Going back to normal?

May 12, 2020 by Fred Allebach

I’m no expert but here’s what things look like to me: we ain’t getting back to no normal.  

Tremendous pressure has grown to re-open. Too much economic pain for too many people. No business, no work, no income, stir crazy, impatient. Yet what I’ve seen in public is a widespread disregard for social distancing and for masks. It must be dumb luck that we flattened the curve, sheer luck it didn’t spread more. Maybe the virus has just not gotten here yet?

Now parks and the bike path are opened, and tons of people are out with no masks, not keeping six feet apart. Construction and other businesses will now re-open. Business pressure has broken the dam; get used to lots of people dying. if this is a real pandemic, the potential for death for anyone is real; the rush to reopen will precipitate the second and third waves, as we see from studying the 1918 flu.

With death by virus on one shoulder and death by no money on the other, we’ve got a volatile mix of a cold-hearted herd immunity calculus mixed with elite privilege justification, class inequity, survivalism, Ayn Rand libertarianism, and anti-science ideology. No unity, no reason, active disinformation. Into this existential void comes all manner of apocalyptic scenarios.  

Who’s responsible? Not the leader! Blame the governors. This is a “novel” virus and perhaps it won’t come back in waves like 1918. There may never be a vaccine, just as there is none for the common cold; the virus is too nimble, mutates too fast. Who knows?

Meanwhile, extenuating economic circumstances have already exposed existing class and race fractures even more. The consequences here may very well lead to a refugee crisis of people who can’t pay their rent. “Essential workers,” the new heroes making minimum wage, are being more highly exposed, and exposing their families. As per usual, those at the bottom get the worst deal. At least when so many workers die as with the Black Death, those left can demand much higher wages.  

The gravity of this class inequity situation was recognized early and resulted in a state-wide eviction moratorium. The governor’s emergency decree is what is holding tenants’ safety in place for now. Everybody knows that people making 60% or less of the area median income were already severely rent and cost burdened here in Sonoma County, right? I look for the emergency decree/ eviction moratorium to be extended indefinitely so as to give a buffer in figuring out a way for people with no money to pay three or more months of back rent on no income. This is a huge, impossible problem; enjoy the last shades of normal while you can.

Climate disappointment is on the horizon. Whole-hog fossil fuel will storm back. Re-opening and jump-starting the economy will take precedence over the “other emergency,” the one we’ve all managed to pretty well ignore and not flatten the curve on all this time. Climate change will eventually cut human population numbers way down. The virus is just the leading edge of our inevitable J-curve population crash. Oh well, from the perspective of geologic time, what’s one more extinction? Twenty million years and earth will recover from us.  

For local government, a new default answer to all our hopes and dreams will be “we’ve got no money for that.” On the upside, the chat function of Zoom meetings allows real-time comments that would never be able to be made before.

My initial optimism that the world could be re-made for the better has turned to pessimism. Trump, instead of leading the nation, has continued to divide, and to use the pandemic as a re-election strategy. Look for Trump and McConnell to continue to try and screw California, and for red and blue intra-California divisions to grow greater.

Locally, previously suppressed but real tensions of class and identity, between the haves and have-nots, may bubble over as economic consequences get more severe. What separates us may prove to be more compelling than what unites us. Blame will become more strident; civic engagement will suffer. Forecast: divided we fall.

How people coped with the Great Depression will be the next thing to talk about. Actual deprivation will be reality. Elite privilege will stand out like a sore thumb. Redwood Empire Food Bank is already running out of money; they get by with donations only. How long can charity continue to float the least able and the non-profits that serve them? The upshot, we’re on our own, in the state and locally.