This is an opinion column.
Young women in a Birmingham coffee shop said they would not let fears of coronavirus keep them from work or play. They were young and strong, they told each other quite loudly. They’d be OK.
OK.
Older men – middle-aged, I suppose – were as cavalier in a Homewood restaurant. There is nothing to fear in Alabama, they assured one another, for they were sure there are no cases here. They’d go to work if they felt poorly, as they always had.
OK, not OK.
Because there may be a lot we don’t know about COVID-19, particularly in Alabama, where the number of people tested is so low that it tells us nothing about the spread of the illness or whether it has actually reached the state.
But there is one thing we do know:
It is not about you.
It is not about whether you are young and strong, able to soldier on through sickness with steadfast resolve.
It’s not about you.
It’s not about whether you have honed your work ethic over a lifetime, whether your self-worth is determined by your ability to show up earlier and work longer than your colleagues.
It’s not about you.
I could say it’s about public health and responsibility, about washing your hands and coughing conscientiously and paying enough attention to realize people are dying across the world and people around us are frightened about what may or may not come. But it is really about common decency, and love.
You may be strong. You may be young. You may be healthy. Some may even be willfully ignorant or strategically in denial – like Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, who told my colleague Kyle Whitmire that Alabamians shouldn’t be concerned about “something that may not ever happen.”
Which is a classic defense of failure to prepare, in a state that did not even begin to test for the virus until last week, in a place that seems all too happy to simply not know what it faces.
Clearly Alabamians, and Americans, and citizens of all the world are beginning to understand the severity of this illness, and the threat it poses to the economy and institutions and most of all to people, particularly older people and those with weakened immune systems.
We all love people like that, even if we rarely bother to think about it. I know I do.
It is not about me. It is not about you. It is about us. All of us, all ages and conditions and strengths and weaknesses. Our best hope is just a little consideration for one another.
We see the NBA suspend its season, and college basketball tournaments are being cancelled. We see the president impose a travel ban that seems both late and confused, and we see the stock market fall on fears of the illness and the response and the potential chaos. Of course we fear medical collapse, but we hope all those fears are overblown.
Let it be nothing. Let us be strong. Let us be healthy. Let it all be OK, and let us get back to our lives.
Let us.
But in order for us to do that we have to interrupt those lives, hopefully only for a little while. We must, as a state, provide testing to those at risk for the virus. We must, as a government, provide a strong and realistic response,. We must, as individuals, push for paid sick leave for those who do not have it and face financial ruin for staying home. We must protect ourselves so we can protect those we love. We must, as decent people, have the courtesy and character to protect those we do not know.
In the end, perhaps, it really is about you.
John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register, Birmingham Magazine and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.
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March 12, 2020 at 11:04PM
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Love in the time of coronavirus: It’s not about you - AL.com
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