jonetta rose barras: Don’t stand so close to me

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has insisted that to slow or halt the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 citizens must practice what has been characterized as social distancing. Agency officials have advised people to stand at least 6 feet away from each other. Ultimately, this strategy may help wrestle the coronavirus, preventing the country’s health care system from being overwhelmed and reducing the number of deaths.

The work of state and local governments across the country in dealing with the pandemic has been praiseworthy. President Donald Trump and his administration bungled the country’s initial response. He persists in misleading the general public. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate approved the relief bill sent from the House, which among other things provides money to pay for sick leave. There is also talk of funding for the hardest-hit industries and cash for select citizens.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had already shifted at least $5 million from the city’s reserve bank account to cover escalating costs for supplies and protective gear for first responders. This week, the DC Council unanimously approved legislation that, among other things, will expand the mayor’s authority under the DC Public Emergency Act, which she used to declare a public health emergency, while giving her more time to submit her 2021 budget proposal, which had been due March 19. (Tuesday’s meeting didn’t take place in the usual room; in a nod to social distancing, staff members set up seven separate tables so that the legislators wouldn’t be crowded together on a dais.) 

The legislature’s emergency bill takes effect immediately, having been signed that night by Bowser, and lasts for 90 days. It includes unemployment benefits for those adversely affected by the virus and the public health emergency, defers sales and other tax payments by commercial businesses, and allows the mayor to offer grants to small businesses. It also prohibits utility companies from shutting off service to those adversely impacted by the city’s anti-coronavirus-spreading regime; landlords are not allowed to conduct any evictions throughout the public health emergency. 

Prior to Tuesday’s vote, DC Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt appeared before council members, urging them not to go beyond their proposed legislation. He referenced a Feb. 28 letter in which he told elected officials that the city’s finances would be fine as long as the economic outlook for various industries, especially that of hotels and restaurants, remained flat. “We’re not staying flat; we’re going down to the bottom,” he continued. If the health emergency continues through June, he said, the city will need to cut $500 million from its current 2020 budget. 

DeWitt said he will provide a revised economic projection next month for the mayor and the council, which can be used to prepare the fiscal year 2021 budget and a revised spending plan for 2020.

In their comments Tuesday, council members hailed the collaboration that produced the relief bill while acknowledging that it’s just a start.

“While many of [the] provisions will undoubtedly go a long way in supporting residents, employees and employers, I know that, unfortunately, this emergency measure cannot meet the vast and varied needs of every worker or every member of the small business community,” said Council Chairman Pro Tempore Kenyan McDuffie, echoing the sentiments of his colleagues. 

They get no lip from me.

Still, I have been wondering about the long-term adverse impact of social distancing on the way we relate to each other. Will the physical and psychological space between us as family, friends, neighbors remain after the emergency is lifted? Will people fear that the virus may be lurking in the darkness, waiting to show its ugliness once again?

Truth be told, even before Wuhan, China, gained its current notoriety, we were in trouble as a society. Over the past nearly four years, Trump and the Republican Party have dramatically and unabashedly altered the standard of civility, integrity, honesty and humanity. Using lies and misinformation, they have deliberately divided Americans for their personal, political and financial benefits, creating indisputable forms of social distancing.

Technology, too, hasn’t been any slouch, creating fissions while disrupting or destroying previously warm, friendly and familiar methods of communication. Text messaging, in my view, has forced us into imprecise thinking and abbreviated language structures. 

In his book Why We Don’t Talk to Each Other Anymore: The De-Voicing of Society, author John Locke scoped out the problem back in the late 1990s, writing that “many of us are beginning to develop symptoms of an undiagnosed social condition, a kind of functional ‘de-voicing’ brought on by an insufficient diet of intimate talking.”

For me, the danger of social distancing became apparent with the introduction and popular use of plexiglass by grocers, particularly in poor and working-class communities. I noticed also in the late 1990s, the erection of wrought-iron fences around DC churches. There wasn’t any specific denomination that proved to be the culprit. Fences surrounded Catholic churches, Methodist churches, Baptist churches and Islamic mosques; they surrounded churches where people spoke two languages and churches where only foreign voices could be heard.

In 2001, anthrax, a deadly bacterium, ushered in an epoch in which the personal, handwritten letter began the life of a leper. That year, the CDC warned Americans to be careful when opening letters marked personal or confidential. 

Now, who sends handwritten letters? Many people consider the tradition of sending hand-addressed holiday greeting cards an anachronism. They advocate for its cold and unfeeling electronic cousin.

That reality underscores my concerns about social distancing.

In his book The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, essayist and literary critic Sven Birkerts wrote in 1994: “We are in a period of extreme imbalance. We are approaching a crisis of meaning. It will take some time for the strand of fiber to be stretched. But slowly, steadily, we may see the pressure build and with it the awareness in the individual of a vacancy at the subjective core, a gnawing sense of need.”

Should we consider the rise in substance abuse among young people the realization of that prediction? Could the rise in suicide be another example?

Earlier this year, a third grader who attended KIPP DC Quest Academy killed herself. In September 2019, another elementary-age student also died by suicide. In 2018, 12-year-old Stormiyah Denson-Jackson, a middle schooler at the SEED Public Charter School, died in her dormitory by her own hands.

In 2017, suicide was the second leading cause of death of youth between the ages of 15 and 24. It was the 10th most common cause of death among Americans of all ages. That year, there were more than 47,000 suicides. Of those, people who are 65 and older accounted for more than 8,500, according to the CDC. Experts have said that depression, loneliness and feelings of isolation are key factors in the suicide deaths of many of the country’s elderly. 

Those numbers are dwarfed by the predictions that COVID-19 could ultimately cause as many as 300,000 deaths in the U.S. However, there is a lesson to be learned from Puerto Rico in the days and months following Hurricane Maria. Some may remember in the immediate aftermath of that tragedy, officials reported only 64 deaths as directly attributable to the storm. When a true, full and accurate account was rendered, however, we learned that nearly 3,000 had died as a result of the hurricane and its effects.

Some in the medical profession as well as sociologists are raising alarms about the potential deadly outcome of social distancing. People may not die from COVID-19, but rather from the effects of the virus on their mental health.

I want to be optimistic about Americans’ ability to bounce back and about our willingness to help the most vulnerable. There are some folks out there lending a hand to the elderly and ensuring poor children are fed. 

While the Harris Teeter where I shop had an unprecedented number of customers last Friday when I went there, everyone was helpful and friendly; there certainly weren’t fights over toilet tissue as had been reported at some stores. When my basket blocked a woman’s passage, I apologized profusely; she smiled and said, “We’re all in this together.” We are — except social distancing creates an impression that each of us is an island.

This phase in the fight against COVID-19 may last several more months. The CDC has suggested folks prepare for at least eight weeks of hunkering down. What’s clear from past pandemics is that a vaccine will be developed. The coronavirus will be defeated. 

What, however, will governments and elected officials do to help bring us out of our caves? What will they do to rebuild the social fabric? What will they do tangibly to remind us that we are neighbors, that we are a community?

---

jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.