Questions about this pandemic
The political discourse has fallen into predictable ruts of us versus them, science versus other systems of thinking, blaming and predictions. Instead of navigating and commenting on those tropes I am more interested in what is emerging. Here, in no special order, are questions I am thinking about:
What is the role of experts, and, more broadly, of expertise? How is it constituted? What agreements can we make (or aren’t we making) as to how to assess information from experts or anyone else? How is this changing? How is it international, national or regional?
What can historians tell us about quarantine? Coming from maritime practices, when/why were ships forced to dock and when/why were they turned away from ports? How have these practices held up over time in ways unlike other medical/social/disease models? What do you think about cruise ships that let passengers disembark but keep employees onboard when there are known cases among them? (In a recent instance, 100 + employees tested positive, seven are dead, and all the workers are still kept on the cruise ship with no chance to get off.)
What is the role of the state/government in determining individual action? How does American exceptionalism and American/Western individualism mesh with or contest state power?
How have our leaders surprised, impressed, disappointed or otherwise engaged you?
How have you thought about the role of the government and the role of other institutions (NGO’s, non-profits, churches, community organizations like food banks) at this time?
This is an election cycle. How has that influenced your thinking/engagement/lack of engagement?
What are our changing feelings and definitions of confinement, enclosure, imprisonment, exile?
How are we asked to reconsider strangers? Stranger danger?
How is the language of war being used to describe and define this event? Of invasion? Of protection? Public safety?
How are race and race-based immigration laws being used to control popular perception of danger? What propaganda tools are being employed?
How do we see other countries considering these questions?
What are our shifting definitions of “disaster?” How is this like and not-like other things we call disasters? What role does personal narrative have in describing and defining what is a disaster? What is the specialists role (seismologist, doctor, weather forecaster, epidemiologist, etc.) and how do they interface with the personal accounts?
How does architecture and urban planning change during and after a disaster? Who decides what to keep and what to change? Whose input is consulted?
How will interior design – like open office plans - be affected by this pandemic? How will streets, shops, traffic, and gathering spaces be affected?
What are the long term effects of this time in the psyche of different age groups? Children, teens, grandparents? What kinds of memories will graduating seniors/graduate students/medical students who had online graduations share with their cohorts?
How do words like “survivor” and “victim” influence experience?
What are some of the awakenings we are having about family structures? Household work/obligation?
And similarly, about the work of teachers, medical workers, agricultural laborers, food production workers? The gig economy? The ride and house sharing economy ?
How are we seeing economic health, physical health and individual freedom/social responsibility connected?
What are the stories we are telling ourselves about this event? How do myths and fairy tales predict/explain what is happening?
How are we linking this story to climate change or climate crisis? To the radical changes in weather and the increase in global disasters, including the extinction of species?
How does the resumption of what was “normal” fit with those stories? How might we reconceive consumption? Distribution? Access to power to control our lives? How might we be rethinking interdependence?
What role does fear have in biology and how is it a helpful survival mechanism? How has it been manipulated, high-jacked, and amplified for this event? Or diminished when its role might have galvanized a better response?
Has anything about virology or understanding of the role viruses, bacteria, and other natural partners in biology interested you? Scared you?
Has the connection to the global food chain interested you? If this came from bats eaten at wet markets what does that say about the food supply of the world, which is related to the waste we normalize here in America (it is estimated that we waste 30-40% of our food.)
How has the role of worldwide transformation – globalization – figured into narratives about blaming, othering, and fear mongering? What lessons of global commerce and interdependence are we taking from this?
What do we mean by borders? What borders and boundaries are questioned at this moment?
How have the tenents of the Global North constructed paradigms used to see the Global South as inferior – i.e. the global north saw this extent of suffering as unthinkable for itself at the same time it saw suffering in other places (Africa, Latin America) as inevitable.
What are the roles of Federalism vs. Nationalism in crises that span the continent? What arguments could be made to favor one over the other in this crisis? In any crisis?
How is the suffering transmitted? (Susan Sontag’s books: Illness as Metaphor; Regarding the Pain of Others). What is trauma porn and compassion fatigue and how are they relevant here?
