Over the past few weeks, there have been enough lines drawn in the sand to make beach volleyball courts on every waterfront the world over.
As governments have scrambled to handle not only the medical realities but also the financial and social fallouts of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a constant din of folks digging in deeply on one side or the other of each targeted response.
It’s a good thing we have those metaphorical volleyball courts now, since the discourse feels like an interminable match of bumps, sets and spikes.
The essential question at the root is simple: how much can we ask of others?
Of course, it’s a central question — if not the central question — of how individuals will define a functioning society, but we really only seem to ask it in those few weeks around election time when we’re promised X services in exchange for Y tax dollars. Who’d have ever thought it’s something we’d be grappling with on a larger scale for a longer term with constantly changing information?
There’s the push and pull, perhaps, of emotional versus rational. In the big picture, no option is good, and it’s pretty difficult to pin down exactly what’s the least bad. On the other hand, unsavoury though it may be to place a dollar limit on saving lives, we’d be kidding ourselves to act as though it’s something new.
Of course, the financial aspect is just a single thread in this terrible tapestry that will exist after the virus is brought under control, whenever that may be; other considerations include mitigating the mental-health impact of sheltering in place, ensuring access to health care for those with other ailments, and establishing proper education for young people who can’t meet in person at this time.
The natural follow-up question after ‘how much can we ask?’ is ‘from whom?’ as not all roles are created equal. Of course, in times like these, government needs to give back more than it asks of its people — and right now, it’s asking a lot.
But what about what we can ask, individual to individual?
It needs to be stressed that nothing about this situation is fair. Everyone, to one degree or another, is bearing some of the burden, though in perhaps a disproportionate way. The obvious platitude is to ensure that those who didn’t have a lot to begin with should lose the least, but that ignores the reality that, generally, those who have the most also possess the means to ensure that they keep the most.
No situation is the same, nor is any individual’s means of coping with that specific situation. At base, as long as we respect the safety and wellness of others (and this caveat that the “Be kind” memes omit is far from a given), we can ask for that in return.
Dan Falloon is the sports editor for Pique Newsmagazine and is writing about various topics for The Chief during the pandemic.
