This health crisis will reveal what our community is made of

Is your head spinning? Are there moments when you feel simultaneously scared, bored, numb and enveloped in brain fog? Are you both exhausted and restless?

This is the world of COVID-19. And as everyone keeps telling us, we’re in it together, for better and for worse – and we don’t yet know how much worse. Our world has changed with an impact every bit as disorienting as 9/11, and this time the crisis will unfold not in a day, but over months. And already we know the death toll will be higher.

But life must go on, as it did in the long national crisis of World War II. Right now that means most of us are hunkered down at home, while others are working long hours and risking their own health to take care of ours. Many work in clinics and hospitals, but others sell us our groceries, or deliver our online orders and mail. And all of our first responders are adding this new risk to the dangers they already face every day.

There also are scores of people in our community working to keep homeless people safe. Spacing beds further apart in shelters reduces the number who can be sheltered, leaving more out in the cold at night. How long will it be until another shelter can be opened?Dedicated advocates and City of Olympia staff have been working overtime, and this week, they are opening a new, 30-bed shelter on Martin Way, to be run by Interfaith Works.

County commissioners and city councils have made emergency declarations and scraped their budgets for money to help people and businesses who are struggling.

And, as usual, kind people are stepping up in ways we would never have imagined. Sandstone Distillery turned itself into a free hand sanitizer factory. People with sewing machines are making masks for local health care workers. Neighbors and friends are delivering groceries to the porches of people who are at higher risk.

And oddly, since people at home are taking more neighborhood walks, many neighbors are actually socializing more – at a 6-foot distance on the sidewalk.

At the same time, however, there are “covidiots” who just want to party on, and jerks who try to profiteer or spread false information. There are adolescent anarchists who inexplicably use this occasion to break store windows and scrawl graffiti. And we have a national leader who wants to turn the page on this problem before he’s even read the headlines.

It’s springtime in the garden of good and evil.

So how do we maximize the good and reduce the evil? And how do we stay sane in a time of anxiety, trauma and the inevitable boredom of staying home so much?

Psychologists report that the biggest contributor to anxiety is the sense of helplessness, but that helping others – rather than focusing on ourselves – is the best remedy.

Humor helps too. The satirist Randy Rainbow celebrates “saving the human race by lying on my couch” in a Youtube video.

It’s peculiar but true that staying home and lying on our couches helps others. But if we sit up on our couches, we can help even more.

We can write thank-you notes to the people at our grocery stores, pharmacies and hospitals, and to other essential workers who are taking risks to care for us.

We can order takeout food from struggling local restaurants.

We can monitor what our elected leaders are doing, and give them the praise or criticism we think they’ve earned.

And those of us who still have jobs can help those who suddenly don’t. Nearly all of us will receive a $1,200 government check as some point from a federal bailout plan. We should give that money to people who need it more than we do. The Community Foundation of South Puget Sound has teamed up with United Way of Thurston County to create a fund to meet “immediate basic needs, health, and economic needs” related this pandemic. You also can give money directly to anyone you know who urgently needs to pay their rent or buy food.

This crisis will not pass by Easter. We need to settle down, do our part, and focus on the future.

When this crisis is over, we will all be changed by it. We are shaping that change by how we behave now, and what lessons we are learning.

In just the last few weeks, we have learned that when there is an emergency, our government and our society can mobilize in ways we had forgotten were possible. Nationally, we could apply this lesson to other long-term emergencies, such as climate change and economic inequality.

Locally, even while we are physically distancing ourselves, we can learn to become a closer-knit community – one that always cares for the vulnerable, celebrates the brave, and honors the ordinary citizens who do their part.