As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage the world, LauraLaw would like to wish everybody well and urge everyone who has the ability – to stay home. As law offices are deemed an essential service, there will be some (but not all) employees at the office this week/month so if you have a legal emergency then they are there for you. But again – if you can, please stay home. This is a serious disease and not taking it seriously could be fatal not only to you but those you love and other members of our society. It is many times more deadly than the Flu, more infectious, and much easier to spread when asymptomatic – meaning you could be feeling fine, but still have the virus and pass it off to others. Our infrastructure is already at a breaking point and it’s going to get much worse before it gets better. How worse it gets will depend on if people take their safety and others’ safety seriously enough. And yes, while this does affect older people and those with health complications more than the average healthy young person – those people are as valuable as any and it’s a bit discomfiting to see how much this excuse is used as a reason to not take this seriously. There’s also the fact that this disease is incredibly dangerous to anybody if they get it but we also shouldn’t be dismissing suffering because it comes from where we expect it to.
However, If your work higher-ups are being ruthless and not allowing you time off or to work at home, then obviously you do what you have to do to make ends meet and the blame falls much more on an exploitive system that forces people to work back-breaking hours just so they can survive. This is not unique to a pandemic and I urge everyone to reflect on the way that resources we need to survive and live decently – water, food, healthcare, toiletries, shelter, etc.. have been commodified to the point where you have to be a competitor in a ruthless capitalistic market to even have a chance of affording these things. And still some don’t. Before laughing and judging at the people rushing to grab precious items from stores, please reflect on how these situations are not produced necessarily by the selfishness or amorality of shoppers – but by a system that doesn’t make sure to freely provide these things to everybody. I think it’s also worth reflecting on how the way that our economic system incentives us to view our fellow human beings has contributed to this disaster. Most people are in competition with each other just to make a livelihood and the people who don’t have to worry about that are those that can look at low wage labor as a shiftless, dehumanized mass that only exists to further their capital accumulation. So many people look at their fellow human beings as enemies when we need as much solidarity as we can to make it through this thing. I just pray that after this is all over, people won’t be willing to jump back into the same type of exploitive society that has helped make this problem worse. Please treat others kindly and with compassion. Stay inside and safe so that others can be safe too. And please also listen to health experts rather than businessmen or politicians who have profit interests involved in whatever they say. Stay safe.
