OP-ED: Stop debating about Covid

“I’m letting my boss know that we’re in COVID hell, so I might be a little distracted.”

That’s what my mom just said to me a few moments ago, right before I sat down at my desk to start my usual work routine.

It was around two weeks ago that we found out that my uncle Fred – who lives in Texas – was COVID-19 positive. A day or so after, his wife Nyla began showing symptoms. Their youngest son, Sam, was next.

It’s Fred’s birthday as I’m writing this; he’s 70 years old. He’s also currently in the ICU on a ventilator.

Then this morning word came in from Colorado. Bob – husband to Jody, my late-grandmother’s sole remaining sibling – was airlifted to the hospital unable to breathe. Bob, too, is COVID-19 positive, and struggling with complications of the disease.

I wish I could say that I was sad, frustrated, or even angry. But in all reality, the spectrum of my current emotional state falls more along the lines of fatigued, tired, and desperate.

It’s hard being a reporter in a pandemic.

I’ve watched as cases steadily rose in Downey. I know some who have ended up with the disease; thankfully, no one that I know of has passed. Friends of mine have lost their jobs in the meantime.

I feel like I’ve heard it all when it comes to response to the pandemic. Mask or no mask? What should open and when? Outdoor dining or take-out only? Hybrid or full-distance?

All while I have felt somewhat (if potentially naively so) safe in my little socially distanced bubble, with a mask securely over my nose and mouth.

Yet here I now sit, scared to leave the house, suspicious of my own family and closest friends. Even over 1,000 miles away, suddenly Texas felt like my own backyard.

I don’t believe that this pandemic is a hoax; I view the coronavirus as very, very real.

However, as credible a threat as I believe it to be, it pales in comparison to the sad fact that the virus is treated more as an area of contention with one another than a problem to be tackled.

Nearly all year, we have treated the coronavirus as a subject of argument. Instead of collaborating and finding solutions, we choose to point fingers back and forth at one another. COVID-19 isn’t just an illness; it’s a political bullet point.

We are all hurting, some more than others in different ways. We have all been affected at this point, in some way, shape or form.

I’m not asking everyone to agree overnight; that is simply illogical.

But the time for debating is over. We desperately need unified action.

 As cases once again rise and new public health mandates are placed into effect, we need to realize that we are past the window of what is right and what is wrong; we are simply at the point of what is.

Only together will we be able to turn this around and – hopefully – get our lives back to some form of normalcy.

COVID-19 makes it hard enough to breathe without the rest of us grasping for each other’s throats.