If you were asked to write down memories of living in San Diego during the time of COVID, how would you respond?
NOTE: There will be a panel discussion and release event for “Stories of San Diego” at the Downtown Central Library on Monday, Sept. 9, at 6:30 p.m. Please RSVP online. All college students will receive a free book at this event and books will also be available for purchase by nonstudents.
I can remember waiting in line to enter Trader Joes, fearing my father would catch the disease in a nursing facility before we could get him home for hospice, hoping the pandemic would ease so my cancer surgery wouldn’t be postponed, worrying about my wife’s exposure at work… You get the picture, what I remember are personal experiences.
We forget that COVID physically divided us like nothing ever had. What started out as a survival strategy ended up as a way of life for too many Americans– alone, afraid, depressed, and lost in the often icky maze of the interwebs. And the mindset of “me, me, me” is still widespread.
Stories of San Diego looks backward to remind us of events and communities that have faded with time. All the chapters in the book are news and opinion published during the pandemic.
Taken together, it’s like assembling a jigsaw puzzle that upon completion serves as a tribute to the worst and best of us during hard times.
The premise of the book is the power dynamic between the majority and minorities in this city. Racism was one thing definitely not disrupted by the pandemic. Even when the best of intentions were manifested –like the UCSD and the County’s vaxx supercenters– there were slights and omissions suffered by the working class in general and communities of color in particular.
Differential access to quality education, sound housing, gainful employment, and a better environment didn’t go away during those months and years, but the limited ability to seek and receive medical care became of paramount concern.
Long time San Diego journalist JW August looked at the intersections between racist hate groups and the burgeoning anti-vaxx movement. The first anti-vax protest in San Diego was led by a woman whose arrest resulted in a Trump-connected lawyer representing her. You may have to squint, but the connections are there.
Another newsroom veteran, Paul Kruger, profiled National City Mayor Alejandra Soleto-Solis, who countered pushback about the safety of vaccines by going public with her decision to participate in a UCSD vaccine trial. In another chapter, Kruger traced a change of heart on vaccines by a veteran community health worker who started out cognizant of the ways Black people had been used as medical guinea pigs.
Will Huntsberry, Jesse Marx, and Bella Ross jointly researched an article for Voice of San Diego on the differences in educational levels among those who did not survive the virus. Other differences, like zip codes, were factored into examining thousands of death certificates. That data was compared with the US Census and painted an ugly picture; being better educated and more affluent gave people a higher chance of surviving the disease. And they confirmed what many suspected; older residents accounted for three out of every four deaths during the pandemic’s first year.
Maya Srikrishnan at VOSD contributed reporting on pandemic impacts in Filipino, Latino, and Black communities.
Compared with the White population. Black and Latino populations are four times as likely to live in areas that have been hit hard by both COVID-19 and unemployment, SANDAG found in a June report.
Jesse Marx reported on the plight of homeless San Diegans, profiling the experiences of one soul who perished just as it appeared as though he was getting back on his feet. And readers learned that the median age for COVID related deaths in the general population (76) dropped to age 62 when those persons came from the streets.
Reporters at inewsource, a non-profit, non-partisan newsroom, contributed many chapters to the book. Many touched on the human aspects of the story, going beyond official reports and profiling the experiences of a decent segment of our city’s less fortunate neighbors.
Jill Castellano and Mary Plummer reported:
National researchers have found a magnifying effect of every COVID-19 death. They estimate each victim leaves behind nine grieving loved ones who are more likely to develop chronic mental illness or substance abuse disorders if they didn’t receive proper support.
Not all the experiences recounted in the book were negative. Book editor Lindsay M. Hood wrote about Barrio Logan, where the Chicano Park Steering Committee took the lead in making the needs of their community known, sourcing vaccines and personnel through the Champions of Health. The Brown Berets of Aslan assumed the lead in canvassing the community to create awareness of vaccination events. Times were tough, but years of community building paid off for Barrio Logan.
Not content to simply portray the minority communities of San Diego, the book includes five chapters on incarcerated humans, and three chapters each for: life in hotel isolation spaces, refugee camps, and the county’s rent relief program.
Contractors hired by the county to assist with and oversee programs connected with isolating people who’d contracted the virus didn’t have enough warm bodies, much less those with experience, to do the jobs they promised.
It should come as no surprise that those charged with running local corrections facilities don’t consider their residents human beings. Told to test, test, and test, they simply didn’t bother. Many cases were diagnosed upon being transported to hospitals.
In the case of the area’s refugee communities, literacy, technological, and language challenges were handled by non profit groups, who lacked the resources to give these new Americans the services they needed. For women with domestic abuse crises, the hotline structure didn’t offer help in the languages they know.
The common theme throughout the essays is about a social safety net being assumed to be in place because private enterprise could be called up in crises. These companies mostly failed, and the government programs for various populations had lost sight of their purpose.
If there’s one thing we should have learned from the pandemic, it is the need for a robust social safety net encompassing the entire community.
Do read this book. There are so many insights in one place that need to be preserved beyond the internet Wayback Machine.