the pandemic's hero and heroine in white gown essay

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Who are the real-life heroes in the time of COVID-19?

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By Gustavo Gonzalez

On World Humanitarian Day (WHD), 19 August, we celebrate and honor frontline workers, who, despite the risks, continue to provide life-saving support and protection to people most in need. On this day, we also commemorate humanitarians killed, harassed, and injured while performing their duty. This year’s theme is “Real-Life Heroes”.

But, what does it mean to be a hero? What does it take to help those in need, the poor and at-risk communities, those who are most vulnerable when a disaster strike? Why should we hold up as heroic the deeds of those who everyday continue to extend a helping hand?

As I write this, I am mourning the death of a UN colleague. He died last Friday, struck down by COVID-19, at the age of 32. As a team member of the UN’s Migration Agency, he showed exemplary dedication and commitment to the situation of migrants amidst this pandemic.

He was a true frontline hero, and he is not alone.

In these extraordinary times, and despite the very real danger to themselves, Filipino front line workers, like my fallen colleague, everyday put their own safety and well-being aside to provide life-saving support and protection to people most in need.

In the Philippines, every day since the beginning of the year, humanitarian workers have stood on the front lines dealing with the challenges arising from COVID-19 and other disaster events, like the displacement from the Taal Volcano eruption, the damage wrought by Typhoon Ambo, as well as continuing relief efforts in Marawi City and responding to those affected by the Cotabato and Davao Del Sur earthquakes. Despite the many risks, humanitarians continue to do their work, diligently and selflessly providing assistance to those who need it most.

Through years of responding to various emergencies and capitalizing on national expertise and capacity, the humanitarian community in the country has embraced a truly localized approach by recognizing what at-risk communities themselves can do in these challenging times. The private sector in the Philippines has also stepped up in sharing its resources and capabilities, joining with other humanitarian actors to support affected local governments and communities.

As we give recognition to local real-life heroes, we also need to protect and keep them free from harassment, threats, intimidation and violence. Since 2003, some 4,961 humanitarians around the world have been killed, wounded or abducted while carrying out their life-saving duties. In 2019 alone, the World Health Organization reported 1,009 attacks against health-care workers and facilities, resulting in 199 deaths and 628 injuries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled an important number of vulnerabilities as well as exposed our weaknesses in preventing shocks. It has also shown that the magnitude of the challenge is exceeding the response capacity of any single partner or country. It represents, in fact, one of the most dramatic calls to work together. The success of this battle will greatly rely on our capacity to learn from experience and remain committed to the highest humanitarian values. Our real-life heroes are already giving the example.

On 4 August, a revised version of the largest international humanitarian response plan in the country since Typhoon Yolanda in 2013 was released by the United Nations and humanitarian partners in the Philippines. Some 50 country-based UN and non-governmental partners are contributing to the response, bringing together national and international NGOs, faith-based organizations as well as the private sector.

COVID-19 might be today’s super-villain, but it does not deter our real-life heroes from doing their job and tirelessly working to find ways to combat the threat and eventually beat the invisible nemesis. We mourn the thousands who have lost their lives to the virus across the globe, including my colleague whom I have spoken of.

At the same time, we join Filipinos in upholding—in the midst of great adversity-- the tradition of celebrating the best of human kindness, generosity, social justice, human rights, solidarity and Bayanihan spirit. We celebrate what makes our front liners and humanitarian real-life heroes. We salute them for continuously putting their lives on the line, despite the risks and uncertainties.

Their efforts must not be overlooked or forgotten.

Mabuhay ang Real-life Heroes! Happy World Humanitarian Day!

Gustavo Gonzalez is the United Nations Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in the Philippines

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Hail the warriors in white gowns

Widely praised as heroes for boosting the country's recovery rate from Covid-19, Thai health workers battling at the frontlines are the Post's person of the year

PUBLISHED : 29 Dec 2020 at 04:00

NEWSPAPER SECTION: News

WRITER: Apinya Wipatayotin and Anchalee Kongrut

In every crisis, there is a hero. And for the annus horibilis 2020, no one deserves the "Person of The Year" title more than the "Warriors in White Gowns" -- a term which the public use to praise medical workers and over a million health volunteers on the frontlines of looking after the ill.

These health workers have been a buttress in the war against Covid-19. The war started in Thailand on Jan 4 -- the day when the Department of Diseases Control opened its Emergency Operation Center (EOC).

The early days of the battle were married with problems -- a shortage of surgical masks amid collective fear and panic among people. Health workers managed to work calmly and stoically, risking their health on the frontlines.

Their sacrifice and grace under fire became a major source of hope and trust that somehow the country could survive the pandemic. People listened to the Public Health Ministry's advice.

On March 29, people across the country paid tribute to the warriors in white gowns by giving them a big round of applause for five minutes, expressing appreciation for their hard work.

According to the Global Covid-19 Index (GCI) released in July, Thailand is among nations with the highest Covid-19 recovery rate.

The performance of our healthcare workers did not only win the hearts of ordinary Thais.

In November, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization (WHO), praised Thailand as "an excellent example" of fighting the coronavirus.

In a tweet on Nov 14, the WHO director wrote: "Thailand is an excellent example of how #COVID19 can be contained with a comprehensive approach -- even without a vaccine. Bravo."

It was no accident, according to WHO's director. The country's impressive performance was the outcome of the country's consistent investment in public health over the past few decades. The investment paid off when it counted the most.

The decentralised public health care system enables medical workers, nurses and volunteers to reach every community. The best example is perhaps Mae Sot Hospital. In November, the district faced a partial lockdown as doctors managed to trace over 10,000 at-risk people and contain the disease from spreading.

But the secret weapon was village health volunteers. The Ministry of Public Health, served as coordinator and messenger between community villagers and state health officials. During Covid-19, these volunteers helped the ministry monitor Covid-19 in communities and educated people on how to protect themselves from the disease.

In May, the ministry launched a nationwide campaign, sending over one million village health workers to knock on 13 million houses, to educate locals about Covid-19 and monitor the disease at household level.

The ministry since May has contracted local manufacturers to supply masks and other items items to make sure health workers would not be affected by a shortage of protective equipment.

It has also ordered Favipiravir, one of the drugs used to treat Covid-19 patients.

In mid-year, the ministry order vaccines developed by the team from the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical firm, AstraZeneca. It also secured a contract to produce the vaccine formula locally in Phathum Thani, for sale to Asean nations.

But the warriors in white gowns did not only fight the disease. While health workers work at the frontlines, doctors at the ministry are trying to win the war on information.

Amid mass panic and misinformation, the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) opened in April, launching daily press briefings on Covid-19.

The CCSA recruited professionals to work as volunteers -- professors in mass media and communications, and corporate PR executives to help the doctors with scripts and presentation.

Another noteworthy move was the decision to choose Taweesilp Visanuyothin as spokesman.

A psychologist at the Department of Mental Health, he knows how to deal with public fear and frustration and how to inspire trust among the public. Now, the CCSA is regarded as an authoritative and reliable source of information on Covid-19.

Apparently, the warriors in white gowns have won the war on information. The war against Covid-19 is far from over. After several months in which infection rates were low, the health workers returned to the battlefield this month as infections spiked.

The number of cases now exceeds 6,000 cases in total, with a total of 60 fatalities and only three seriously ill patients on a respirator.

The infection rate looks formidable, yet health workers calmly follow the playbook -- tracing, testing and containing risk areas.

It is hard to know when Thailand will win the war against Covid-19. But with the warriors in night gowns at work, Thais know they are in good hands.

A medical team from Mongkutwattana General Hospital collects swab samples from an elderly man at a mobile clinic in Pin Charoen 2 community in Don Muang district. Apichit Jinakul

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A boy swims along the Yangtze river on June 30, 2020 in Wuhan, China.

