Thread by @WhitneyEpi

Been thinking a lot about this, especially the “for a paycheck” part. I have many relatives working in jobs where it’s impossible to distance, avoid closed spaces, etc. It is 100% a failure of govt (US senators esp) to provide money for businesses & workers to stay home...1/

https://twitter.com/JuliaLMarcus/status/1327305373016055810

But me getting on a soapbox about
the stimulus bill US should have passed this summer is neither here nor there for my relatives who need to make decisions today about work, even when they know perfectly well (thanks to yours truly!) that their work environments are not safe 2/

If I sat in my home office or in my empty campus office typing away about how “everyone should just stay home & this would all be over, The End,” I’d have no credibility with them. (They love me though, so they’d just 🙄 & quietly ignore my posts. 😂) 3/

When I talk with my family and community* or consider rhetoric from others, I hold several things in my mind at once:
1) we know ideal conditions to stop #SARSCoV2 spread
2) those conditions don’t exist in most of US; our fed govt has actively blocked them; this is enraging...4/

3) smug people who’ve made little bubbles of safety for themselves but still find time to lecture strangers whose lives they don’t know are annoying, yes, but also they’re breaking chains of transmission, we should give them props. Also they are scared like the rest of us 5/

4) people who are engaging in behaviors that I think are risky may have made a very rational and considered choice given the options they have. My biggest impacts are in how I behave & in helping others manage risk 6/

As usual, Black scholars have been thinking about these issues presciently & insightfully... 7/

https://twitter.com/mclemoremr/status/1248119740016414721?s=20

“As someone who wants desperately for as many people as possible to survive this pandemic, I need to know how to make the agreements and take the precautions necessary given the reality of my life.” @drmcclain published this is April, y’all. thenation.com/article/societ…

Back in the spring, I felt self-conscious about the perspective I was giving in this article. It was more permissive (read: practical) than the standard, Just Stay at Home, #epitwitter party line. I didn’t publicize the article much. That was a mistake. I sold myself out.

Yes, I feel like I’m living in a horror show. Yes, I cry when I remember the horrifying crush of sickness & pain heading towards us like a tsunami. I can’t stop the tsunami, but I can be a life raft. I can point to the high ground. Most of us are just doing the best we can do.

* The direct public health communication work I’ve done in my extended family and neighborhood is the most rewarding & important work I’ve done in my career. Despite it all, we are doing ok for now. 🙏🏾 If my career stopped tomorrow, this work would have made it worth it. 11/

from @drmcclain in April: “As we’ve settled into our new routine, it’s become clear to me that public-health messaging around the pandemic assumes that everyone...can simply retreat into a home, be self-sufficient, & survive the weeks or months that this intervention will last.”

👆🏾 Also @drmcclain is a national treasure. That’s the tweet.

Also, when I lay out options for people, describing spectrum of risk & possible precautions to reduce risk, people often surprise me, backing out of risky situation entirely. Not always, but enough so that I know it’s a thing. I’m sure #harmreduction folks knew this from way back