COVID-19 Reflection and Disaster Archipeligo

The terrifying reality that is happening today will be marked down in history as one of the worst epidemics in history. COVID-19 has engaged the world to take action from biological pandemics and change our way of living. As Jennifer Cooke beautifully states in their article, Letter on a Plague Year, “The most vulnerable will suffer even more. There will be social unrest. And there will be incredible community support, for the people by the people.” Within the United States, there is much talk between the middle class citizens about how we are doing our part by doing what we can to help ourselves and the closest people around us. This includes social distancing and providing help where help is needed which includes making homemade face masks to fight the limited supply of masks and making sure neighbors and close relatives get the care that they deserve. However, the United States government, as well as other countries, are having problems of bureaucracy where they have trouble allocating funds to the cause. With all this bureaucracy talk in the government, it is hard for governments to take action to give citizens what they need as they need it, but rather slows the entire operation and lays the foundation for many more lives to be lost to the pandemic. This has a parallel structure to the March 11th disaster in Japan where an earthquake and tsunami broke the infrastructure on the country. As Maia Madison points out in their article, Making the Most of Disaster: Learning from Memories of March 11, “the extreme bureaucracy of the government which often hindered relief was a source of annoyance for many” and “the difficulty caused by excessive bureaucracy in the distribution of goods and services… caused unnecessary stress and oftentimes a slow response.” The massive outbreak of disasters, in both COVID and March 11th, upon communities and infrastructure leads to survivors to provide support for the close ones around them rather than relying on governmental assistance. It is unsettling that the United States, a global superpower and leader of western influence, did not have a plan with taking care of the virus. As Cooke also states, “COVID-19 is going to show us very starkly how important a free healthcare system is…” As in the case with both, COVID and the March 11th disaster, we can conclude that infrastructure and government intervention does not prove itself to be efficient when dealing with high stake crises. Through experience, we cannot rely on governmental assistance right away, rather, we should rely on ourselves to make decisions for the greater good in our daily lives.