Have you noticed how we talk about this pandemic? The
language of war has come to dominate our news coverage and conversations.
Scientists and healthcare professionals at every level are engaged in viral
warfare. Persons who are infected battle for their lives. COVID-19 is the enemy, and we are deploying
every weapon in our arsenal at it in an all-out barrage to neutralize this
enemy. Should COVID-19 launch a counteroffensive of viral proliferation, we
will bring in reinforcements until the virus surrenders and a total victory is
won.
Like everyone else, I hope that scientists win their war against
this disease by coming up with a cure. Doctors and nurses help patients in
their fight for life every day, and I cheer them on in their very real war.
Yes, we are in a war against the virus itself.
The problem with war language arises when it bleeds into
other arenas of our shared existence. Once we get above a cellular level, the
usefulness of this language diminishes.
I understand the allure of trying to keep a warlike attitude
on a community level. We read about WW2 and how united our nation was against
the common enemy, and sentimentality makes us long to get back to those days of
unity. If we can all just unite against this common enemy, then we will win. Warfare language begins to be
used for our national response to COVID. What could go wrong with that?
The problem is that the common enemy becomes no longer just the
virus, it becomes us.
When we use the language of war to talk about our response to the virus rather than simply the virus itself, we are throwing
kerosene onto the fire of our already existing divisions. Rather than fighting
the disease, the focus of our hostility becomes each other. COVID-deniers
versus COVID-accepters. Mask-wearers versus mask-refusers. Stay-at-home versus
back-to-work. The battle lines of this war fall too easily into our old political
and cultural patterns. We settle back into the unending trench warfare that
characterized WW1, where front lines never budged even as hundreds of thousands
of lives were lost.
As a result, our forays into hunting and gathering (my
terminology for what I used to call “shopping” in a more innocent time) become
incursions into dangerous territory. We worry about the enemy in the form of the
invisible virus, but we have to worry also about the visible enemy in our
fellow shoppers. Will other people wear masks? Will they follow the directional
arrows? Will they stay 6 feet away while standing in the checkout line?
Even the most mundane experience becomes another skirmish in
this war.
On Mother’s Day, Andy and I made an (unsuccessful, but that’s
another story) attempt to pick up a meal from an area restaurant. As we sat in
our car for over 30 minutes waiting for our pre-ordered and pre-paid meal to
emerge from the restaurant (which it never did, but that’s another story), we
watched one worker bring meals to cars while wearing a mask and gloves. The
other worker wore neither as he leaned into the cars to hand over the bags of
food. We hoped that our order would be brought out by the mask-wearing person.
When I called the restaurant the next day to request a refund for our non-meal
(which appears unlikely to happen, and perhaps that is part of the story), the
man to whom I spoke happened to be the non-mask-wearing person. After he agreed
to look into my paid-for-but-nonexistent order of food, I told him, civilly,
that we had been troubled that he hadn’t been wearing a mask. His response? “Well,
that’s not gonna happen.” When I told him, civilly, that we wouldn’t be back as
a result, his level of caring was equal to the likelihood of him refunding my
$34.72. He is fighting a war in which lost business and possible spread of
contagion are acceptable casualties. And for us, a formerly-favorite restaurant
sits smack dab in the middle of enemy territory.
I feel like I’m a soldier, conscripted into a war which I
didn’t sign up for. And yet here I am fighting in it with the best of them.
Like everyone else, I am combat weary already.
Is there a way for us to reimagine our national and
community response to one another as something other than warfare? I’m thinking
of the image of a highway, where we’re all traveling to different destinations
in different vehicles, yet our journey is shared for a time as we travel along
the same highway. On that highway, there are rules of the road that are
designed to keep everyone safe. Speed limits, passing lanes, turn signals,
tailgating laws are all things which we’ve agreed to as a society to govern our
use of the highways. While there will always be that person who tailgates or
drives at excessive speeds or engages in road rage, the rules of the road keep
most of us behaving as decent human beings. Our common enemy is highway deaths,
and we try to work together to diminish those deaths.
In this time of pandemic, we are traveling an uncertain road
together. We don’t know what’s around the next curve, or even how sharp the
curve itself will be, so we drive at a cautious speed. We don’t know how long
this road will be, so we make sure we’re taking necessary rest stops. We try
not to sideswipe or tailgate others, knowing that we would all sustain damage
in an accident. Like the busiest highway, lives are at stake every day,
especially the first responders and health care workers who put themselves at
risk by tending to us. Shouldn’t we travel with care along this road?
So by all means, scientists and medical professionals, fight
COVID with all-out warfare, using every weapon in your arsenal. Obliterate it,
send it into retreat, claim full victory. For the rest of us, let’s remember
that it’s the virus that’s the enemy, not each other. The rest of us are just
trying to travel this road together, so that we can all get to our destination.
As the signs along the highway say, “Drive Safely. Arrive
Alive.”