A year has passed since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March, 11, 2020. A virus not visible to the human eye has left its mark in every corner of the world. No single image can define the loss and heartache of millions of global citizens, but photojournalists were there to document the times as best they could. From the exhaustion on the faces of frontline medical workers to vacant streets once bustling with life, here is a look back at photo essays published by U.S. News photo editors from the past year. When seen collectively, these galleries stitch together a year unlike any other.

In January of 2020, empty streets, protective masks and makeshift hospital beds became the new normal in Wuhan, a metropolis usually bustling with more people than New York City. Chinese authorities suspended flights, trains and public transportation, preventing locals from leaving the area, and placing a city of 11 million people under lockdown. The mass quarantine invokes surreal scenes and a grim forecast.

Photos: The Epicenter of Coronavirus

Photojournalist Krisanne Johnson documented New Yorkers in early March of 2020, during moments of isolation as a climate of uncertainty and tension hung over the city that never sleeps.

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For millions of Italians, and millions more around the globe, the confines of home became the new reality in fighting the spread of the coronavirus. Italian photojournalist Camila Ferrari offered a visual diary of intimacy within isolation.

Photos: Confined to Home in Milan

Around the world, we saw doctors, nurses and medical staff on the front lines in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photos: Hospitals Fighting Coronavirus

As the pandemic raged, global citizens found new ways of socializing and supporting each other. From dance classes to church services, the screen took center stage.

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In April of 2020, photographer John Moore captured behind the scene moments of medical workers providing emergency services to patients with COVID-19 symptoms in New York City and surrounding areas.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted undocumented communities that often lack unemployment protections, health insurance and at times, fear deportation.

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Aerial views showed startlingly desolate landscapes and revealed the scale of the pandemic.

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With devastating death tolls, COVID-19 altered the rituals of mourning loved ones.

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In recognition of May Day in 2020, these portraits celebrated essential workers around the globe.

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In May 2020, of the 10 counties with the highest death rates per capita in America, half were in rural southwest Georgia, where there are no packed apartment buildings or subways. And where you could see ambulances rushing along country roads, just fields and farms in either direction, carrying COVID-19 patients to the nearest hospital, which for some is an hour away.

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In January of 2021, as new variants of the virus emerged, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and other vaccines led a historic global immunization rollout, offering hope.

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Tags: Coronavirus , public health , Photo Galleries , New York City , pandemic

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The hazards of 'heroism' in the time of COVID-19

How does it feel to be called a hero - and who is really being served? Image:  REUTERS/Tom Brenner

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Stay up to date:.

• The word "hero" has been used a great deal during the pandemic.
• But this label is not always helpful, and can have negative consequences.
• Here are some suggestions for how we might better acknowledge the courage shown by so many at this time.

When the world is under threat, we look for heroes. We point to women and men who face the dangers that all of us fear, and we tell their stories with pride and gratitude. Identifying heroes can rally us, inspire us, and bring us together at times when unity is desperately needed. Not surprisingly, we are now finding heroes in the time of COVID-19: we are praising healthcare workers, first responders, those who deliver our mail and bring us our food. But what is it like to be called a hero? And who is served when we call some people heroes and others not?

We looked back to another time of crisis – World War II – to a group of soldiers who faced the horrors of war in Europe and the Pacific. The Harvard Study of Adult Development has tracked the lives of hundreds of men from the time they were teenagers all the way into old age, and more than 250 of them served in World War II. When these men came home from the war, we asked them how their wartime experiences changed their view of life, and whether they felt that the world owed them something for their military service. Not a single person said that the world owed them anything for their service. And no one said that they felt like a hero. Most said they were just doing their jobs.

Have you read?

Migrants and mayors are the unsung heroes of covid-19. here's why, stories from the medical staff on the frontline in the united states, what's needed now to protect health workers: who covid-19 briefing.

Why this disconnect?

The “hero” often feels like an imposter. Heroism is an ideal that few of us can live up to. Consider, for example, the nurse caring for COVID-19 patients in the hospital who feels she is neglecting her children by not being at home. Or the man working in a food processing plant who must work to feed his family, but who would much rather stay at home where he feels safe.

Calling some people heroes leaves other people feeling unappreciated. A doctor who must stay at home to care for her demented husband makes a sacrifice that no one may notice. During World War II, many soldiers felt guilty about doing desk jobs far away from combat.

When I praise someone as a hero, it serves my needs, not the needs of the “hero”. Calling someone else a hero – a nurse, a politician, a factory worker – can make us feel better. In a time of uncertainty and danger, imagining that someone else has special powers lets us feel a bit less helpless and vulnerable. Many of us are desperate to find this kind of relief.

We all want to be seen and appreciated by others for who we are and what we are doing. During this time of crisis, people need to feel appreciated more than ever.

How can we express gratitude in a way that feels genuine? A good place to begin is by paying close attention. What exactly do we appreciate about someone’s behaviour? What are the actions that take courage? When we appreciate the fact that a grocery store clerk reports for work every day in the midst of a dangerous pandemic, we are naming and expressing gratitude for a specific action. When we thank the nurse who cannot hug her children because she works with COVID-19 patients, we are appreciating a sacrifice that is both simple and profound.

Valuing each other is exactly what we need to do in this time of crisis. Labels like “hero” have their uses, but history tells us that those in the spotlight often do not feel seen when we put them on a pedestal, and many who behave with courage are hidden from view. Noticing and naming our many courageous gifts to each other can be the most inspiring and unifying way to keep hope alive during dark times.

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The Hero’s Journey in the Time of COVID

Why stories of a hero’s adventures may resonate during the current pandemic..

Posted August 30, 2020

In only seven months, we have watched the dissolution of our familiar world. The viral outbreak has fractured our social order and dismantled the scaffolding which has held our society intact. Institutions we have come to rely on for our well-being—health care, education , government itself—are altered in ways we couldn’t have predicted.

We wonder how our future will look. Some of us even wonder if we will be alive in the future. What will survive? Will there be restaurants? Movie theaters? Malls and sports arenas? Will our children have human teachers, or will tele-teaching and tele-medical visits become the norm? Social instability appears to be chronic and unfixable and our psyches are suffering greatly. How could we not be swept up by feelings of abandonment, worry, anger , fear , hopelessness, helplessness, disorientation and loss, or numbed out and grieving? If any of these feelings ring true for you, you’re not alone.

Where can we find strength and resilience when hardships proliferate and we need to accommodate even more change? One way is to turn inward to our heroic self who seeks our greatest potential and guides us toward authentic wholeness. Here’s how depth psychologist Carl Jung described this inner companion: “Inside each of us is another who we do not know who speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from how we see ourselves.”

These days most everyone knows about the hero’s journey, whether they are aware of it or not. Popular culture brims with stories structured around the hero’s journey, including some of our most popular fictional characters like Harry Potter or Atticus Finch. The film industry has notably co-opted the hero’s journey to plot movies like Star Wars , The Lion King , Frozen , and all the James Bond films.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell first wrote about the hero’s journey in 1949 in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Campbell compared myths from around the world, some dating back thousands of years, and found that many of them shared a common structure, which he called “the hero’s adventure.” On an outer level, Campbell noted a sequence of events each hero/heroine encountered and he outlined their stages: departure and separation in which the hero/heroine leaves their safe world; initiation and ordeal in which the hero faces obstacles and ordeals that test her wisdom and skills; and the return , in which, having successfully overcome hardships, the hero returns to where she started, changed by her experience. On an inner psychological level, the hero’s journey depicts a maturation process of discovering one’s potential and becoming one’s true self; it is a portrait of profound transformation.

