Could COVID-19 cure what ails us?
I walked the streets of San Luis Obispo the other night, alone.
The “shelter at home” order had yet to be issued, but even so, the typical hurly-burly of a Thursday night downtown was missing.
Farmers Market was canceled, but it wasn’t a holiday. Rain hadn’t made downtown forlorn. A low-grade fever of fear had emptied the streets.
Not the kind of fear that triggers an everyone-for-themselves panic. Rather, the kind that gives the feel we’re in this together: a rational fear, an understandable fear, a comradely fear.
None of the few folks I encountered on the streets of SLO that night seemed particularly bothered. We smiled, greeted with elbow bumps.
Yes, we’re all suffering selfish fools who spread the kind of irrational fear that causes hoarding, stripping stores of essentials everyone needs.
But this rational fear, this is the kind that says: “Hey, how’s it? I’m OK. Thanks for asking. Stay well, friend. We’ll make it through.”
While some may panic, I’m sensing an overall vibe in SLO County that most of us are looking after each other, abiding guidance to avoid crowds, washing hands, being mindful of each other’s personal space.
Most folks around here seem to be staying level-headed, not so much to evade getting sick, but to prevent the chance of making someone else sick.
Alone on the streets, I felt more connected to my community that night than ever, optimistic that locally, during this historic test of our national character, we might successfully navigate the age-old conflict of self-interest vs. the common good.
Professional pedant David Brooks of the New York Times thinks not, predicting Americans will channel their inner medieval and toss our frail onto collective funeral pyres in a grand culling of self preservation.
I couldn’t disagree more. I’m with sociologist Eric Klinenberg, who opines in the NYT that “social solidarity” will prevail.
Walking the streets of SLO, Shelby Foote’s three-volume masterpiece, “The Civil War: A Narrative,” comes to mind in a reminder of how easily the force of self-interest and division can rip us apart.
I still don’t quite understand how so many Americans could tear their nation asunder, but I’m starting to get it.
Our political disagreements today run deep, the inability to reach common ground grows more profound. As during the antebellum, the default inclination today among potential friends is to be enemies instead.
This is illustrated commonly on the SLO Tribune’s Facebook page: Word violence holds dominion over the community square. Hate begets hate.
Yet it seems there’s not much venom being flung over COVID-19 on the page. Sure, there are plenty of opinions about how our national leaders are managing the crisis, some conspiracy drivel about “fake news” creating calamity.
But thanks to COVID-19, some of that personal poison seems to have self-quarantined from our local body politic.
Walking deserted SLO, David McCullough’s “Truman” – the seminal biography of President Harry Truman – resonates.
In it, McCullough writes of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1917-18. An artillery soldier in France in 1919, waiting to ship home from the carnage of WWI, Truman wrote to his future wife, Bess, of his relief that she’d contracted the illness and survived.
Some 40 million people – military and civilian – died in that war, yet the future president who witnessed so much death was most worried about influenza claiming his bride back home, demonstrating the power of concern for one’s own.
Truman’s fear of the unknown was triggered by the horrific scale of the pandemic, which infected some 500 million people worldwide and killed up to 50 million people. There was no vaccine nor treatment because it was new — like today.
Fear of this invisible foe brought Harry closer to Bess and the nation closer as a people. President Wilson and local governments instituted nationwide “social distancing” and other measures we’re experiencing today to curb spread of the virus.
Political differences were tossed for the common cause. Everyone threw in together to protect their families, neighbors and nation.
Life changed dramatically, but things eventually got back to normal. The country survived. It will for us, too.
Walking deserted SLO, the thought occurred: Could COVID-19 actually help cure our ills as a society?
Could it be the glue that binds us again, the catalyst for self-reflection and change, the cause of a national examination of the spiritual virus that’s eroding our social contract and threatening our democracy?
Now seems a good time to treat the sickness afflicting our nation’s soul.
A fever dream of wishful thinking? Perhaps. But I’m seeing light in this darkest of hours.
Like a smile and elbow bump on a nearly deserted street in downtown SLO.
Columnist Tom Fulks serves on the San Luis Obispo County Democratic Central Committee.