Certainly, I can feel Mr. LaHomme's anguish. It was over a year ago I was present when a family member, not a heck of a lot older than I am, died in an ICU unit from COPD. This was 2019, no pandemics were present, and so the family was allowed to be there for her final hours, as she literally gasped for air, her body pumped full of morphine. It was a moving experience; I had known this person for about 40 years, and we had what I would call an uneasy relationship for about half that time, but I was glad that we had made peace with each other for the final two decades. A good chunk of my stimulus money this spring went toward her headstone.
Being present for her end brought me and that part of my family closer. But the loneliness of the COVID deaths -- people dying of many of the same symptoms, but alone and largely unaware of the people around them -- is one of this disease's most unsettling aspects. And unfortunately, our nursing homes have become COVID incubators. In the past, I have had close family members who lived in senior facilities, and I can't imagine the fear and uncertainty for those who live there now, or for those who have parents / grandparents they fear they may never see again.
I live in New York State, about 230 miles from the city, which was the early COVID epicenter in North America. New York City, by virtue of its dense population, bore the brunt; up here, we were more in the "COVID outskirts," enjoying many of the same restrictions but suffering through far fewer deaths. Still, the local newspaper reports a few new COVID deaths every day or two, many of them residents of nursing homes. Names and circumstances are never announced, and I am shocked that given all the current social unrest there hasn't been more demand for accountability.
Myself, I have complicated views about this -- not so much the disease, but the human response to it. In the U.S. everything is now viewed through politically polar lenses, so utter any two words and people assume they can predict your entire world view. As a centrist and an independent thinker, I've figured out it's best if I keep most of my views to myself.
I do live with an at-risk individual, so I do have to be careful. Since late March I've been working from home. I struggle to keep my patience with new hires (yes, we've had several) whom I've never met in person, with whom my primary interaction is Skype, and who use that medium constantly to pester me with minor questions. Only once have I visited with a friend, and I have several close relatives who live out of state whom I probably won't see again until 2021, if not later. Thankfully I live near large amounts of public land, and so I've been able to continue my outdoor pursuits since the beginning. Nowadays when I visit my favorite microbrew, as I did earlier this afternoon, I bring a book to read and find a table where I can keep to myself.
But:
I also think our response to COVID is wrong. I think it asks the biggest sacrifices from the people with the lowest personal risk levels. I think it incorrectly sees the health crisis as completely distinct from, and unrelated to, the massively high unemployment and the sustained social unrest. It equates inaction with heroicism and civic duty in a way that makes my stomach turn: our generation's "Pearl Harbor moment" is to stay home, shut up, and watch Netflix. It wields "science" like a monolithic truth that brooks no dissent: "the experts have spoken, so anyone who disagrees is obviously ignorant." It expects the impossible of human nature: to remain apart from each other for so long.
I grieve for the people who are suffering, and perhaps even more so for the people who have family members who are gravely ill and may never have that final moment together. But I also grieve for the school children who are struggling with sub-par educations, missing out on all of the standard human experiences of building friendships with people their own age. I grieve for the high school seniors whose families have been derided for daring to have graduation parties, or the college graduates who are facing one of the grimmest job markets in a century. I am angry on behalf of the small business owners who are doing their best to comply with health guidelines, only to have some preening ass of an authoritative state governor [cough*AndrewFuckingCuomo*cough] decide on a Thursday afternoon conference call that he's going to change the rules, for reasons that have nothing to do with science or data.
Some people apparently have the ability to rank these crises from worst to least concerning, but I do not. I see them as all concurrent, equal in gravity: one caused by nature, the rest a fearful human reaction to the first. We've been blindsided by nature; it has happened in the past, and the trend will continue unabated in the future. But I just can't help but think that our global response to COVID seems unimaginative, lacking innovation -- and without spouting off any further, I'll end here by saying:
I can agree simultaneously with the people who fear for their own health or that of someone they love… and with the people who feel frustrated by the sustained disruptions to their lives, as well as unheard by what is amounting to an undemocratic process.