Hard times spur us to embody our hero-self. As Campbell and others discovered, many classic fairytale motifs as well as myths begin with a statement of misfortune, then progress through challenge and struggle, and finish in triumph. These stories chart the call to a higher purpose that catapults the hero/heroine out of the ordinary world into the unknown where she is tasked with a series of tests and tribulations and ultimately secures a treasure or elixir for herself and the collective world.

The Brothers Grimms' version of “Little Brother and Little Sister” illustrates how the initiating journey starts with misfortune:

Little Brother took his little sister by the hand and said, “Since our mother died we have had no happiness ; our step-mother beats us every day, and if we come near her she kicks us away with her foot. Our meals are the hard crusts of bread that are left over; and the little dog under the table is better off, for she often throws it a nice bit. May Heaven pity us. If our mother only knew! Come, we will go forth together into the wide world.”

Likewise, “The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn” begins:

There were once three brothers who had fallen deeper and deeper into poverty, and at last their need was so great that they had to endure hunger, and had nothing to eat or drink. Then said they, “We cannot go on thus, we had better go into the world and seek our fortune.”

In both stories, bad luck leads to good fortune as it does in “The Six Swans”:

Once upon a time, a certain king was hunting in a great forest, and he chased a wild beast so eagerly that none of his attendants could follow him. When evening drew near he stopped and looked around him, and then he saw that he had lost his way. He sought a way out, but could find none. Then he perceived an aged woman with a head which nodded perpetually, who came towards him, but she was a witch ...

In each story, we hold our breath as the hero faces impossible odds that seem unsurmountable and deadly. We read on, hoping against hope that some unseen force or influence will save the day. As in fairytales, so in life, but the helpers that come to our aid are not good fairies or friendly animals, they are our own brilliant but latent resources, instincts stirred to assist us.

Like dreams, these tales and their variants express the universal experiences of our inner worlds. The life of the soul comes to us through story. When we dream or dream our way into a tale, we are being shown the archetypal images latent in our souls that are bound by neither time nor place. To be in touch with this deep personal resource allows us to be lifted from the familiar and every day to view our lives from a God’s-eye perspective—and to see that the wasteland of today may be only a stage in the renewal of a new world.

What images are currently emerging in your dreams that speak of inner fears and challenges? Do you feel yourself abandoned by our government and leaders? Do you see yourself as a child lost in a wood, or freezing to death on a snowy evening ignored by the happy celebrants who pass you by, as in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl”? Do you feel unseen in a society that doesn’t seem to care? Do you dream you have an impossible task to complete and not enough time? Do you arrive too late to take the exam or your driver’s test? Have you missed the train, forgotten your suitcase, misplaced the ticket, or can’t start the car? Do you dial for help only to discover your phone battery is dead? These are dream images of difficult beginnings, the conflict, or misfortune that sets you on the path. Carl Jung summed up the mystery and importance of dreams when he wrote, “A dream is a product of nature, the patient has not made it, it is like a letter dropped from Heaven, something he knows nothing of.” (ETH Lecture V 23, Nov1934. Page 156.)

Did you have a favorite fairytale growing up? (Preferably not the Disney version, which has usually been altered quite a bit from the original.) If “Rapunzel” or “The Frog King” or “Jack and the Beanstalk” enraptured you then, reread the story and note what stands out for you. What emotions do you feel? Is there something in your life now that has a similar theme? Does a different fairytale capture your attention ? Ask yourself how this particular tale affects you now.

Many of us are now managing anxiety , depression , anger, and fear through psychological and spiritual support. Working consciously with a creative channel by dream journaling, reading, or writing your own fairytale, or simply thinking about the stages of the hero’s journey can complement more conventional ways of managing difficult feelings. They could even bring fresh insights and creative solutions and restore energy to our feelings of “battle fatigue.”

The more you honor and stay in contact with feelings and images that arrive unbidden and give them space, the more they will share their wisdom with you. This is what Jung discovered during his decades-long exploration of soul and psyche. “The privilege of a lifetime,” he writes, “is to become who you truly are.”

Dale M. Kushner, MFA , explores the intersection of creativity, healing, and spirituality in her writing: her poetry collection M ; novel, The Conditions of Love ; and essays, including in Jung’s Red Book for Our Time .

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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Students Describe Their Pandemic Experience in Six-Word Memoirs

Wake up, get on Zoom, repeat.

By The Learning Network

Illustration by Nicholas Konrad

This post is part of The Learning Network’s weekly Current Events Conversation feature, in which we publish a selection of notable student comments on our daily writing prompts .

How would you describe pandemic life … in just six words?

Inspired by “ The Pandemic in Six-Word Memoirs ,” an Opinion piece by Larry Smith, the creator of Six-Word Memoirs , we challenged students to capture their experiences over the last 19 months in their own six-word stories.

We asked them: What comes to mind when you think about the last year, or even the 19 months since quarantines first began? What small details of your life seem especially interesting, poignant, funny or relatable?

Teenagers rose to the occasion with pandemic memoirs that brought humor, introspection and deep feeling to this moment. While short, these miniature stories convey much bigger ideas about online school, being trapped inside, missing friends, the political landscape, the “longest two weeks ever,” personal growth and hope.

Thank you to all those who participated in this exercise this week, including teenagers from Layton, Utah ; Riverside University High School in Milwaukee ; and Pittsburgh .

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

“Congratulations on graduating!” *closes Chromebook* — Jack, Hoggard High School

Dusty backpacks, my life on pause. — Charlotte, J.R. Masterman

I love sleeping. Not this much! — Reece, Hoggard High School

Don’t cough. It scares people now. — Vay, Utah

Day 582 of two-week masking. — Will, Illinois

Glazed donuts, glazed eyes, glazed life. — Cassidy, Hoggard High School

Google search: How to survive apocalypse? — La, NUAMES High School

Day three: I need more shows. — Terrell, J.R. Masterman

Sounds fun, but what about Covid? — Alexandra, J.R. Masterman

Sleep and procrastination: my closest friends. — Nicole, Cary High School

Technology. An escape, but not education. — Gwyneth, Kempner High School

Eyes open, but never really awake. — Kara, J.R. Masterman

Close with family, far from friends. — Shalom, Houston

48th time I’ve seen this video. — Jonathan, J.R. Masterman

every day is the same day — Hsamu, Milwaukee, Wis.

Wake up, get on Zoom, repeat. — Jack, GB

Together now, but still all alone. — Sophie, Union High School

netflix, missing assignments, doordash, sleep deprived — Joah, Glenbrook North

Productiveness overcomes bad feelings and thoughts. — Manar, Kempner High School

Sleeping, eating, strolling. Nothing to do. — Jasmine, Riverside University High School

Trapped inside, empty streets, empty me. — Klajdi, J.R. Masterman

Tired of being in my room. — Valeria, New Mexico

TikTok, YouTube, Netflix; mind goes numb. — Maya, NUAMES High School

I’m six feet away from normal. — Abbey, J.R. Masterman

Learned how to smile without smiling. — Gabriel, Northbrook

Watching history being made; it’s bad. — Payton, Illinois

Political polarity, ravaging ‘rona, deliberate deceit — Caden, Utah

“In this together,” says comfortable billionaire. — Mya, NUAMES High School

Covid danger zones: parks and schools. — Chris, Hoggard High School

Spent 10 minutes picking out mask. — Lillian, Hoggard High School

Birthday ruined, schedule ruined, trust ruined. — Garrison, J.R. Masterman

“Covid is a hoax,” they said. — Jackson, Layton, Utah

a long, harsh, challenging, roller coaster — Hyan, Atrisco Heritage Academy High School

if we could flick a wand — Zebo, J.R. Masterman

Quit old habits, to heal inward. — Da’Jah, City High Charter School

I caught Covid; I’m better now. — Micaela, J.R. Masterman

Clenched jaws underneath disposable masks. — Pragati, Farmington High School

Offline, online, offline … Present? Not really. — Celia, Cary High School

Lacking sleep, lacking emotion, lacking connection. — Lorenzo, TNCS, Richmond, Va.

