“Honestly, that’s what we’ve got. We’ve got each other.”
David Cobb was talking to the Journal about Cooperation Humboldt, the nonprofit he co-founded, and its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But it’s true of all of us. In ways that have never been so plain, community resilience is vital. And it will likely be further tested in the weeks and months to come.
As this edition of the Journal went to press, Humboldt County had been fed a string of seemingly reassuring news, going nearly a week without a positive COVID-19 test and just two since April 7. On April 20, Humboldt County Public Health also announced that all but five of the local residents diagnosed with COVID-19 have since recovered, meaning they have met the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria and are no longer in isolation.
But this good news bears the risk of complacency. While Humboldt County hasn’t seen any of the “liberation” protests cropping up in Sacramento and elsewhere, with the president’s apparent support, similar sentiments have bubbled up on local social media. Even Humboldt County First District Supervisor Rex Bohn quipped in a Facebook post, “Would I like an easing of the restrictions sure I think you folks have earned it.” Some, it seems, view this pandemic as somehow behind us or overblown or something we can decide is over, like a punishment. It is not. A million times, it is not.
Earlier this week, we reported Butte County Public Health Officer Andy Miller’s disease model, which he said was “endorsed” by the state. It included a median projection — falling between best- and worst-case scenarios — in which Humboldt County could see 40 COVID-19 deaths before June. Some charged simply reporting on this was fear mongering or sensationalist. But we think readers should know this is the projection state and local officials are using to plan for a potential reality.
As you’ll read in this week’s story on infectious disease modeling, models aren’t crystal-ball predictions peering into an already decided future. They’re informed best guesses aimed at guiding public policy decisions. If we as a community practice aggressive social distancing and abide by the spirit and intent of shelter in place, we change the assumptions behind these models and bend the projections down. If we cluster together to protest public officials’ prioritizing community health, we bend those projections upward. Then we may find ourselves thinking wistfully of that time the state thought just 40 of us would die over the next five weeks.
This isn’t to say sheltering in place, leaving businesses shuttered, savings accounts depleted and bills unpaid while trying to homeschool our children isn’t hardship. It is. But it’s also a communal sacrifice — as in wartime — that experts have deemed necessary to minimize the number of Humboldt families who have to pay the ultimate sacrifice.
What has buoyed our spirits throughout recent weeks — and gives us tremendous hope that we can navigate whatever lies ahead — are locals who have seen this as a chance to be our best selves, to swallow fear and angst, and help someone. Last week, we profiled two organizations stepping up in big ways to meet community needs. Peninsula Union School, one of Humboldt County’s smallest, has morphed into an outreach organization not only feeding and educating its students, but delivering supplies to vulnerable community members and connecting them with services. Cooperation Humboldt, meanwhile, has launched a vast countywide online registry where people can ask for help or join the ranks of a fleet of able-bodied volunteers assisting neighbors they’ve never met.
We will be navigating this for a long time, whether or not we see temporary or partial reprieves from shelter-in-place orders. COVID-19 is not going to disappear and we are likely at least months away from the the kind of testing infrastructure needed to get a handle on the virus and its spread. But even amid so much uncertainty, we have each other.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Pearl Buck wrote: “Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”
This is the test that COVID-19 — a disease that cruelly preys on seniors and those already sick or frail — lays bare. And the measure of who we are will not show in what reopened when but how we protected those who needed it. We’d all do well to follow the lead of groups like Peninsula Union School and Cooperation Humboldt, to set up systems to help those most vulnerable among us stay home and limit their exposure, and to keep them emotionally connected.
And to those of us over the age of 65 and/or with underlying illnesses or compromised immune systems: Please lean on your neighbors. They worry about you and want to help.
Honestly, that’s what we’ve got. We’ve got each other.
This article appears in Front Window.
Yes we need to sacrifice. We need to sacrifice our fear, all to easy to embrace, for rational thought, not so easy to embrace.
The virus will not go back in the bottle.
The elderly and at risk populations need to shelter. The rest of us need to be free to make our own personal risk assessment and decide for ourselves to go back to work and school. We must achieve herd immunity.
We must make this sacrifice for the common good.
“Some, it seems, view this pandemic as somehow behind us or overblown or something we can decide is over, like a punishment. It is not. A million times, it is not.”
Predictable of you both to include vindictive drivel. There’s ample reason to suspect events around the pandemic are overblown. You will not truly explore the myriad reasons why. You refuse to. You don’t practice what you preach. You preach, for one thing. You both preach a lot. Neither of you are good at objective journalism. You’re both great at “angering your readers”. That doesn’t provide intelligent information. It’s divisive smut.
At a time when we need each other more than ever, I am dismayed to find so many that post in the nextdoor site and here that are being disparaging toward the president, which hurts me, and also being judgmental and disparaging toward those with whose politics they don’t agree. I was especially appalled by the response to the photo of the guy with the white supremacy tshirt. Nobody asked whether he was ever interviewed so as to determine what his views actually are (and why he is wearing the tshirt); nobody offered an opinion that maybe there’s room for all political opinions (as long as no bad actions accompany them); I thought it was hypocritical for that board that responded to state that “we are an inclusive community…..” No, you’re not included if your opinion is politically incorrect. One guy did ask “why is it not okay to be a racist”? We are becoming a society that is attempting to control one another through “virtue signaling”–group coercion, which is used to usher in new political ideologies, such as the one preceding the holocaust.
While I don’t agree with the idea that any race is superior, I want my fellow citizens to be free to express their opinions as long as it’s done in a non-hurtful way.