Trust is key as we reopen with the coronavirus still present
Former L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky turns a UCLA graduate seminar into a crash course in coronavirus crisis management No matter that putting on a face covering when out among others is now required by the city and county.
No matter that doing so can help us reduce transmission of a virus that we know can be spread by asymptomatic people who have no idea that they have it. No matter that it’s easy to find face coverings that you can wear around your neck and pull up to cover your face as needed, when other people are near. Do they resist because they don’t believe the risks are real? Because they don’t like being told what to do? Because they’re sick of the restrictions and have called time’s up on caring? Because they feel invulnerable — as I know I once did when I was young?I don’t presume to know their thinking, but I’m willing to give them a pass if they’re taking pains to stay out of everyone’s way — to keep themselves even more than the recommended six feet away from others. More often than not, though, I find that they aren’t. They don’t try to protect us. They leave it to the rest of us not just to protect them but to dodge them or contort our bodies to stay out of their way. And it’s not just the mask orders that people are flouting. It’s also other well-publicized safety instructions in places where masks are required for entry. Wearing face coverings and distancing go hand in hand. Doing one doesn’t obviate the need to do the other. Both my supermarket and my farmers market have worked hard to remind people to keep their distance from one another — taping and chalking lines on the ground as guides. The Hollywood Farmers Market draws big arrows on the pavement to try to get people to minimize crowding by walking up the market on one side of the street and down it on the other.I come back from both markets exhausted from all the defensive maneuvering and social awkwardness required. How do you tell a person politely to not stand so close, to back off a little? I have yet to find the proper etiquette that makes such a request feel comfortable to me and guarantees that it will be received with good grace., which just became possible again. I want to do these things to help the economy — but I won’t until I’m confident that they won’t greatly add to our societal risk.. More than 2,200 people here have died of the virus — which adds up to more than half of the deaths statewide so far. We have more than 51,000 COVID-19 cases here, which is nearly half the cases in the state.Yes, our number of hospitalized patients appears to be holding steady at this moment. And yes, testing now is widely available. But people are still getting sick from the virus. People are still dying from it every single day. A vaccine probably remains a long way off. The information we get about symptoms and what’s safe and what isn’t safe keeps changing. And just because our hospitals have yet to be overwhelmed doesn’t mean that they won’t if we handle all this reopening badly. Which is what I fear will happen if we don’t all accept the seriousness of the risk we are taking. And my guess is that the mere fact that we’re reopening will lead more people, not less, to act as if we no longer have anything to worry about. As I said, I still haven’t found quite the right turns of phrase to very politely tell people ignoring the safety basics to stop doing so. But I think we all have to find ways to convey this message, now more than ever, if we want to move forward, not backward, together.
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