Trapped in my head, no escape. — Claire, J.R. Masterman

Lonely, but content; I grew tremendously. — Haven, Kempner High School

everyday is yesterday, my new life — Christoper, J.R. Masterman

Empty town, empty wallet, empty mind. — Ed, Mass.

My home soon became a chrysalis. — Sofia, California

Physical seclusion resulted in lonesome ideation. — Darlene, Kempner High School

Fail my classes. Eat Doritos. Repeat. — Dylan, Hoggard High School

A different person emerged from quarantine. — Tracy, Kempner High School

Lost my mask, need another one. — Jonah, J.R. Masterman

Friends? No, just games and screens. — Michael, City High, Pittsburgh

The vaccine works, please get it. — Eoin, J.R. Masterman

Depressed. Stressed. What is coming next?! — Taisen, Pittsburgh

I need to see the world. — Vrishab, J.R. Masterman

Time for reflection, time to question. — Gabrielle, Connecticut

Loneliness, anxiety, fear. Oh look, hope. — Audrey, Miami Country Day School

Learn more about Current Events Conversation here and find all of our posts in this column .

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Me? A Hero? Gendered Work and Attributions of Heroism among Volunteers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Braden leap.

Mississippi State University, USA

Kimberly Kelly

Marybeth c stalp.

University of Northern Iowa, USA

The gendered features of adults’ attributions of heroism to themselves and others has received substantially less scholarly attention than the gendered dynamics of media representations of (super)heroes. Utilizing 78 interviews and 569 self-administered questionnaires completed by adults in the United States who were voluntarily making personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, we show how respondents effectively deployed popularized assessments of the relative value of gendered labour in the private and public spheres to shift attributions of heroism from themselves to others. Though media portrayals at the outset of the pandemic depicted these volunteers working in their homes as heroes, respondents insisted that the real heroes were those working in the public sphere. Even if media representations increasingly frame women as heroes, these results suggest that the long-standing associations between men and heroism will likely remain in place if feminized labour associated with the private sphere of households remains devalued.

Introduction

Heroes are especially important to communities and societies because they enhance the well-being of others and personify who and what are considered worthy of emulation ( Kinsella et al., 2015a ). Like ‘cultural constellations’ ( Dyson, 1996 ), those labelled heroes provide individuals with ‘moral beacons’ ( Porpora, 1996 : 210) for how they should look, act and relate to others. In western contexts, heroism is generally associated with voluntarily acting to benefit others despite the physical, emotional and/or social risks incurred by taking such actions ( Franco et al., 2018 ; Kinsella et al., 2015b ). In addition to prominent public figures, ordinary individuals are fully capable of being heroes ( Franco and Zimbardo, 2006 ). Heroism can entail dramatic, death-defying feats, yet heroism also regularly involves caring for others and generosity ( Becker and Eagly, 2004 ).

Heroism can also present drawbacks for individuals, communities and societies ( Frisk, 2019 ). Prominent associations between heroism, men and masculinities facilitate the reproduction of inequitable gender orders by justifying men’s power over supposedly weak and vulnerable women ( Cocca, 2016 ; Cree, 2020 ; Lorber, 2002 ). Although the gendered features of media representations of (super)heroes have received substantial scholarly attention, significant work remains to be done in examining the links between gender and heroism ( Frisk, 2019 ; Kinsella et al., 2015b ). Regarding attributions of heroism, Kinsella et al. (2017 : 9) provocatively ask, ‘Do women have to achieve more to be recognized as heroes?’

We answer this question with an emphatic yes, but with a twist. We argue that women and men must achieve more to be recognized as heroes if their heroism is based on feminized labour associated with the private sphere of households. The ideology of separate spheres cleaves space into two distinct categories differentially associated with women and men. The private sphere of homes, care work and unpaid labour is associated with women and femininities. The public sphere of businesses, politics and paid labour is associated with men and masculinities. Following its initial development in the 19th century, how the spheres interface in practice has regularly been reorganized in response to shifting political-economic conditions and policies ( Hochschild and Machung, 1989 ; Laslett and Brenner, 1989 ). Although women increasingly entered the public sphere in the United States following the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the ideology of separate spheres is still centrally important to how gendered labour is accomplished and understood in both spheres. Paid work in the public sphere is still strongly associated with men and masculinities, for example, but women in the United States complete more unpaid labour on behalf of volunteer organizations outside their households at least in part because this unpaid work is associated with caring dispositions and skillsets commonly linked to women and feminized labour in the private sphere ( Gerstel, 2000 ; Leap, 2019 ).

By analysing 78 semi-structured interviews and 569 self-administered questionnaires completed by those who voluntarily made personal protective equipment (PPE) at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show how individuals who were labelled heroes at the outset of the pandemic shifted attributions of heroism from themselves to others by repeatedly drawing on the ideology of separate spheres. Although our respondents, whom we refer to as ‘makers’, were voluntarily subjecting themselves to a range of risks by producing and distributing PPE to help others during the pandemic, they overwhelmingly rejected the idea that they were heroes even though they were being lauded as such in the news media (e.g. Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, 2020 ; Heloise, 2020 ). Drawing on understandings of heroism that associate it with masculinized work in the public sphere ( Featherstone, 1992 ), makers generally insisted there was nothing heroic about the sewing and 3D printing they were doing in their homes to protect others from a deadly virus. They emphasized that the hero label should be reserved for businesses and individuals working in the public sphere during the pandemic. Echoing popular assessments of gendered labour that have repeatedly elevated the value of masculinized work in the public sphere over feminized work in the private sphere ( Daniels, 1987 ; DeVault, 1991 ), men and women respondents lionized others’ work in the public sphere while deploying devalued assessments of work completed in their households to shift attributions of heroism from themselves to others.

Other scholars contend the lack of representations of women acting heroically in news and popular media is a key reason why heroism is more commonly attributed to men ( Becker and Eagly, 2004 ; Cocca, 2016 ; Rankin and Eagly, 2008 ). We argue that the link between men and heroism is also informed by gendered assessments of labour that obscure the importance and risks of feminized work in the private sphere. Even when the news media were portraying men and women who were voluntarily making and distributing PPE as heroes, those doing this work drew from devalued depictions of feminized work to insist they were not heroes. Disrupting the cultural links between men, masculinities and heroism, we show, can require more than just increased public attention to women acting heroically. It also requires acknowledging the complexities and significance of feminized work completed in the private sphere so that it can be recognized for what it often is – heroism that involves voluntarily placing one’s self at risk to enhance others’ well-being.

We utilize this analysis to synthesize and extend the literatures on pandemic heroism and the gendered contours of heroism. Although scholars have critically engaged with attributions of heroism at the outset of the pandemic ( Halberg et al., 2021 ; Kinsella et al., 2022 ), this scholarship has not considered either the gendered contours of heroism or heroes beyond the public sphere. Further, although there is an extensive collection of content analyses examining the gendered dynamics of representations of heroes, fewer studies focus on the gendered dynamics of attributing heroism to others. This is especially true in respect to adults’ assessments of heroism ( Kinsella et al., 2015b ). This deserves closer analysis because attributions of heroism are closely coupled with the reproduction, and potential subversion, of hegemonic gender orders that empower some men at the expense of women and other men ( Cocca, 2016 ; Cree, 2020 ; Lorber, 2002 ).

