There are many different narratives that are woven together to make up the COVID coverall. There is the thread of the the redundant and those who support them in so many hidden ways. There is the thread of those who are in ICU, separated from loved ones. There is the thread of anxiety and fear.
One of the narratives that troubles me most, is the narrative that this is a war that is being fought. The enemy is COVID and there are those who are in the front line of the battle. Now I well understand this parable, but what disturbs me is that it assumes that some lives are expendable for the greater good. That our dollars somehow take priority over human life. The reality is that life is infinitely precious and it doesn’t matter whether it is the life of our ‘pollies’, our policemen or our pensioners.
To label our healers as ‘soldiers’ actually does them a disservice. It white washes the elective nature of their sacrifice. It diminishes their noble choice to go back to work, hour after hour, day after day. It normalises their potential death as just an inevitable consequence of ‘the war’.
So at the end of the all this, we could just shrug our shoulders and say “Oh well it’s sad, but at least our economy and shops are open again. At least we are all exercising our democratic right to be where we want to be, when we want to be and use ‘free speech’.”
So lets not trivialise what our health care workers are doing for us by assuming they had to do it and that they are expendable for the greater good. That would be worse than the disease itself.