Class and COVID-19: Those Who Can and Those Who Can’t

Now there are two classes of people locally: those who can stay at home and those who cannot. Those who can stay at home are also divided by class between those who can have all delivered and those who must shop. Let me suggest that all City Officials can afford to have life delivered by workers which separates them in experience and therefore in policy. I suspect those individuals may have access to testing the rest of us do not.

Those who cannot stay at home are divided into three classes: those working in healthcare, those working in essential supply, food, medicine, fuel, fire, police, water, etc. and then the homeless. Those working for the government have healthcare and limited testing. Those working in the food supply chain often do not. That is where we are spreading it. With no testing, no temperature checks, no masks or gloves for these workers, only Captain Obvious would dare comment on the irony.

Having been involved in the disaster in Vietnam, I understand being subject to fatal negligence by a misinformed government and public. Remember, when we were drafted as 18 year olds there was little resistance locally. Neither our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers friends nor church members were there to save us because it was not their fate. The cultural belief system was fatally toxic to 50,000 teenage boys.

Such is now the general case here in Bloomington. Those who don’t have to suffer the fate of being exposed to Covid-19 carry a different mindset. Unfortunately, they are who is creating policy. And they are doing it with virtually no input from non-government workers. This is why we will have so much death here. Policy without representation.

Most folks think that the grave deficiencies in medical supplies (tests, masks, ventilators) is an isolated problem in our supply chain. Let me suggest that this disaster lurks in our food supply as well. A representative government would encourage local food production the same way they encourage Parking Garages and Convention Centers with multi-millions of dollars. Hungry people are notorious for being pushy.

Marc Haggerty is a musician in Bloomington, Indiana.