Gendered Representations of Heroes and Gendered Inequalities

Media representations of heroes inform how individuals and groups do gender by legitimating certain behaviours as appropriate for men or women ( Coyne et al., 2014 ; Pennell and Behm-Morawitz, 2015 ). Representations of heroes have long provided powerful symbolic models against which actual men and women were judged as worthy of status and respect ( Connell, 1995 ; Cree, 2020 ). Although individuals can challenge the gendered dynamics of such representations ( Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005 ; Dallacqua and Low, 2021 ), others often still hold them accountable to expectations legitimated by these representations ( Marsh, 2000 ; Moeller, 2011 ). By engaging with these representations, individuals and groups situate themselves within inequitable gender orders ( Cocca, 2016 ; Dyson, 1996 ).

Although evidence suggests women have been more likely to act heroically in some situations ( Becker and Eagly, 2004 ), across a range of national contexts heroism is generally associated with men and masculinities ( Cocca, 2016 ; Danilova and Kolpinskaya, 2020 ; Lorber, 2002 ). Even the fictional worlds of superheroes, which provide opportunities to celebrate ‘ultimate androgyny’ ( Taylor, 2007 : 346), regularly feature powerful men rescuing vulnerable damsels in distress ( Burch and Johnsen, 2020 ; Scott, 2013 ). Female characters such as Wonder Woman provide exceptions to this trend, but they can still facilitate the reproduction of a hegemonic gender order because these heroic women are often dependent on men to validate their (hetero)sexual desirability and vanquish evil ( Avery-Natale, 2013 ; Cocca, 2016 ; Gilpatric, 2010 ; Magoulik, 2006 ). Consequently, such depictions can promote a patriarchal gender order closely linked to heterosexuality even though female heroes may kick some ass ( Cocca, 2016 ; Magoulik, 2006 ).

Representations of heroes also legitimate hierarchies among men and masculinities. Particular men are represented as heroes worthy of status because of their unique bravery, selflessness or abilities to utilize exceptional skills – often to protect women from men portrayed as exceptionally evil ( Cree, 2020 ; Kelly, 2012 ; Lorber, 2002 ). Even when not fighting bad guys, depictions of heroic men equate certain practices and body types with status and respectability ( Avery-Natale, 2013 ; Burch and Johnsen, 2020 ). In short, representations of heroes have regularly provided exemplary hegemonic masculinities that justify hierarchal gender relations between, and among, men and women ( Connell, 1995 ; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005 ).

Gendered Perceptions of Heroes and Work

Although Porpora (1996) encouraged greater attention to adults’ attributions of heroism over two decades ago, studies examining individuals’ assessments of heroism have continued to focus on children and adolescents ( Estrada et al., 2015 ; Gash and Bajd, 2005 ; Holub et al., 2008 ). This is especially true in respect to analyses of the gendered features of hero attribution ( Danilova and Kolpinskaya, 2020 ; Kinsella et al., 2015b ). The limited studies focusing on adults diverge from and parallel studies on youth. In contrast to children, adults regularly indicate that they either do not have a hero or express reservations about identifying one ( Danilova and Kolpinskaya, 2020 ; Porpora, 1996 ; Yair et al., 2014 ). Nevertheless, laboratory studies show that popular depictions of heroes can influence adults’ understandings of themselves ( Pennell and Behm-Morawitz, 2015 ) and whether men or women can be heroic ( Rankin and Eagly, 2008 ). Echoing research on children, women are more likely than men to indicate that a woman is their hero ( Danilova and Kolpinskaya, 2020 ; Donoghue and Tranter, 2018 ; Rankin and Eagly, 2008 ). Nevertheless, overall, adults are more likely to identify men as heroes ( Danilova and Kolpinskaya, 2020 ; Donoghue and Tranter, 2018 ; Rankin and Eagly, 2008 ) or associate masculinized occupations such as ‘fireman’ with heroism ( Keczer et al., 2016 ). Men and women also sometimes associate different characteristics with heroism. Kinsella et al. (2015b) found that men were more likely than women to associate fearlessness, strength and saving others with heroism.

The gendered dynamics of hero attribution are related to whether and under what circumstances men and women are depicted as heroes in news and popular media ( Cocca, 2016 ). Becker and Eagly (2004) contend that heroism tends to be associated with masculinity because men are generally overrepresented in occupations in the public sphere whose death-defying rescues of people in distress receive consistent public recognition. Consequently, although women also routinely risk their well-being to help others, men are more strongly associated with heroism because men’s heroism gains more public recognition ( Becker and Eagly, 2004 ). A follow-up study by Rankin and Eagly (2008) supports this contention. Respondents were more likely to name men when asked to identify public figures who were heroes. However, when respondents were asked to identify heroes whom they personally knew, they were equally likely to identify men and women as heroes. When presented with a hypothetical rescue scenario, male and female respondents were equally likely to consider the fictional rescuer as heroic whether the rescuer were depicted as a man or woman ( Rankin and Eagly, 2008 ).

Becker and Eagly (2004) are right that men are overrepresented in occupations in the public sphere that are often lauded for heroic work, yet what is unclear is why work commonly associated with women in the private sphere is not considered heroic. Featherstone (1992) , for example, explicitly frames feminized work in households as the antithesis of heroism. Presumably, if attributions of heroism are contingent on recognizing that individuals’ actions benefitted others at the risk of harming their own well-being, work associated with the private sphere and femininities must be understood as either failing to benefit others or being risk free. Given that work associated with femininity and the private sphere is widely considered central to caring for others ( Laslett and Brenner, 1989 ), failing to consider this work heroic must be at least partially because it is not considered risky. Featherstone (1992 : 165) seemingly confirms this when he notes, ‘A basic contrast then, is that the heroic life is the sphere of danger, violence and the courting of risk whereas everyday life is the sphere of women, reproduction and care.’

Because the meanings associated with heroism, work and gender are social constructs, there is nothing inevitable about the conceptual links between heroism and work in the public sphere associated with men and masculinities. Seale’s (1995 , 2002 ) analyses of terminal illness are illustrative. Seale (1995 : 598) frames those who care for those dying from such illnesses as engaging in ‘specifically female heroics’. Further, newspaper coverage of cancer patients deployed gendered representations to frame women as heroes who were uniquely capable of utilizing emotional labour to effectively cope with devastating cancer diagnoses ( Seale, 2002 ). In both cases, Seale (1995 , 2002 ) portrays women as heroic due to their skilled utilization of caring and emotional labour commonly associated with the feminized private sphere.

Heroic Work during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Contrary to the general trend of focusing on the positive features of heroism ( Frisk, 2019 ), initial analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic have emphasized its potential drawbacks ( Kinsella et al., 2022 ). Emphasizing how heroic acts are undertaken within institutions that inequitably distribute risks and social obligations to address them ( Halberg et al., 2021 ), neoliberal policies and ideologies shaped the need for and portrayal of pandemic heroes ( Lohmeyer and Taylor, 2021 ). Labelling first responders, healthcare workers and other ‘essential’ personnel heroes positioned them as individually responsible for addressing problems exacerbated by decades of neoliberal policies ( Lohmeyer and Taylor, 2021 ). Meanwhile, the culpability of state institutions in helping to create conditions of suffering and any responsibility to effectively address them was minimized ( Cox, 2020 ; Halberg et al., 2021 ; Kinsella and Sumner, 2022 ; Lohmeyer and Taylor, 2021 ).

These portrayals also threatened to undermine the well-being of workers, as attributions of heroism made it more difficult to acknowledge workers’ needs for institutional supports, personal protective equipment, adequate pay and boundaries delineating how much they should sacrifice for others who often refused to participate in collective efforts to blunt transmission rates ( Cox, 2020 ). Analyses of frontline workers’ responses to public efforts to label them heroes are especially notable. Danish nurses reported that their experiences did not align with their understandings of heroism ( Halberg et al., 2021 ). They reported feeling overwhelmed, afraid and largely unprepared to work with COVID patients. Like a variety of frontline workers in the UK and Ireland ( Kinsella et al., 2022 ), Danish nurses also reported that being labelled a hero facilitated the expectation that they should endlessly sacrifice their own well-being on behalf of others.

