We are here to care for each other
This is a deeply uncertain time. COVID-19 will be especially difficult for older people and those who care for them, immunocompromised people, marginalized communities, service workers, and health care workers; heroes among us working around the clock to save as many people as they can.
Please check on your elderly neighbors, perhaps asking if you can help with their groceries or prescription runs, or setting up their tech and communications systems so they can be connected to you, to their families, and to their health care providers.
We are only as safe as the most vulnerable and least healthy and cared for among us. To keep others safe is to keep ourselves safe. Share when you feel like hoarding, reach out to help when you feel like only helping yourself.
Washing our hands, wearing masks, and physical distancing are the three best things that every one of us can do today. And we don’t just wash our hands for ourselves, it is for everyone we might touch. This is a metaphor for life that is visceral and real today.
People exhibit fear in different ways. Be kind, be gentle with their fear, and your own. But we do have to face it head on. Humans are hard-wired to be afraid of new threats and panic is dangerous. But we can do hard things if we work together. Misinformation, discrimination, and fear-mongering fog up the glass of truth. Stay focused on sources you can trust and what you can do to stay prepared and to help yourselves and others. Balance healthy concern with reasoned action.
Support each other; support your local businesses; see if you can order online from them, buy a gift card to use later, or call for a delivery (tip as much as you can). Discuss setting up a community fund. Support gig workers and freelancers who may be struggling now. If you employ a service worker, pay them to stay home like you. Rally around those who are financially struggling.
Your Tour Support provides mental health assistance for live music and theatre crews, many of whom are now out of a job. Homeless shelters need supplies. Donate to World Central Kitchen and Feeding America (or find your local food bank) as schools close, depriving many children of their only hot meal for the day. Support your local animal rescues. Bookshop.org and IndieBound can help you shop at your favorite independent bookstores online. Check in with your alma maters and local colleges and see how you can help those who are stranded as colleges close. And universities should dip into their endowments as needed to care for their student bodies.
In times of crisis, those who are most disadvantaged will suffer the most, unable to take sick days or anxious about health care expenses, forgoing medical treatment. When we protect them we protect everyone.
We need to trust the scientists and doctors who are at work every day developing the plans and strategies to protect us. We need more tests and more access to them and they must be free. We need our best scientific minds working on vaccines and ways to combat this fast-spreading virus to which we have no natural immunities. Much of what is going to happen remains uncertain, so we take charge of what we can.
We must flatten the curve. Our most critical work right now as a public global community is to lessen the number of sick people who need hospital treatment at any one given time and lessen the demand on overwhelmed health care systems. We must keep as many hospital beds open as possible, and help health care workers get access to resources and supplies for those who need them most. We must wear masks.
We have to cancel non-essential gatherings and stay home if possible. A virus is something we cannot see, and keeping physical distance when we want to reach out (or go about our daily routines) may feel impossible. But it’s what we need to do today so that tomorrow we have more choices.
We have to vote to elect ethical leaders around the country and world who have the insight, experience, temperament, and empathy to lead us through these difficult, complex times. We need universal health care, a UBI, frontline hazard pay, and paid sick leave policies.
Transparency, accountability, and clear, competent strategies are the baseline. If this is not present on the federal level you must insist on it in the leadership of your cities, states, companies, schools, committees, and communities. We need decisive action and flexibility for day-by-day changes. We need relief from debt. We need more compassion and consideration for those in detention. We need assistance for those at risk of eviction.
Advocate for those in nursing homes, prisons, and other vulnerable populations. Volunteer (lots of ways to do that online). Follow your heart.
We are here to care for each other. To serve one another. To build a brighter world for our children’s children. But to do that we need to fight our fear and worst instincts.
It’s going to be difficult, and it’s going to get even more difficult in the coming days. But we can do difficult things.
We can get through this, together.
***
Learn more about Flynn: flynncoleman.community
Twitter: @flynncoleman
Instagram: @flynncoleman
