A Piece about Being Kind During COVID

We are coming up on our second year anniversary of being in a global pandemic. This experience has challenged me in every way possible. Mostly it has challenged my view of myself, and my duty as a citizen of the United States.

As an American, my whole life until this moment has been centered around me. Like many other Americans, I value independence. I value success. I value free speech, and the ability to make my own choices. And like many other Americans, I have no intention of ever giving these freedoms up.

When COVID first started the hardest part for me was having to think about other people’s choices, and knowing they were evaluating mine. I have always been empathetic (sometimes overly so), and incorporating other people’s feelings and health into my decisions was a natural adaptation. But what I had never been doing was posing judgment on other people’s choices. Now, under the pressure of wanting to be safe I was evaluating the decisions made by friends and families, and I was having the difficult conversations I never wanted to have. When those close to me (and far away) made questionable choices, I often had the urge to attribute these decisions to selfishness or some moral shortcoming. I have since come to understand it is so much more complicated than that.

There is so much we don’t know.

As the pandemic has evolved we all have heard multiple conflicting statements about the danger of this disease, the potential of long-term effects, the efficacy of masks and vaccines, and whether we’ll ever truly be out of this nightmare.

From my perspective, the majority of people have chosen to handle this uncertainty by choosing answers that are most comfortable for them. Based on a variety of factors like economic standing, trust in government, racial history, etc. these answers can be widely different in different communities. But the only constant is that we all pick an answer and we stick by it.

This gives us comfort. It gives us a path forward, some formula for life, that will end in us being okay. We start to fear anything that challenges our understanding of the events occurring, lest it thrust us back into a world of ambiguity. The most unsavory consequence of this choice, is the desire to become judgmental and defensive when being faced with an opposing opinion. Not knowing (or perhaps not caring) that this will only make the situation worse, we attack those who disagree with us, desperate to keep our version of the truth intact.

Let me tell you my version of the truth…

I am a 22-year old from Saratoga, CA. I was raised by immigrant parents and I studied Computer Science in college. I now live in San Francisco, and work as a software engineer at a big tech company. I have never been attacked or harassed by the government. I have never experienced serious economic turmoil. I have a strong faith in the vaccines, masking, and most other statements put out by the CDC or scientists.

During this pandemic I have had the worst panic attacks I’ve ever had in my life. Getting a notification about an exposure or a test result will instantly make me lose my breath. I am so afraid.

I have never been sure about anything.

I questioned whether stay-at-home was really such a good idea. Personally, I feared for all the people in abusive households who now had no way of getting out or calling for help. I mourned for kids from underprivileged homes without access to the internet and computers whose education was going to be irreparably set back by this pandemic. I looked for people like me, whose mental health issues were being exacerbated to their very limits.

I was scared of the vaccine. I read an article once that said the reason why people fear decisions like getting vaccinated, is because the choice is entirely in our hands. As opposed to some other risks like getting hit by a car or getting cancer, if this one goes wrong, we are entirely to blame. But my fear of getting COVID and my desire to resume normalcy outweighed doubt over a shot I didn’t know very much about.

I’ve questioned why we need boosters. I’ve questioned if we’ll ever get back to normal. I’ve questioned whether it’s worse to get COVID or to lose two years of my adult life. But I have rarely discussed it with others, because I’m scared of being judged by those around me.

In my experience, the discussion about these issues is very hard to have. I’m from a mainly liberal community, and I’ve found that out here this discussion often boils down to “If you don’t agree with my level of strictness, you are selfish and you do not care about the health of the community”. Regardless of where you are, this conversation often very quickly loses all nuance and turns into a morality battle of who is the better person. People who don’t agree with you, are judged and/or shunned, as opposed to being listened to.

To me, this attitude is scary. It leads to people doubling down on questionable choices, hiding information about exposures and test results to avoid judgement, and puts even more stress on relationships with friends and family. We are a battered and beaten country, and the least we can do is stop beating on each other.

Basically, I’m just saying I will try to understand. If you are frightened and can’t leave your house I will try to understand. If you are unvaccinated I will try to understand. If you did something unsafe, or made a choice you regret, I will try to understand. I’m tired of trying to be righteous, and I’m tired of trying to be right. I want to move forwards with empathy first and foremost, and I hope this piece encourages other people to do the same thing. No matter what happens, I want everyone to feel like they have a community to depend on.

Feel free to reach out if you want to talk about anything in this piece!!