Cox (2020) advocates ceasing labelling healthcare workers heroes, but others conclude that the label can still be useful for describing responses to the pandemic. Instead of portraying pandemic heroes as endless wells of sacrifice and bravery, it is necessary to acknowledge the social institutions that worked to facilitate the need for heroic acts, the negative consequences that can stem from sacrificing on behalf of others and how attributions of heroism can create unrealistic, potentially harmful expectations ( Halberg et al., 2021 ; Kinsella and Sumner, 2022 ). In short, heroes must be contextualized within institutions and considered fully human.

Methods and Data

This analysis utilizes 569 self-administered online questionnaires and 78 semi-structured phone interviews completed by US adults between July 2020 and January 2021. Both data generation techniques were approved by the authors’ institutional review boards. Inviting PPE makers to complete either a questionnaire or a telephone interview accommodated their time constraints and comfort with different technologies. There was a greater risk of social desirability bias during interviews because respondents were required to talk with a person. When asked whether they considered themselves heroes for making PPE, for example, interview respondents could have been more inclined to indicate that they did not because they wanted to avoid seeming narcissistic to the interviewer. However, responses across data generation techniques were consistent in content on this and all other questions utilized in this analysis. Consequently, we do not suspect social desirability bias had a more substantive impact on interview responses. On average, respondents completed questionnaires in 36 minutes and interviews in 53 minutes.

We used professional, personal and virtual networks to distribute flyers and invitations to participate in the study. Paralleling prior analyses of disaster responses ( Penta et al., 2020 ), social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Reddit were especially useful for identifying potential participants because makers often used social media to organize PPE production. Because individuals who acquired raw materials and organized distribution networks were just as important as makers in getting PPE into the hands of users, they were included in the study.

As Table 1 illustrates, women, whites and relatively well-educated individuals are overrepresented in the sample as compared with the population of the United States. Other analyses that distributed online calls to participate during the pandemic reported similarly skewed samples ( Craig and Churchill, 2021 ; Friedman et al., 2021 ). The dynamics of making and volunteering in the USA could also help explain the sample composition. Sewing and 3D printing requires specialized equipment that presents classed barriers to participation ( Stalp, 2015 ), and the gendered and racialized dynamics of volunteerism in the USA have often encouraged white women to engage in volunteering at higher rates than other groups ( Pham, 2020 ). Although we purposefully contacted maker groups comprised primarily of people of colour to try to further diversify our sample, non-response bias could have also skewed the sample.

Demographic composition of interview and questionnaire respondents.

Notes : a Age was structured as an ordinal variable on questionnaires and an interval variable during interviews.

We cannot generalize our findings beyond our sample, but our dataset does have some notable strengths. The regional composition of questionnaire respondents is within +/– 5% of population estimates of the four Census Bureau regions of the USA ( US Census Bureau, 2022 ). Our data are also comprised solely of individuals’ first-hand assessments of their responses to the pandemic as it unfolded . As a result, it is an emotionally evocative dataset with detailed descriptions of makers’ efforts to survive a worsening disaster.

Following analyses of hero attribution that advocate utilizing open-ended questions to assess individuals’ attributions of heroism ( Danilova and Kolpinskaya, 2020 ; Donoghue and Tranter, 2018 ), we focus primarily on data generated through open questions. In addition to asking makers to detail the who, what, where, why and how of PPE production, we asked respondents whether they believed they or anyone else was a hero for their responses to the pandemic. Following Charmaz (2003) , we utilized an open, iterative approach to data analysis. We first read and re-read responses to identify themes respondents regularly invoked. After identifying and analysing key themes such as ‘risks incurred through making’ and ‘attributing heroism to PPE group organizers’ in greater detail, we determined that the ideology of separate spheres was centrally important to makers’ attributions of heroism because it effectively integrated the themes that emerged during the initial stages of data analysis.

Respondents are identified by their gender and region in the ensuing analysis. Each quote comes from a different maker. We begin by focusing on makers’ descriptions of fabricating PPE to highlight that their actions were heroic. We then illustrate how makers overwhelmingly rejected the suggestion that their work was heroic even though they incurred a multitude of risks to enhance others’ safety. Finally, we illustrate how makers deployed the gendered ideology of separate spheres to shift attributions of heroism from their work in the private sphere to other individuals and entities working in the public sphere.

Heroic PPE Production: Voluntarily Incurring Risks to Bolster Others’ Safety

Supplies of PPE were quickly exhausted in the USA in early 2020. After decades of neoliberal reforms had weakened public health infrastructure and encouraged for-profit production facilities to be moved out of the United States, neither state institutions nor private businesses could provide adequate PPE supplies ( Leap et al., 2022a , 2022b ). Individuals and civic organizations were encouraged to voluntarily produce and distribute substantial amounts of masks, face shields, hand sanitizer and other protective equipment. Across the USA, makers who answered this call were publicly lauded as heroes by news media and state officials. A June 2020 article in the Washington Post portrayed makers as heroes ( Heloise, 2020 ) and US House Representative Abigail Spanberger officially recognized makers as heroes ( Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, 2020 ), for example.

Nevertheless, it may not be readily apparent that makers met the definition of heroes who were voluntarily risking their well-being to assist others. Pham (2020) , for example, echoes Featherstone (1992) when she contrasts the working conditions of low-paid garment workers with the supposedly safe working conditions enjoyed by volunteer PPE makers. She notes, ‘[Garment workers are] not making masks in the safety and comfort of their homes’ ( Pham, 2020 : 322). However, makers often exposed themselves to a multitude of physical, emotional, financial and social risks to get PPE to those who desperately needed it.

Repeatedly, makers indicated that they incurred aches, pains and repetitive motion injuries from spending hours on end producing PPE. One interviewee had even gone to the hospital after her legs became swollen following an especially intense mask production session. Makers also placed themselves at risk of infection as they sought out materials for production and then distributed finished PPE. In response to a questionnaire item that asked makers to detail any drawbacks associated with producing PPE, a Midwestern woman remarked, ‘Some people do not realize the time it takes and the risks I took with my own health when I stood in line for hours to get fabric. The assumptions that it was easy made me feel undervalued.’

Beyond physical risks, makers regularly indicated that it was emotionally overwhelming to know that others might die if they did not produce enough PPE. This caused considerable emotional turmoil for a man in the Western United States who was helping organize a network of makers that was producing tens of thousands of pieces of PPE. During his interview, he explained:

For several months, it was just making. That’s all I did. I woke up at 6 every morning, started working on making stuff, trying to organize, call people, try and track down materials to get stuff done. I would work until 10 o’clock at night and got to a point where I was like, super stressed out, I was having mental breaks. I was losing hair, and I ended up having to kind of step away for a little bit. And it was, it was tough. But it’s one of those things where, you know, you’re helping people, you know, it’s really, really important. You know, it’s not like you’re shipping teddy bears, you know, we’re shipping protective equipment to help people. It’s really difficult to walk away.