Who/what is clean? Dirty? Dangerously dirty?
How do feelings about this relate to immigration and race in general? What stigmas are attached to these?
What stigmas are attached to age in this crisis? How does age influence pandemics – normally pandemics affect young and old but this time old people are more at risk.
How do different societies construct protection for the young and old? How, for instance, might honoring elders in Asian societies make for a difference in social cohesion around sheltering-in-place? Or is that a cultural stereotype?
What do you think of the Swedish response – not closing the economy? Their gamble on herd-protection? Their idea that losing old people to the virus is justified by the idea that they aren’t losing many "person years?"
How might this thinking be a slippery slope into other ways we justify who gets health services? How do we do that already? How did you feel when you heard about doctors in Italy and New York letting some people die and others live because they didn’t have enough Personal Protective Equipment to take care of them all?
What are the lessons from other countries? From their leaders? From women leaders, new to the world stage but remarkable in gathering support. Is this through their leadership - clear definition of the problems, ability to listen to the advice of others, and compassion for suffering?
What is the effect of hoping a vaccine will save us from this? Of wistfully hoping to go back to pre-Covid as normal? For whom was normal working and for whom was it inequal, unfair, unkind, unjust?
How do we anthropomorphize the virus, which we can’t see, onto others – as “Patient Zero,” ”super-spreader,” “asymptomatic carrier?” How does this intertwine with the belief that one's personal health can be protected? Especially if we can distinguish ourselves from those pariahs as part of that protection?
How has this led to violence against Asian people? To migrant workers? To health care workers when they are suspected of transmitting Covid-19? To incarcerated people?
How have marginalized communities in the US that are historically poor and lack decent resources fared – black communities, Indian communities, Hispanic communities? What do we know now we have denied before - that chronic issues of illness, nutrition and access to medical care affect poor communities in ways richer ones can’t conceive? How has the slow violence of poor people’s exposure to toxins and air pollution amplified their vulnerability at this moment? At other times?
How do we interact with people who see this evidence as bogus?
What kinds of social activism will be born of this awareness? How are young people responding, i.e. dedicating themselves to social justice issues because of this? How has their experience as a multinational generation, with internet access to the whole globe, changed their sense of connecting across race/ethnic lines?
How do we justify asking workers in meat packing plants, in grocery stores, in fields, in Amazon warehouses, in fast-food places to risk their lives and their families lives so those with more money can shelter-in-place safely and protect their families?
How has your perception of “who is disposable” changed or been reinforced? Recognizing the vast majority of deaths have come in nursing homes, prisons, and overcrowded blue-collar workplaces, are you more relieved you’re not there, or uncomfortable by how few people point this out? What parts do racism, ageism, and atheism play in who gets health care?
Has your opinion of health care workers changed at all? How has the pandemic altered - or not - your view of the healthcare system in this country? Will the pandemic focus attention to needed reforms, or will politics as usual rule in the aftermath?
How have incarcerated people been affected? What is the relationship of public safety to people in prison? How has our bail system put people at risk of dying because they don’t have $100 bail? How have non-violent offenders, or prisoners who are low risk/old/health compromised been treated? Is it fair for them to risk death when their release is not a hazard to society? How has the for-profit system of incarceration exacerbated this problem?
How do we treat refugees and asylum seekers, considering all of us except Native Americans were once immigrants? How has the recent decision by the Trump administration created rampant neglect, indifference, and abuse to peaceful asylum seekers, thousands of them, many of whom are children? How has the for-profit model of detention centers incentivized keeping them in hazardous and cruel conditions?
How have we responded to the increase in domestic violence? How can we better prepare in the future? Are models like “Crisis Text Line” good to expand?
How much money does each American pay per capita to support this system of prisons and detention centers when the companies are paid $750 a day per person in a detention center and ~$50,000 a year for a prisoner?
Is the above how you want your money spent? Do you feel we have become safer as a nation after decades of locking people up?
How has this pandemic affected your personal income? How do we understand who this is affecting financially? Those who gain and those who are losing financially?
What do you see as the effect of these first months to your local economy?
What do you think will be effects over the next few years?
What changes do you see to our national economy?
