Like most everyone else in the United States, we’ve been hunkered down at home for the last couple of weeks. I’ve been ordering groceries for curbside pickup and getting my classes set up to go online starting next week. Initially, the administration at my university hoped we’d be able to resume classes; now it’s clear that won’t happen. Graduation has been postponed. All campus events have been cancelled. We are, officially, in this for the long haul.
The problem is, no one know just how long that haul will be. And that, I think, is what makes this whole experience so nerve-wracking: none of us knows how long it will last.
Meanwhile, students have been sent home early from their study abroad programs. For some of them, that might have been their only chance to travel–and now it’s been cut short. I’m still waiting to find out whether or not I’ll actually be teaching in England next fall. No university will send students to a country with a Level 3 travel warning from the CDC. Even if we’re no longer being told to stay home, the question of when travel restrictions will be relaxed is a separate issue. (Also–in all honesty–if I were a parent, I’m not sure I would be making plans to send my kid anywhere right now.)
I’m not terribly concerned about missing my own trip. I’ll go to England another time, if not this fall. But I’m very sad about the students who might be missing their only chance at international travel. For now, those students are being told to register for classes on our campus as though they’ll still be in attendance. If they aren’t, those classes can be removed from their schedules. But they need to be prepared for the possibility that the plans they’ve made are going to fall through.
And on the one hand, such is life. But on the other–it didn’t have to be this way.
I’m not a lemons-into-lemonade person, by any means. I do think there are good lessons to learn from difficult experiences; I don’t think it helps to diminish those difficult experiences by finding a way to call them blessings. Suffering is real. Disappointment is painful. The student who is missing their only change to travel abroad is absolutely justified in feeling cheated.
But if one good thing does come out of this moment, perhaps it will be the understanding that foresight and preparedness are indispensable. Experts in infectious disease have been warning about another pandemic for years. Those warnings were ignored.
Waiting for a problem to appear is, oftentimes, waiting until it’s too late. Thousands of deaths around the world are testament to that. So is the decimation of whole economies, not to mention individual livelihoods.
And the argument that other illnesses cause more deaths? That this one doesn’t deserve so much of our attention? Well, perhaps we should be taking those other illnesses more seriously, too. Perhaps this is our moment to decide how much death and suffering we’re willing to tolerate.
As the mayor of San Antonio said recently, “I’m not willing to sacrifice anyone.” Maybe that puts him, and me, in the minority. So be it. I’d rather stay at home in solidarity with the small army of people who want to keep their fellow human beings alive than go about my life as if there’s no legitimate reason to be concerned. There is.
Our respect for others’ well-being is the best part of our humanity. And it’s worth protecting, no matter what we have to give up to do it.
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