Makers also subjected themselves to financial risks. In materials alone, nearly two-thirds (65.4%) of questionnaire respondents reported spending at least US$100 for supplies to fabricate PPE. More than a quarter (26.9%) of respondents reported spending over US$350, and it was not uncommon for makers to indicate that they had spent well over US$1000 on materials. Makers were sometimes reimbursed for some of their costs, but, most commonly, they were not. Of those that reported spending over US$350 on materials, 62.1% indicated that they had not received any reimbursements. Makers also ran the risk of getting stuck with substantial bills when plans for reimbursement unexpectedly failed. One Southern man reported losing nearly US$1000 after not being reimbursed. In some cases, these expenses undermined makers’ financial well-being. Responding to the questionnaire item concerning drawbacks associated with PPE production, a Northeastern woman noted:

It was a financial strain. I now have a lot of materials that I will continue to use, of course, but I definitely spent more out of pocket than I was reimbursed for. A lot of these purchases were made using my unemployment cheques.

Finally, makers routinely indicated that fabricating PPE facilitated interpersonal conflicts in their households and communities. Numerous women noted tensions with others in their households who did not appreciate the amount of space PPE production required or that they had shifted some of their time from domestic chores and childcare to produce PPE. Makers also risked social standing in their communities. Respondents reported being judged negatively by others who did not like the aesthetics of their PPE. Others reported being ‘ostracized’ from collective group efforts. Some even experienced abuse from those opposed to mask wearing. Detailing the drawbacks of PPE production on the questionnaire, one Southern woman explained: ‘Anti-maskers are quite nasty and rude and have been going out of their way to make my life difficult. We had to anonymously coordinate deliveries and donations because people were so rude to our drivers and seamstresses.’ Similarly, a Southern man remarked, ‘The Karens and anti-maskers are vocal and abundant. It’s disheartening.’

Voluntary PPE production has been characterized as largely risk free ( Pham, 2020 ), but makers provided far more complex characterizations of their work. Although our respondents were relatively privileged in terms of socio-economic status and race, they described a multitude of physical, emotional, financial and social risks associated with PPE production. Makers made significant sacrifices and incurred a multitude of risks to help others during the pandemic.

I’m Not a Hero: Makers’ Denials of Their Heroism

Makers were rightly recognized as heroes for their work at the outset of the pandemic, but did makers consider themselves heroes? Among questionnaire respondents, exceptionally few men (6.3%) and women (5.8%) indicated that they considered themselves heroes for producing and distributing PPE. During interviews, makers also overwhelmingly rejected the suggestion that they were heroes. Some even laughed when asked if they believed they were heroes, as if equating heroism with their efforts to voluntarily save others’ lives verged on humorous absurdity. One Southern woman’s reaction is notable. After being asked if she considered herself a hero, she immediately guffawed before exclaiming, ‘Nooo. No, that’s ridiculous.’

Makers provided a variety of reasons for rejecting the hero label. Some did not want to seem narcissistic. A Midwestern woman noted, ‘I never want to glorify myself, but I am willing to call others heroes when they are willing to sacrifice for others.’ Reflective of how incurring risks and assisting others are both centrally important to attributions of heroism ( Kinsella et al., 2015b ), others indicated that they had not incurred enough risks or assisted enough people to be considered heroes. After being asked during her interview whether she considered herself a hero for fabricating and donating over 600 masks, one Southern woman explained, ‘To me, [heroes are] someone who is like literally putting their life in danger for other people. I’m sitting at my sewing machine getting a little carpal tunnel.’ Echoing the association between pandemic heroism and limitless sacrifice ( Halberg et al., 2021 ), makers routinely set exceedingly lofty thresholds of assistance rendered to others for a maker to be considered heroic. Describing when he considered other makers heroes, one Northeastern man noted, ‘People who have been able or willing to devote every waking moment to it.’ In response to the same questionnaire item, a Southern woman noted, ‘I have known individuals who have donated 100% of their time to making masks nonstop.’

Reflective of some adults’ hesitancy to venerate others through attributions of heroism ( Yair et al., 2014 ), makers also sometimes expressed ambivalence about labelling anyone a hero because lauding individuals distracted from the need for collective responses to the pandemic. A Midwestern man’s sentiment is notable:

‘Heroes’ is a hard word for me. It feels very ego-focused. We need heroes because we need to point to *individuals* who have gone above and beyond, who have made heroic personal sacrifices, done brave and helpful things. But . . . We all have a role to play in dealing with this pandemic. Some of us have already established roles that make their contributions more risky. But ultimately, we are all at risk. We all have to make sacrifices. We all have to care for others. And ‘hero’ misses the point.

A Northeastern woman echoed this while linking the need for pandemic heroism to failed state responses. Reminiscent of Danish nurses’ assessments of heroism ( Halberg et al., 2021 ), while answering the questionnaire item regarding who she considered heroes, she wrote:

The term hero is very complicated. The hero rhetoric makes martyrs out of [frontline] workers when it would not have to come to that if the government ensured everyone had the proper protective gear and/or a liveable income under safe conditions.

Finally, and echoing sentiments expressed by frontline workers in the UK and Ireland ( Kinsella et al., 2022 ), makers often indicated that they were not heroes because they were unremarkable and simply doing what they should. After being asked whether she considered herself a hero for making and distributing 400 masks, one Southern woman replied:

I don’t think so. I don’t know. Now, I guess I see it as, this is, you know, like people in WWII or WWI or the Revolutionary War. They were born for those moments, and they lived up to them. And this is just me living up to what my time and day is asking of me. It’s just stepping up and using talents that I know God has given me to serve and to help. Don’t think I’d say hero, no. (laughing) But just someone who saw a need and stepped up.

When asked in a follow-up question whether she considered soldiers, nurses, doctors and teachers who stepped up during the pandemic heroes, she replied, simply, ‘Yes.’ As we illustrate in the following section, attributing heroism to those working in the public sphere was a recurring way that makers denied their own heroism while emphasizing the heroism of others.

They’re the Heroes: Makers’ Descriptions of Others’ Heroism

Although very few makers personally accepted the hero label, roughly 75% of men and women questionnaire respondents indicated that at least some of the other makers fabricating PPE were heroes. Further, over 90% of men and women indicated that there were individuals beyond makers who should be considered heroes due to their responses to the pandemic. Unlike studies that find men and women tend to associate different characteristics and occupations with heroism ( Danilova and Kolpinskaya, 2020 ; Kinsella et al., 2015b ), men and women in our sample generally utilized the same standards to assess heroism. Nevertheless, gender was still centrally important to how makers attributed heroism because both men and women consistently drew on the gendered ideology of separate spheres to delineate who was a hero. By drawing on popularized assessments of gendered labour in the public and private spheres, makers shifted attributions of heroism from themselves to others.

Businesses that transitioned into PPE production, makers who prioritized PPE over paid employment, those involved in community organizing and ‘frontline’ or ‘essential’ workers all featured prominently in makers’ delineations of heroism. These depictions of heroism were sometimes deployed in isolation, yet they were also regularly interlaced to associate the public sphere with risks, sacrifice and, subsequently, heroism. In contrast, and as is common in respect to feminized work associated with the private sphere ( Daminger, 2019 ; Daniels, 1987 ; DeVault, 1991 ), the complexities and significance of work completed by makers in their homes was dismissed.

Businesses operating in the public sphere that transitioned into PPE production were routinely lauded as heroic. When describing whom she considered a hero, a Southern woman wrote, ‘The bourbon industry in KY stopped making bourbon and made hand sanitizer! General Motors and Ford shut down to make ventilators. Tech Schools started making face shields with their 3D printers. Those people are heroes.’ Respondents regularly stressed that businesses were heroic because they appeared to be jeopardizing profits by engaging in PPE production. A woman in the Northeast noted, ‘Companies that quickly switched to supply and distribute what was needed. Many of them risked their profit that allows them to exist as a business.’ Likewise, a Midwestern woman wrote, ‘Businesses that are sacrificing profit for the greater good.’ Paralleling this focus on businesses risking profits, respondents were sometimes only willing to attribute heroism to other makers when they risked their paid occupations in the public sphere by devoting time to PPE production. Explaining when he considered other makers heroes, a Southern man explained, ‘People giving up jobs to organize the large donation drives and coordinating directly with the hospitals/organizations.’

