Whose responsibility?
By: Sophia Huda
Tags: NYC, Earth Day, Flatten The Curve, Responsibility, Covid 19

How the con of focusing on individual responsibility in the environmental movement offers lessons for the COVID response

I have noticed the rhetoric surrounding the COVID19 pandemic has taken a subtle turn from ‘flattening the curve’ to manage hospital flows to focusing on ‘social distancing or staying home to save lives’. The distinction is important. With both curves we will get roughly the same amount of people infected. If we do nothing, we will reach the peak of infections faster, overloading hospitals and resulting in a reduction in the quality of care and more people dying. By flattening the curve through lockdowns and social distancing we’re reducing the rate of transmission and helping to stem the flow to hospitals. The high death rate in Italy can likely be attributed to this run on hospitals, which not only resulted in a drop in quality of care but also a surge in infections from hospitals.

So how is ‘social distancing to save lives’ different? First it implies that lives will be saved. Yes, they could be, through better care at the hospital and eventually with a targeted treatment. And certainly, by isolating vulnerable populations and reducing the chance of transmission through social distancing you can save more lives. But the unfortunate reality of a virus, and life itself, is that some people will die. In the US, with its abominable health care system that barely provides preventative care let alone basic treatment — the consequences of which are a significant part of the population that lives with pre-existing conditions that make them vulnerable to this virus — the death rate from this pandemic was always going to be fairly high. That unfortunate truth was long ago established with the country’s inefficient, for-profit healthcare system. But declaring that social distancing or staying home saves lives is dramatic, as though if you step outside your house, get within less than 6 feet of someone, dare even breathe heavily or ‘speak moistly’ YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR PEOPLE’S DEATH!!!!

Let’s be realistic, social distancing, while it may be important to follow, is not going to be practical to achieve, especially in large cities. Just today, when I stepped out of my apartment building to throw out the garbage I already violated the 6 feet rule. My local grocery stores? Forget it. The public transit system — the one that is currently helping essential workers get to their jobs — even when it’s not crowded I have never been able to maintain a distance of 6 feet from anyone. And what about summer? If we are to continue staying home, some people will find staying in their apartments next to impossible. These are the people that live in the hottest parts of NYC, in apartments that do not have good air circulation, and cannot afford the high energy bills that extended usage of air conditioning brings, and these are the people that often die from that kind of heat exposure. With NYC’s public pools and recreational facilities that also serve as cooling centres closed for this summer, urban heat presents huge challenges to successfully keeping people at home.

But as long as people are trying in some measure, social distancing may have some effect, especially combined with the use of masks (apparently). A policy that does not have some degree of non-adherence built into it is a bad policy to begin with. The problem is, by attaching so much importance to the idea we’ve now successfully shifted the responsibility of managing this pandemic to individual action, whose impact is unreliable and to which it is almost impossible to fully adhere.

This also happened with environmental action. Every semester I try to get my students to read this excellent article on how the beverage and packaging industries successfully shifted the burden of managing waste from the producers to the individual consumer, whilst giving themselves free licence to continue the mass production of their disposable products. It shifted the solution to managing this source of waste from re-thinking how the industry operates to lecturing individuals for their choices and actions. This off-loading of responsibility has allowed industries and governments to dodge their own environmental and social responsibilities and avoid undertaking any major (and profit-reducing) structural change.

We require individuals to make their choices and sacrifices within the constraints of a poorly designed system, instead of creating a system that ensures all their choices are responsible and all their sacrifices are worthwhile. How can we reduce the amount of waste we produce? We can design products and packaging that consumers can purchase and consume knowing they were designed to be fully circular. We know how. How can we reduce GHG emissions and slow down the effects of climate change? Shaming individuals into not flying might help, but stopping using coal as an energy source would make the biggest and quickest impact.

In that same vein, if our focus for addressing COVID19 is primarily on individual responsibility to flatten the curve and reduce transmission, what larger structural efforts to lessen the burden on hospitals are we not looking at? How can we use community-level health care to stop a surge into ERs? 1.2 million New Yorkers use the ER as their only source of primary care as they do not have family doctors. Of course that was going to cause a surge in ER admissions, how are we remedying that for the next peak in infections? Many people in high infection areas also have to take the subway to the hospital, they don’t live within walking distance or an affordable taxi ride of one. How can we remedy that so people who are sick and possibly infectious are not obliged to infect others in the process of seeking care? How can we strengthen communications to make sure people are not going to the hospital unnecessarily, or are not going too late when they’ll require the most resources….or worse, are not too afraid to go at all, which has increasingly been the case.

What lessons have we learned from these past few months that can help us moving forward? Do doctors need to explore new treatment options? What’s the best way to do this and facilitate learning on this? Even small and seemingly insignificant actions can make a massive difference… for the USNS Comfort and the Javits Center temporary hospitals, an onerous administrative process meant that these 2 resources couldn’t be used to their fullest. In a city where there are over 100 000 confirmed cases of COVID19 (and no doubt many more unconfirmed), those kinds of backups can create a big mess, quickly.

When we think of environmental responsibility…what kind of individuals are better positioned to make the right choices and sacrifices for the environment? Who are the ones that can drive electric vehicles, for example, or live in urban centres where they can bike everywhere? Who are the ones that can shop at Zero Waste stores, or choose products that are more environmentally friendly, or can afford/have easy access to farmer’s markets where they can buy locally grown food? It’s usually the more well-off and privileged members of society. Just like it’s the privileged who can point out that ‘all you have to do is sit on your couch’, because it’s that easy for them.

In my building there is a family of 3 adults living in a 1-bedroom apartment. I know for a fact that they lost at least one stream of income, hopefully only temporarily, but with social distancing rules in effect they may not get it back for a while. Staying in that apartment while worrying about finances must be suffocating. Quarantines, lockdowns, social distancing… it’s not the same for everyone. Any policy that is indifferent to issues of equity is a weak and ineffective one. Rather than constraining people to make difficult choices and tough sacrifices in a poorly designed system, how can we make sure that individuals can be confident that all their choices and actions are actually making a difference?

Instead of setting up social distancing snitch lines how about we look at what measures need to be taken to ensure public transit is hygienic and safe for people. The city already reduced circulation of trains, resulting in rush-hour levels of crowding…during a pandemic. What measures are we going to take to address that now and in the future when more people will be using public transit?

Instead of taking pictures of people at parks and scrutinizing EXACTLY. HOW. FAR. everyone is from each other how about we discuss some of the safety measures businesses will have to take once they re-open; if they’re effective, if people can actually follow them, if they’re affordable, and if smaller businesses will get support to implement them? Why don’t we look at how we can protect workers who may not feel comfortable returning to work due to their health or the health of others’ in their households?

Instead of coming up with newer and even more sanctimonious ways to ridicule people for wanting fresh air and social connections let’s talk about how people can safely start being outdoors more or get exercise, all important ways to boost your immune system and keep your mental health balanced. In fact, let’s even talk about how we can help educate people on making sure their immune systems and overall health are in the best shape so they’re better prepared to fight a virus should they get infected with one… that’s one of the most important individual contributions anyone can make to flattening the curve!

Individual action will always have an impact, but it’s the structural actions of our governments that will have any meaningful effect on those peaks and curves… don’t be fooled, stay home, stay 6 feet apart, but stay woke too ;)