I am not a big fan of celebrations, especially those which arbitrarily mark a beginning or end, but in this year the familiarity of a closure ritual, especially one that gives some kind of personal reboot, is absolutely vital to our mental health. So, during one of the longest, coldest nights this year not long after the solstice, as daylight hours begin to lengthen ever so slightly, though we can’t really get away, lets agree to whatever ritual we each need to put the dumpster fire that was 2020 behind us, shall we?
It will not feel right. The pandemic will not be close to extinguished on December 31st by any measure. Strangely, the November election is not quite behind us either, partially because it exposed how we as a people don’t inter-relate in the civic realm very well. The virus is still spreading virulently. It exposed how norms and the truths on which our commonality were based also victims in 2020. So are desperation and poverty creeping in amongst us like a second plague whether we see it yet or not. No matter our politics, even if we are not sick, most of us are not well. It was a cruel year.
We like to feel that we are in control, that we have personal agency (“freedom”) in all areas of our lives, and the independence to pursue what we want, how we want to, when we want. Those are convenient fictions confounded this year. Some took to the streets believing these desires—the right to not wear a mask– were equivalent to the civil rights issues that also came to a head in 2020. Sorry, not so. While the virus might have underscored how connectedly in-this-together we are, it didn’t much. Instead of a collective experience of suffering and coming together to organize a response and protect each other which might have bonded us as a people, during 2020, we found ourselves separated, disoriented, unrested and very much in the late middle of an experience that chose us. For much of the year a large portion of the populace believed that the virus was a hoax, then many of those, in the face of fact believe the election was illegitimate. We don’t seem to agree on the basic tenants of our group operating system right now. That will not end with 2020.
The clicks that will pass from 11:59 on December 31 to the next are neither a beginning nor the end unless we collectively choose to pivot from these cynical untruths going forward. How that is to happen is far from clear.
The full history is yet to be written of our COVID, post-truth situation. I liken it to the years when the U.S. was in full isolationist mode before joining WWII. We don’t know yet how 2020 (and beyond) will change us, personally or collectively. What we know is that we are still in it no matter what the calendar says. Our experiences are changing us. It is likely that much of 2020 will not be looked upon kindly from a historical perspective, how this election assaulted truth, how we resisted public health measures and have not adapted terribly well to repel the simultaneous assaults on our health or our democracy. From all of that, it is time for us to begin to move on without pretending.
There is good news. Just this month vaccines are being distributed. This rollout provides some solace from the truth that daily deaths in late December 2020 are averaging about 3,000 Americans each day, which increases the 300,000 COVID death toll by 1 % daily. That daily figure, for reference, surpasses the 2,077 who died on September 11, 2001. The total U.S. COVID death toll surpassed the 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam on April 28th. It surpassed the American fatalities in WWII this past month. By March, even as the vaccines begin to be more widely circulated, the death toll is likely to surpass the half a million soldiers who died in the Civil War. Amazingly, most of us do not see the Pandemic as being of that scope of cultural impact yet. It is.
Like each of those tragedies, the toll on the living is also terrible.
We are not “close” to being through the virus or the damage it has done to us. For many local businesses in our region, it will take multiple years to recover– if they hang on. For the economic and mental health of many individuals, some who were disadvantaged before, others newly so. The impact of this period may never really escape them—ever, unless we make fundamental policy changes as a nation. Prior to COVID, poverty rates in the U.S. were hovering between 10 and 15% of the population—that’s around 33 million Americans or roughly the population of Texas and Louisiana. This report issued Dec 15th by the Universities of Chicago and Notre Dame states that 7.8 million MORE Americans are living in poverty now than were in June. That’s about the population of Colorado and New Mexico combined. We not been compassionate about poverty when it comes to national policy, slowly chipping away at the programs that make up the social safety net since the 1980s. Keep up your personal giving if you can but know that our individual giving is not keeping up.
We have approached these challenges differently in the past with success—the New Deal, the Great Society. The difference is that we were not persuaded convincingly that there were others amongst us who were less fortunate because they were not trying as hard, or that they were fundamentally different.
Just one story on that. I spoke just before Christmas with our communications director, Judi LaPoint. She was shaken. She had just completed three days of sorting, selecting, packaging and delivering presents from the Summit Rotary Adopt and Angel program to needy families. One of her last deliveries was to a single mother with two children living in a travel trailer “the size of a bathroom” as she put it… out in the open in a parking lot exposed to the wind in Fairplay. The woman had to walk to get groceries because her bald tires could not climb the hill to the store. Somehow she made it to work in Summit County every day. More of us are getting glimpses like this than ever before.
For people such as the single mother in Fairplay, this has been an extra-brutal year. There are millions more who are living with similar challenges, and millions more are joining them as this progresses. And yet, we are a resilient people who have come together following more wretched episodes in our history. It will take significant mustering to begin to repair and fix what is not right with us. Right now, our existential threats are within us—virally and mentally.
So find some ritual to mark the end of this year—you need to–then let us gather ourselves and next year press our leadership to meet that compassion with policy. We have that in us. Locally, in our communities, there has been a tremendous outpouring of public and private coffers for direct aid. Nationally, not so much for six months between May and late December.
So, how DO we close out the Pandemic/Economic Crisis/Election/Thoroughly Unrestful Year 2020?
The strategy I recommend is to look back and reflect with greater clarity, identify what needs to be done differently in the future and then act on it. For many Americans, the COVID year 2020 began the second week of March. For those of us surviving, whatever shelter we have, the rhythm of our lives was radically altered. Our sense of time, of scale, of self, of our place in history has warped considerably—because we are very much amid that history being made. Before the dust settles, we have an opportunity to shape outcomes. We tend to be a people who has to live our history to learn from it.
When we begin again in 2021, there is that opportunity.
