The Great Unleveler

[hrj]

You might think that a pandemic would be a great leveler -- after all, viruses don't care who are what you are. But I spend a lot of time thinking about how Covid19 is going to be a Great Stratifier. And even that highlights and emphasizes divisions. I've commented previously about how it's clear that there are at least three--let's call it four--classes with regard to employment (with a number of subclasses depending on personal situation): those who are able to continue their regular jobs working from home (with variation for learning curve); those who have "non-essential" jobs that cannot be done remotely and so are unemployed against their will; those who have "essential" jobs that cannot be done remotely and so are unable to quarantine; and I'll add a variant of that last category, those who have "essential" jobs that put them in direct contact with infected people and so put them at much higher risk than otherwise.

But that's just the immediate un-leveling. There's also the long-term that operates both on a personal and an institutional level: those whose professional/financial life is unaffected by The Current Unpleasantness, who can ride it out and come out of it essential in the same place; those whose employment (whether self-employed or via an employer) is badly damaged or even destroyed by the long-term shutdowns; and those who--as always--find a way to profiteer off the current social and financial disruptions. I think a lot about that last category and how badly our society is structured to control them or call them to account. We've seen it in the stock market insider trading by politicians with advance access to information on how bad it was going to be. We see it in the businesses being given favorable treatment by corrupt administrations (at all levels) so they can push all the risk onto their employees and customers while jacking up profits. We see it in the way big corporations have pillaged the funding intended to support small businesses during the shutdown. We see it in the way essential services and supplies that should be managed by the government are handed off to middlemen. And we've gotten used to this sort of corruption being "normal" because the institutions that should be calling profiteers to account are instead working hand in hand with them.

There's the un-leveling of the genders because so much of the moment-to-moment maintenance of households that could be outsourced (thus participating in class-based un-leveling) now must be done solely within the household, and as always, the majority of that labor is both gendered as feminine and utterly discounted as economically valuable.

There's the un-leveling of resources among students, as inequities of family resources (communication equipment, parental coaching, etc.) widen gaps that communal public schooling are, in part, intended to address. There's the un-leveling among households depending on how many extra functions the adults need to take up, which impacts how able they are to focus on long-term career activities.

At every step of the way, rather than being a "leveler," the pandemic and resulting quarantine is fracturing the systems intended to provide more equal opportunities. The most effective government actions to address the crisis boil down to "more socialism". I hope we could learn the lesson that, to make ourselves stronger and more able to face a similar crisis in the future, we need to strengthen and normalize those socialist solutions, but what I'm afraid will happen is a backlash, where "getting back to normal" means calling for the dismantling of even programs that have been wildly successful.

I think about this a lot, and my place in it. Because at every step of the way, except for profiteering, I'm in the privileged group. And that means my understanding of the long-term consequences of the pandemic is mostly intellectual. And I'll be in danger of coming out of it thinking, "Well, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

* * *

Saturday I finished the last details of the automated watering system, and since I had to go to Home Depot to get some relevant equipment, I also filled in the last couple of empty spots in the vegetable beds with a variety of eggplants. I do have three beds currently unused, but those are the ones where I want to seriously tackle the Bermuda grass before planting anything. And for now I want to relax about the yardwork for a little while and move on to other projects.

I'm in the process of doing my first real bread batch with Sourdough Sara, as well as finding easy things to do with the starter discard. It means I'm eating a bit more starch than usual and I'd like to back off on that a bit once I have the rhythm of the culture maintenance figured out. So far the discard has made crumpets, waffles, and pancakes.

I keep promising myself to do a serious session of editing all the podcast recordings I currently have in hand, rather than scrambling at the last minute. In theory, I could get all of May set up today if I make it my priority. I also need to do an author newsletter (skipped last month) and post the new releases mini-reviews on Patreon for the last couple months. Those are tasks that don't actually have hard deadlines, but I feel like clearing them off my plate would let me move forward with other stuff.

I took a load of groceries over to Stockton yesterday late afternoon. Chatted for a while, but couldn't stay as long as I'd like because the coffee I'd had on the drive over was taking the express route through my system and I didn't want to undermine the whole social-distancing thing by going in the house to use the bathroom. Generally I like the habit of swinging by the Starbucks drive-through on the way out of Concord for that drive, but I guess I should skip it in the future.

I keep thinking how this slower, laid-back, nesting sort of life would be more enjoyable with someone to share it with, but that's a different highway than the one I ended up on.

Comments

[hrj]

5/2 - temperature 97.4; excursion to Home Depot wearing mask, sanitized cart, some unavoidable <6ft encounters; Starbucks drive-through, wearing mask, unavoidable <6ft but no direct contact (only shared contact of cup); dropped off groceries in Stockton, wore mask, sanitized before and after. (One can always assume "washed hands after returning home for all excursions.)
5/3 - temperature 97.4; no plans to leave the property today.

