No, we don’t get to be excluded from a pandemic. As nice as it would be to have a free pass to avoid everything associated with the coronavirus situation, there is no such pass.
We can feel sorry for ourselves that a stupid virus has upended our lives temporarily (permanently, for the unfortunate ones it kills and their families). We can be angry and stomp and yell and throw things (wine glasses shatter very nicely, by the way). We can yield to sorrow and depression and nihilism. We can stubbornly refuse to comply with guidance from experts and rail against government efforts to control the speed with which this thing spreads as attacks on our personal freedoms, and we can deny not only scientific facts but real-time data from other countries around the world who are also dealing with this. We can do all those things. None of them are helpful.
A virus doesn’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. A virus doesn’t care if you had a vacation planned or a wedding or tickets to a concert or graduation or any other human event scheduled. Viruses simply don’t have the capacity to care, and because they don’t, we must.
We must care for one another by taking precautions and protecting the most vulnerable among us, by supporting our local business owners and our displaced workers in whatever way we can, by looking after our neighbors and friends if this thing drags on, which it’s likely to do, given what we’re seeing in other nations.
This is going to leave a mark, much like the events of 9/11 left a mark, and possibly a much larger one. What did we do in the face of that enemy? We came together as a nation to defend one another, to do what was necessary for the greater good. Will we do that again, when the enemy is invisible and already among us? For all our sakes, I hope so.
Do your part.
By Niki Turner | [email protected]
