Pandemic experiences aren’t equal

A pandemic may be a great leveler in that we’re all at risk.

But the event is also filled with inequities.

Not all pandemic experiences are created equal.

And the disparity can be unsettling. It can also provoke a sense of guilt.

After all, here we are in rural America with — comparatively — a handful of cases of COVID-19 while we watch television images of hospitals in New York City stretched beyond the breaking point.

We read stories of people dying in hallways. We hear interviews with nurses and doctors whose lives — as well as their mental and emotional health — are at risk.

Some of our fellow Americans face crisis, while we deal with inconvenience.

Our challenges are puny by comparison.

Boredom doesn’t equate with exhaustion. Jigsaw puzzles don’t equal decisions over which patient merits a ventilator and which patient dies. Wearing a face mask at Walmart isn’t in the same league with running out of personal protective equipment in an emergency room.

Some of the disparities are geographic; rural Midwest as opposed to East Coast megalopolis.

Some are generational.

If you’re on Social Security, you’re a member of the target demographic for COVID-19. But your income is vastly more secure than a 25-year-old waitress who has lost her job because of state-ordered actions to promote social distancing.

One party faces a health threat. The other faces a threat to her economic survival.

And the waitress’s sacrifices are in service of protecting the retiree’s life.

The two are inextricably linked.

All those thoughts tumbled together last week when I learned that the $1,200 in federal economic stimulus money, $2,400 to the two of us as a couple, had popped up in our account.

And I felt guilty.

My wife and I are inching our way toward retirement — some days more, some days less — and the Uncle Sam windfall felt undeserved.

“What do you want to do with it?” my wife asked.

And I had no answer.

We didn’t need it to pay our bills; we could handle those.

We couldn’t use it for any extravagance; those are pretty much gone from the landscape.

“How about a motorcycle?” I joked, knowing that we’d come up short on the price tag and never get on the darned thing.

“What would we do with that?” said my wife.

Travel? Out of the question at the moment.

Art? Our walls are full, and there’s stuff stacked up in the closets.

Clothes? I have a number of pieces that are older than most of my employees.

A donation?

Yup.

It’s going to take some time to figure out where the money should go. We’ll do our best to be thoughtful and mindful about this.

There’s a screaming need from New York, and with daughters in Boston, that will factor into any decision.

And then there’s the waitress and thousands like her whose jobs have simply evaporated. Their needs will factored into our equation as well.

The inequities will linger, but maybe if we make our decision wisely, the guilt will diminish.