Fax of Life
The fax machine story sent me over the edge.
Doing my daily “doomscrolling” on COVID, I read a New York Times story about how case information had been lost as an overloaded fax machine spewed papers all around a health department office in Harris County, Texas (Houston). OMG!
Shortly thereafter, Arizona announced the county health department would hire 150 contact tracers, at minimum wage, for at least a year. The job of contact tracing is complex; people must encourage cases to quarantine and convince them to provide the contacts they were with two days prior to showing symptoms of the coronavirus.
The job qualifications stunned me. The hiring agency simply requires that candidates have a high school diploma and experience in a call center or in customer service.
These are highly delicate and sensitive situations that require more than the ability to follow a call center script and enter data. People may not wish to divulge their immigration status, may be angry about their diagnosis, or be unable to isolate themselves because they are caring for a family member.
I think about friends who teach in college and elementary school in Wisconsin who aren’t sure what their fall semesters will be like.
It’s hard to make a lesson plan for a grade school teacher who isn’t sure if students will be at home or in class. It’s also hard to give lessons and lectures on trombone —a brass instrument that doesn’t lend itself to distancing and involves periodically spitting saliva.
But there are signs of hope, says New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright in an article in the July 20 edition.
“Like wars and depressions, a pandemic offers an X-ray of society, allows us to see all the broken places.
It was possible that Americans would do nothing about the fissures exposed by the pandemic: the racial inequities, the poisonous partisanship, the governmental incompetence, the disrespect for science, the loss of standing among nations, the fraying of community bonds.
“Then again, when people confront their failures, they have the opportunity to mend them.”
I can deal with that.