[hrj]

ETA: 5/3 had interaction (well distanced) with the delivery guy who brought the Omaha Steaks part of my Corporate Attaboy Presents. Unloaded them into the storage freezer then washed thoroughly. Left the delivery box in the garage for later.

[choirwoman]

We're also in the privileged group except for profiteering. I must rein myself in very hard in order not to feel guilty about it (especially with all the "I'm working in a dangerous situation while you privileged people sit back and enjoy it" articles I've been seeing lately). I have two daughters who work in a supermarket, and one as a public health psychologist which can be done only partly from home, so I'm not completely ignorant, but I still feel I'm getting more than I deserve.

[alithea]

Pretty much nobody gets what they deserve in life in the real world. All you can do is make sure you take every opportunity to use your privilege to help raise up those less fortunate

[alithea]

Great unleveller indeed.

I'm seeing a stark contrast between my middle class friends enjoying hanging out in their gardens and getting to spend quality family time with their kids, and those of us who live in small flats with no private outdoor space and only one living area for everyone. A lady I meet in the park dog-walking currently has her adult son living with her in a one bedroom flat and she doesn't have *any* outdoor space. We do at least have a small garden even if it is shared between 7 households (altho the grad students in the ground floor flat and my immediate neighbour are the only other folks I ever see use it)

[rosefox]

I'm in the "four people, one apartment, no private outdoor space" camp and desperately envious of the friends who have private patios and decks, never mind the ones with access to places where kids can run around. Our four-year-old runs laps around our living room.

We're extremely fortunate in every other way, though, so I don't harp on it much.

[alithea]

I'm glad you're fortunate in other ways but that must be tough especially with a small child

[hrj]

Yeah, it's one of those fractures that cuts along different divides than one might expect. For me, having my "bit of earth," as Mary Lennox puts it, is deep-rooted (ahem) in my soul. I've spent a few brief times in my life living in apartments and it drains something out of me that's hard to explain. It isn't so much about having the space to walk around outside on my own property (although that's definitely a side benefit) but a need to dig in the soil and grow things. It's shaped some of my choices in where to live. I can understand the thrill and energy of living in an urban center, but only vicariously or as a visitor. It's not for me.

[rosefox]

Our apartment is the top floor of a house. We have a small patch of dirt along our front patio. Last year we planted a lot of wildflowers around the tree in front of the house, and downstairs neighbors grew tomatoes and herbs and tulips on the patio. This year, gardening's been less of a priority, but the tulip bulbs did their thing all on their own, and that made me happy.

Our last apartment (in a slightly nicer part of the same neighborhood) had a big back yard with a deck. A neighbor kept chickens, and occasionally one would escape and get into our yard and have to be dragged squawking out from under the deck. This apartment is nicer in just about every way, but I do miss that green space.

[threadwalker]

I agree on all points. You say it very eloquently, too.

I also agree that nesting with a BFF would be cool. The next best thing IMO is having a BFF nearby to routinely chat with.

[madbaker]

We set up a Zoom dinner meeting with Geoffrey & Crystal last night. They were slightly jealous that we have two couples in our building. It's not much, but it is interaction with somebody besides the spouse and that does make a difference.

[hrj]

It's occurred to me that one possible direction that "social isolation" could have gone would be for small groups of people (who have the logistical and geographic ability to do so) to form "separate sphere" groups, where they interact as if in a single household and commit to not extending to outside contacts. It's the promiscuous intermingling of contact groups that creates the risk, not the continued interaction with a fixed set of people.

[rosefox]

I'm concerned that "immune to covid/not immune to covid" is going to become another very significant stratification, at least until there's widespread vaccination.

[hrj]

Yes, although that won't happen until we have widely available testing and have confirmation that "had it" means "immune to re-having it." I know there was one bit of research suggesting that some people who had recovered were re-testing postive, but then another article saying it was a false positive due to viral fragments being released by dead cells. We still don't know enough. But I'm with you: "back to normal" won't really happen until we have a vaccine.

[rosefox]

This thing has been in American and European populations for long enough that if significant numbers of people were becoming reinfected—or any people at all—I think we'd be hearing about it. Anecdotal reporting is being taken pretty seriously by infectious disease specialists, which is how anosmia got on the official symptom list, and also by journalists; I haven't seen even one tabloid-style "I SURVIVED COVID—TWICE!" headline, or any case studies outside of that study you mentioned. Something close to 20% of NYC's population has been exposed enough to acquire antibodies, which is a whole lot of people, and if antibodies weren't enough to protect those who have been sick, we'd definitely been seeing reinfections among people who recovered and went back to work at high-risk jobs (NYPD, MTA, etc.).

How long one acquires immunity for, whether worse infections give greater immunity, whether the virus will mutate to the point where last year's antibodies are ineffective, and a lot of other questions are up in the air, but the basic question of "can you catch the same strain twice in rapid succession" seems pretty conclusively to be answered "no".