Local lessons learned from the global coronavirus pandemic

As soon as this coronavirus crisis hit, we knew it would change us, and teach us some new lessons. We’re a long way from the end of it, but here are some of the lessons we’ve learned so far.

Lesson 1: Science is the best guide

The first lesson is, of course, that we need to listen to the scientists early and often. There is one all-American sign that most of us have taken this lesson to heart: Dr. Anthony Fauci, our nation’s de facto pandemic president, is now so beloved you can buy socks, candles, pillows, and T shirts with his picture on them. You can even sleep under a duvet cover with his portrait on it.

Lesson 2: Most of us are willing to sacrifice for the common good

Paying attention to advice from scientists has resulted in another good news lesson: Most Americans are still capable of collective action for the common good, even when collective action means isolation from each other. Staying home is certainly getting old, but we are still doing it, and it’s working. Good for us.

Lesson 3: Telemedicine is in our future

For better and for worse, widespread telemedicine – that is, seeing your doctor on your computer screen, rather than in an office – is likely to stick around after this sudden, Covid-driven expansion.

Locally, Thurston Talk posted an article saying that MultiCare, which has used telemedicine for some time, is ramping it up. It “allows us to provide peace of mind for people who most likely don’t have the virus and to also quickly ‘triage’ others to appropriate COVID testing sites,” Stephanie Cowan, MultiCare’s clinical care director said.

Cowan said they saw more telemedicine patients in March than in all of 2019, thus keeping people out of doctors’ sometimes germy waiting rooms as well as hospital emergency rooms.

For the many who detest going to the doctor’s office, will online medical visits put them more at ease? Probably. But others may find the technology more intimidating than an office visit.

And here’s the “worse” of for better or worse: For people who lack internet access, reliance on telemedicine just widens the digital divide, which is a symptom of the divisions between rural and urban, and between affluent and poor.

Lesson 4: Criminal justice reform gets a trial run

Reformers have been struggling for years to end the era of mass incarceration. The need to prevent COVID-19’s spread in crowded jails and prisons is giving that effort a boost. In fact, we are witnessing a major experiment in how many offenders can be released safely, or not jailed at all. Patrick O’Connor, director of Thurston County’s Public Defense office, reports “a lot of innovation” in a very short time in our local criminal justice system.

Over the past two years, he says, “We had already made a lot of progress in reducing the jail population, but COVID put things in action that we aspired to.” Just since the pandemic hit, the jail population has been reduced by 30 percent.

“Time will tell,” O’Connor says, whether these reductions will be sustainable, or whether there will be an uptick in crime.

When the current moratorium on jury trials eventually ends, the system will face a big backlog. Everyone in the criminal justice system will wish we had a larger, safer county courthouse. We share that wish.

Lesson 5: The economic pain hasn’t crested yet

In the past week, horror at all the suffering and death has been matched with fear of the pandemic’s long-term economic fallout. Now we worry about explosions of poverty and despair locally, nationally, and globally. How will we bend that curve?

The federal government can’t keep passing trillion-dollar bailouts, and state and local budgets will be cut deeply. And The Seattle Times reports that people between 18 and 29 are the most likely to have been laid off or had their hours cut.

We may be hard pressed to keep homelessness from rising, especially among the young.

Lesson 6: We depend on a lot of people we usually take for granted

We’ve all celebrated nurses, doctors, and other health care workers for their dedication and bravery. Grocery clerks also are getting recognition for being on the front lines.

But we depend on many people to keep us fed, from farmworkers to food processors to truck drivers. The shirts on our backs and the shoes on our feet also involve thousands of workers all along complex supply chains that include people in countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, El Salvador and Ethiopia.

In this global war against a virus, we don’t win until everyone wins.