GUEST BLOG - Covid 19: Naming What Ails Us
During this week's presidential debate, I was once again troubled to hear COVID-19 referred to as "a Chinese disease." While yes, Coronavirus may have traveled from a marketplace in China to the United States and other countries, this does not give the virus a cultural identity. It doesn't care if you are Chinese or American or Swedish or Mexican or Russian.
It's going to do its best to infect you, because that's what viruses do; a cockroach isn't going to walk out of a motel because it doesn't like the pattern on the bed sheets. Aside from the political problems of giving coronavirus a national identity, the idea that it is a Chinese disease is tangibly harmful. There is a long history of using illness as justification for violence against members of the Asian American community.
Others take a disturbingly rosy view of the virus. Yes, it's causing so much disruption and pain and death. But what about the bright side? Like how it's created an opportunity for a renaissance of religious creativity? We can become better people by facing the reality of something out of our control. We can conquer the suffering of the human condition by discovering new moral truths. We can ignore the fact that hospitals have had to prioritize limited beds for COVID patients, leaving people experiencing mental health crises without proper care. Not everyone has the privilege of thinking their way out of a crisis.
So here we are on our journey of definition by elimination. COVID-19 is not a national identity. It is not a simple religious awakening. Nor is it, as some might be tempted to argue, a metaphor for anything. Susan Sontag, in her 1978 essay, Illness as Metaphor, states "As long as a particular disease is treated as an evil, invincible predator, not just a disease, most people with cancer will indeed be demoralized by learning what disease they have. The solution is hardly to stop telling cancer patients the truth but to rectify the conception of the disease, to de-mythicize it."
As Sontag illustrates, medical conditions become a source of stigma when given an outsized role in our imaginations. Instead of viewing the coronavirus as The Phantom of the Medical Opera, we should view it through the lens of science. Greater access to testing, and reliance upon knowledge from credible studies, will give us the compassion we need to see each other's humanity. And to avoid false solutions that will put us further in danger.
Let's try again: maybe, even if it's not an immigrant or a religious savior or a mythical villain, we can define COVID-19 as a beacon of creative destruction. There is no denying that it has created massive disruption and even positive change in business. Entrepreneurship can thrive on this disruption. We could see a rebirth of small business, challenging the market dominance of the likes of Amazon. Corporations could become the community-minded neighbors they used to be, before the rise of the ethic of greed. We could see technology providing automated answers to many of the inefficiencies currently preventing fair access to essential resources.
Or, it could be that the status quo will keep whistling its tune - that is, until we acknowledge the dominant corporate interests that have me wondering if the American Dream got a passport to a country where we can no longer go because of COVID.
To the Chinese American watching the debate this week; to the mental health patient trying to find comfort amid unrelenting anxiety and sadness; to those on the front lines seeking credible protection; to the small business owners whose creativity hasn't been enough to surmount drops in demand due to (justified) caution toward infection - COVID-19 does not define you. It does not define us.
We need your help in finding a reality that reflects our shared humanity. That's not going to come from an easy definition of what ails us. It's going to come from examining how we ail each other, and working to change it
CAROLINE HUNTER, MBA
Trained spiritual companion and group facilitator through Still Harbor (www.stillharbor.org)
Creator of CAROSPARK - Creating conversation where faith, justice, queerness, and ability meet.