Perspective: Two Years of COVID and Counting, Medicine Still Does Not Value Black Lives
It was a Wednesday night in March 2020.
I was one of the few people left in my dorm at the University of Chicago (UChicago) and I had put the last of my clothes in my suitcase. I sat in my house lounge, now completely empty and not full of people watching movies or playing Catan or trying to finish a general chemistry problem set. It was an uncomfortable silence as I sat in my house lounge for the last time in my third year of college, and my own hopeful naivety that it would be possible for me to return to this place I called home in the fall for my final year of college. But I knew that wasn’t going to be the case and my interaction with my own mother hours prior would confirm such.
Earlier that day, my mother and my aunt had come to help take some of my bedding and other non-clothing items home. It was the first time I had seen my mom in a couple of weeks, despite being a 23-minute walk from my Woodlawn apartment but that’s just the quarter system life. I walked around my panicked classmates, some who were rushing to catch their Ubers to O’Hare and some that were crying and holding onto their friends and partners they’d have to say goodbye to much earlier than any of us expected this academic year and went to open the door for my mom. At the moment and for the hour and a half we spent—well I spent—carrying boxes and extra suitcases to put in my aunt’s trunk, I didn’t think much of my mother and I’s interactions. We were in such a rush to finish packing up my things so she could go back home to try to get an extra two hours of sleep before heading to work. It wasn’t until I was sitting on that green chair in my house lounge and the chilling breeze of silence that covered my body that made me realize the absence of warmth I’d usually get from my mom when we saw each other. She didn’t give me a hug or a kiss on the cheek like she normally does when she sees my “designer” eye bags from the late nights I’ve had studying. There was little to no small talk and when I had to take a break to catch my breath, we were standing 6 feet apart from each other.
So, my mother could not give her own daughter a hug or a kiss and apart from the busy academic schedule that locked me in my bedroom despite a global pandemic, we would barely speak to each other.
My mother was an essential worker and like many other people who were classified as essential at that time, she did not have the privilege to “work from home.” Just as she’s done for the past 15 years, she’d take a two-hour public transit ride from our house on the south side of Chicago to her hospital on the northside where, as a housekeeper, she would be responsible for cleaning up the offices of the hospital administration that could embrace the work-from-home lifestyle and silently counted the days before the COVID-19 pandemic would blow up to a point where she’d have to work in the ER and then further increase the risk of getting COVID. So, my mother could not give her own daughter a hug or a kiss and apart from the busy academic schedule that locked me in my bedroom despite a global pandemic, we would barely speak to each other.
She was worried that she would give me COVID.
My mom did not get her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine until mid-January in 2021 and only then, nearly one year later, did she feel comfortable enough to embrace me, though still not as long as we’d usually hug since I wouldn’t be fully vaccinated for another 5 months.
Every day my mother left the house, I was worried that she would get COVID and due to some of the pre-existing conditions my mother has, it would kill her. And if COVID-19 wasn’t already a horrible risk and death sentence for my then-73-year-old dad who was trapped in Ghana due to travel bans and flight cancellations, the death of my mother would kill him and I’d be left without parents in my last year and a half of my college career.
Every day my mother left the house, I was worried that she would get COVID and due to some of the pre-existing conditions my mother has, it would kill her.
The first year of the pandemic was one of the worst years of my life because of this fear I had about losing my parents. Every morning I’d check the New York Times COVID-19 tracker and see the number of cases and deaths go up. I kept checking local news and information put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and by April 2020, when it was revealed that Black people were catching COVID-19 and dying at a higher rate than the average American