll be able to restrain myself from visualizing the act of swiftly sucker-punching so many of my friends.
I’m sure I’ll learn to live with that feeling at some point; of being important enough for people to check-in and see how I’m doing, but not actively engaging in actions that would keep myself and others like me safe.
This isn’t a new phenomenon either. Anyone fighting for universal healthcare, expanded economic benefits for those in poverty, or resources for any marginalized group can recognize this same pattern repeating itself. People say one thing, but their actions support another line of thinking. It just seems that the acutely blatant nature of this duplicity is especially prominent this time around.
We thank health care workers for their hard work and sacrifice, meanwhile, we’re further contributing to acute stressors for their work, the healthcare system, and overall greater threats to their personal well-being. We’ve long preached ourselves as selfless people, who will sacrifice for others with little reward in return. If COVID-19 proved anything, if there’s no punishment in sight, selflessness becomes selfishness quite easily.
In any case, I’ll receive my second dose of the Moderna vaccine at the end of this month and will be fully inoculated by mid-April. I plan on seeing some close family members shortly after whom I have not seen for over a year, who will also be vaccinated by that time.
I’ll be excited to return to movie theaters, restaurants, and other venues when the CDC and other health organizations determine that we’ve reached herd immunity or that the vaccine prevents asymptomatic transmissions from vaccinated to unvaccinated persons.
Until then, I’ll be doing what I’ve been doing: Staying home, staying safe, and attempting to reestablish faith in the common decency of those I know. That’s all I can do, aside from pondering whether, if done all over again, the average person would be willing to let hundreds of thousands die in favor of the “joys” of a microwave meal partaken inside an Applebee’s.
