Three Years of COVID – Made of Stardust and Stubbornness

Note: Originally posted on https://jenrohrigdesign.com/

I’m so frustrated that we’ve had three years of a pandemic that very few people have taken as seriously as they should. It’s been frustrating watching everyone drop all precautions and acting as though there’s no reason to continue being cautious. The news paper articles and other media mocking those taking precautions have been happening for a while but they’re getting particularly worse as those of us who are still taking precautions are largely viewed as fearful of everything.

The pandemic isn’t over despite what a lot of people want to believe. We never had COVID under control and most people never took it as seriously as they should have. Part of the reason for that is that the groups most impacted were minorities (Black and Indigenous people, disabled people and/or elderly people). People, including the director of the CDC kept saying only the old and already sick would die. The statement is horrible on its own but it’s also largely a lie given the numbers of deaths there have been from COVID at all age levels and health. But then some of us are used to pushing aside scary ideas and focusing on the positives…

In chapter three of their book “The Future Is Disabled” Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha has a section called “Death COVIDs” and Disabled Grief Access Intimacy” which begins with the following two paragraphs:

“Every single BIPOC person I know had an incredible number of people in our lives die during the pandemic. A lot of us weren’t strangers to death, we’d lost people to suicide or gun violence or cancer before. But the past two years of COVID and the triple pandemic have meant we’ve often lost more people, more quickly, than ever before. I know friends who’ve planned seven funerals since 2020, or lost four people they loved in one month.

And it’s been my experience that a lot of even my white disabled friends were uncomfortable with this kind of mass death faced by their BIPOC disabled friends. They lost people too, but it wasn’t quite at the same level. And they didn’t know how to deal with it when we did.”

Later on in the same section Leah Laksmi talks about the difference between their experiences with COVID – “death COVIDs” and other people’s (mostly white) experiences with COVID – “boring COVID”. I’m admitting my own privilege here – I’m one of the people who experienced mostly boring COVID, at least in terms of my personal life. While I know people who have gotten sick none of them have actually had a serious case or died from it. Which is probably why even at work we’re mostly back to normal. For some value of normal… we should all be thinking about what normal actually means.

Imani Barbarin of the blog Crutches and Spice has an great blog post on that subject: “You’re Never Getting “Normal” Back”

“We cannot afford normal—and it seems that only the privileged are the ones who can actually afford to return to it. To want normal says that you have identified all of the issues put on display and said, “I’m fine with that.” Unfortunately, the rest of us cannot be and never have been alright with normal. […]”

I know exactly how privileged I am in that I haven’t yet gotten sick with COVID, nor has anyone in my family died from it. At least not yet – given how the rest of my family has mostly gone “back to normal” it’s probably only a matter of time.

Edited May 2023

For various reasons I do not wish to discuss at this time I am no longer involved with Marked By COVID. As such I have removed all links to that group.

Another group I’ve been following is the COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project which formed in 2020 and has become “an organization known for comprehensively advocating on behalf of the Long COVID community” – Long COVID is another thing people aren’t taking seriously enough. People don’t seem to realize that even if they’re lucky enough to survive COVID they could still end up with Long COVID symptoms. I know a handful of people who are now experiencing Long COVID – though not directly within my personal life.

I’ve also been following the People’s CDC and their reports about COVID levels as it’s become clear the official CDC can no longer be trusted to give an accurate picture of COVID. “The People’s CDC is a coalition of public health practitioners, scientists, healthcare workers, educators, advocates and people from all walks of life working to reduce the harmful impacts of COVID-19.” They’ve been posting weekly “Weather Reports” about COVID – the latest one is from December 25th.

Soon I’m going to write another post about COVID precautions that we should be taking but also about how those same precautions have disproportionately impacted various groups of people. Because both things are important to be aware of as we go forward with 2023. COVID isn’t over and how we handle it speaks to how we care about others. Meanwhile check out the additional readings and links below