In the wake of our still unraveling political crisis, the peace of mind we’ve been struggling to retain is now being threatened by the increasing danger of the world’s most recent pandemic. The COVID-19, Corona Virus, or “Rona” as us youths have taken to calling it, has been racking up death numbers and shutting down the economies of some of the world’s largest and most influential players. There is a lot of anxiety over how quickly and easily the virus is spread and the damage it can cause. Currently, there is said to be two major risk factors that can heighten the chance of becoming deathly ill from COVID-19: old age and pre-existing conditions. However, a third factor also plays a large part, poverty.
Given how easily spread and contracted the virus is, many nations have been implementing mandatory quarantines and shutdowns of businesses, schools and tourism hubs. Everyone is tense as the possibility of infection looms on their minds and some are finding that innocent sneezing can now be considered a dangerous sport. Given the fear and need to contain the virus, self-quarantine is being sold as an effective way to limit the numbers of infections so that there are enough resources to manage the virus. Quarantine has been used before in pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu to decrease the number of new infections and deaths. States that did not follow quarantine rules were hit the hardest and recorded the highest mortality rates. Given that many employees currently work under an unfair economic model however, quarantine is an option that is not available to a lot of workers. There are many low-income jobs that cannot be done remotely or do not offer paid sick days thus requiring workers to put themselves at risk even in the midst of a pandemic. While some persons will try their best within their limited means to not contract/pass on the virus, they will inevitably expose themselves and others simply because they could not afford to do otherwise.
Poor persons will also suffer from the unethical practice of price gouging by businesses and the shortages and increased cost of living that will come from panic buying/hoarding. Only a day after the virus was confirmed to have contributed to the death of an elder returning from the US, many began panic buying of sanitizers, cleaning agents and food while many businesses staying true to their parasitic nature, sought to exorbitantly raise the prices right in front of their shoppers. Many things are revealed to us in times of crisis and could hold important lessons for how we operate as citizens, consumers and business entities once the dust settles. With the post election slowdown of the economy and now COVID’s building numbers, everyday items are steadily rising and persons are already finding it hard to stay afloat. If and should the situation become more dire, many can see themselves facing starvation in the face of unavailable goods. We’ve only begun to see the beginning of what the fear of this virus can do to our country and how it will impact the most vulnerable amongst us.
The increased unpaid work women will be burdened with in this crisis is something that should not be overlooked. Given how unknown and misunderstood women’s unpaid labour is, I was pleased to read Ian McDonald’s article last week on “the true value of women’s work.” Women’s unpaid labuor has been supporting the growth and smooth movement of the world’s economies from the beginning and in times like these, women will be relied upon more and more. With women making up the majority of health care and social workers, they are on the frontlines of this crisis and face even more challenges in managing it. With many mothers being sent to work from home or let go without paid leave, their lives will become even more stressful in the weeks to come as they seek to perform the unpaid and unthanked labour of cooking, cleaning, teaching and performing childcare duties while facing the worries of mounting debt and limited income.
Something to note is that this virus and its impacts is much more than just that of a natural disaster. Its threat was precipitated by neoliberal capitalism that caused weakened social safety nets, public health degradation and environmental destruction in the face of hoarded wealth. If the chance crossover of a virus from animals to humans has been able to cripple the global economy in this way, it might be high time for government and businesses to reevaluate our current economic models and adjust them to fairer and equitable systems of distribution. If anything, COVID-19 is showing us the inadequacies of the system we prop up and how necessary and humanity-bound social programmes are.