How are the economics of coronavirus going to play out in this year’s election cycle?
To permanent changes in global networks? To supply chains?
How has stigmatizing and alienating China going to affect our economy going forward? What is the function of the narrative of making them the bad-guy?
How are your friends and family doing during this time? What kinds of changes do they contemplate in the future?
Do you think we can make changes to our way of being/consuming so we feel good but align more closely with right livelihoods?
What might right livelihood and/or appropriate technology and/or “small is beautiful” mean to you?
What role is the internet playing in the dissemination of information and dis-information? What role have conspiracy theories played and how have they been amplified by the internet?
What role do you think cyber hackers from other countries play in the information we get? To what extent are our fears being manipulated by Russia, or other foreign governments, to sow discord in the social fabric? How is it possible to know? Who is the arbiter of information on social media? About science, politics, justice, disease, vaccinations?
How will a vaccine - and the way anti-vaxxing has become a wedge tool created and supported by said hackers - play out if and when it comes out?
What is the role of privacy with tracking data through devices linked to the internet? Who gets to decide? What would something like “immunity cards” do to our perception of who is ok, who is not safe, who is “other?”
Is this, in fact, a crisis, or is it just a worse-than-usual contagious disease that will pass? To what extent are the flames of panic being flamed by the media, right and left, to generate ratings?
How have online companies gained as other kinds of companies have lost ground?
How have delivery services changed?
What is the role, and the future role, of the US Post Office and how has it been affected by this?
How have your personal shopping habits changed since Coronavirus became part of your vocabulary?
What have you done to help others in need?
How have you, your family/friends/partners/pets fared psychologically and physically during shelter-in-place?
What kinds of activities have you done you never thought you’d do during this time?
What kinds of home remedies and/or folk knowledge have you listened to or tried? Have you heard of or tried anything from Ayurveda, homeopathic remedies, marijuana products, Chinese medicine, ad hoc pharmacological experimentation?
Have you had symptoms that you worried about?
Have you checked out or shared worries on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, or by phone, email, or text message?
Who do you trust to give you good information about staying healthy and has that changed at all?
Do you feel like you would get good care if you got sick?
Has not going to the doctor been a problem?
Do you know anyone who has gotten Covid-19? Are they ok? Are you concerned about them?
Have you had it, or would like to know if you have had it? Are you scared to find out?
Do you worry that if you get sick how bad it might be physically but also about repercussions at work or socially?
Have you got a support system? Money? Health insurance?
Will you lose your job/work if you get sick?
Has worry/anxiety affected you?
How has your sleep been?
Have you had any strange dreams?
How have other people’s experiences of this time affected you?
How has media affected you? Television? Streaming? Facebook? Instagram? Newspapers? Google? Tik tok? Games? Other sources of screen activity?
How has isolation affected you? Or are you living with people you normally don't, or at least don't usually see so much - like being with your partner or kids all the time?
Has your dominant emotion during this time been anger? Fear? Despair? Anxiety? Confusion? Blame? Victimization? Spiritual awakening? Emotional lockdown? All of the above?
What ways have you discovered to mitigate these emotions? What life patterns have you re-evaluated? What new goals have you set? What are the ways you feel you’ve regressed or progressed? In relationships, in self-awareness, in social focus?
How have you gotten exercise or gotten outdoors? What is different when you go out?
What are some of the new words you’ve learned, like “coronavirus” and “pandemic;” “social distancing” and “shelter-in-place?”
How has teaching and learning been affected? Have you kept a journal? Tried new art practices? Written letters?
How does introversion and extroversion suffer/thrive under stay-at-home conditions? How is that manifest?
How has the home/work dichotomy shifted? What is new about working from home? What kinds of roles have changed, or not changed? Are there parts that are liberating and parts that are disorienting?
How has Zoom calling (and other formats) affected you? What is it like to see where your co-workers or bosses or classmates live? What are the pros and cons of this kind of interaction?
What of the above might you carry into the future?
What are some of the potential benefits that might come out of this – for you personally but also for your community, state, country, planet?
How do you think you will tell others about this time? The tri-parts of the disease, the social phenomena, and the historical shifts?