As the preceding man’s response alludes to, community organizing in the public sphere also featured prominently in makers’ attributions of heroism. Describing when she considered other makers heroes, a Midwestern woman wrote:

The [Midwestern] Mask drive organizers, they have been on the cutting edge of making this happen in our community and are continuing with not only making masks but setting up stations around the community for donation and receiving (free) masks.

Similarly, a Western woman noted:

The folks who are organizing the collection and distribution of the items. Those of us making them are doing what we can, which is really just doing what we should. I don’t have the skill set to do community organization – those that do this are the heroes.

In some cases, makers linked community organizing to enhanced risks. In response to the same questionnaire item, a Northeastern woman wrote, ‘Those who go out and interact with the community and put themselves at greater risk.’

Paralleling public attributions of heroism during the initial phases of the pandemic that often focused on workers in the public sphere ( Cox, 2020 ; Lohmeyer and Taylor, 2021 ), makers also repeatedly referenced ‘frontline’ and ‘essential’ workers when describing whom they considered heroes. Reflective of the pandemic hierarchy of heroes that placed medical professionals at the very top ( Kinsella et al., 2022 ), ‘healthcare workers’ were referenced by an overwhelming majority of makers in questionnaires and interviews. A Western woman who produced and distributed 11,000 masks is illustrative. After being asked whether makers could be considered heroes, she shifted the conversation directly to healthcare workers:

You know, my thought was that the real heroes are the healthcare workers. They are the ones who really sacrificed themselves. And to me, you know, making masks is part of the effort to be worthy of their service. You know, to deserve their sacrifice. Yeah, the real heroes are really the healthcare people.

Less common, yet still noted by a sizable share of makers, were delivery drivers, first responders, grocery store staff, janitors, local governmental officials and teachers.

Although makers repeatedly linked heroism to labour in the public sphere, makers generally did not link heroism to labour in the private sphere when describing other pandemic heroes. References to risks were often centrally important to makers’ attributions of heroism, but makers did not associate risks with the private sphere when describing pandemic heroes. Makers did not indicate that they considered other makers heroes because producing masks risked physical injury or intra-household tensions, for example. Further, in only a handful of instances did respondents portray work associated with the private sphere as involving significant sacrifices worthy of commendation. One Southern woman provided an exception. When describing makers she considered heroes, she wrote, ‘Possibly people who have made PPE full time – turning their home or workspace into more of a factory.’ However, even her invocation of ‘possibly’ seemed to indicate some trepidation with describing such makers as heroes. Further, linking heroism to homes transformed ‘into more of a factory’ still emphasized the links between heroism and the public sphere because only those homes that were made more reminiscent of a workplace in the public sphere were indicative of heroism.

The substantial risks and sacrifices that warranted attributions of heroism were overwhelmingly associated with work in the public sphere. Not work in the private sphere, which was often feminized and portrayed as relatively insignificant. The following passages are illustrative. When describing whom she considered a pandemic hero, a Southern woman replied, ‘People working the actual front lines are heroes. Not those of us sewing at a sewing machine safely in our homes.’ In response to the same question, a different Southern woman remarked, ‘Those that were able to invent things to help. Organize mass groups to make PPE. I was just a wife at home making as many as I could to help.’

Discussion and Conclusion: Gendered Work and Attributions of Heroism

Paralleling previous considerations of heroism ( Kinsella et al., 2015b ), makers repeatedly referenced risks and providing benefits to others when assessing their and others’ heroism. In contrast to prior analyses ( Danilova and Kolpinskaya, 2020 ; Kinsella et al., 2015b ), makers generally deployed the same criteria in their assessments of heroism regardless of whether they were men or women. Nevertheless, gender was still centrally important to respondents’ attributions of heroism. Makers repeatedly associated heroism with work in the masculinized public sphere. Work in the feminized private sphere was not heroic, according to respondents, because it was unremarkable work that did not involve significant risks or sacrifices.

Whether and how men and women are represented as heroes in news and popular media is especially important to attributions of heroism ( Cocca, 2016 ). Becker and Eagly (2004) and Rankin and Eagly (2008) contend that men are more readily associated with heroism because they are overrepresented in occupations that consistently receive public recognition for heroic acts. Seemingly, the association between men and heroism is largely due to the relative visibility of men’s heroism in the public sphere and invisibility of women’s heroism in the private sphere. Our findings indicate that even when men and women are publicly commended for heroic acts in the private sphere, popularized assessments of gendered labour that devalue feminized labour in the private sphere can be deployed to delineate whether those publicly lauded for such heroism are actually worthy of such accolades.

In the case of PPE makers, even when individuals were intimately aware of the benefits and risks associated with their work, they still overwhelmingly rejected portrayals celebrating their heroism. By downplaying the risks and significance of voluntary work to produce PPE in the feminized private sphere, they shifted attributions of heroism from themselves to those working in the public sphere during the pandemic. This was not simply because respondents wanted to avoid appearing narcissistic. Among the hundreds of responses we received, in only a very limited handful of cases did makers associate others ’ heroism with labour in the feminized private sphere. If makers were just trying to avoid appearing vain and the relative value of gendered labour in the public and private spheres was not central to their attributions of heroism, respondents would have been just as likely to associate others’ heroism with work in the public and private spheres.

Work completed in the private sphere by both men and women is not simple, insignificant or risk free. Although this work is regularly taken for granted, it requires skilled physical, emotional and cognitive labour ( Daminger, 2019 ; DeVault, 1991 ; Leap et al., 2022a ). As makers’ descriptions of their work emphasize, this work is also associated with a range of risks. Nevertheless, so long as the significance and risks of work associated with the private sphere continue to be downplayed, it seems reasonable to conclude that the heroism of those doing this work will continue to be obscured even when it gains public recognition.

What is required to complicate the long-standing link between men, masculinities and heroism is both an expansion of the public recognition of heroic women and an expansion of what work is considered worthy of respect and commendation. Only then can the true scope of heroism be acknowledged. Without acknowledging the true value and complexities of work associated with the private sphere, it seems unlikely we will ever fully recognize the heroic men and women who voluntarily risk their own well-being to help others through such work.

Like heroism in the public sphere ( Halberg et al., 2021 ; Kinsella et al., 2022 ), heroism in the private sphere cannot be disassociated from social institutions or the personal costs that are often incurred by heroes. Labour in the private sphere is also informed by state, market and cultural institutions that encourage some to sacrifice their well-being on behalf of others ( Hochschild and Machung, 1989 ; Laslett and Brenner, 1989 ; Leap et al., 2022a ). PPE makers would not have needed to place their health, finances and social standing at risk if PPE stockpiles and manufacturing facilities in the United States had not been hallowed out by decades of neoliberal political-economic restructuring ( Leap et al., 2022a , 2022b ), for example. Feminized work in the private sphere can be heroic, and this heroism is just as political as heroism in the public sphere.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank all of the makers who graciously agreed to participate in this study while also voluntarily fabricating PPE to heroically assist their families, friends and communities amid a global pandemic. We are also very appreciative for the thoughtful feedback provided by the reviewers and editors at Sociology .

Braden Leap is Associate Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University. He studies the gendered dynamics of socio-ecological transformations, disruptions and disasters.

Kimberly Kelly is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Gender Studies at Mississippi State University. Kelly studies gender and collective behaviour, with an emphasis on religion, politics and abortion.

Marybeth C Stalp is Professor of Sociology at Northern Iowa University. Stalp studies how and where gender, culture and leisure intersect using qualitative methods, with a particular focus on women’s creativity and leisure pursuits through the life course.

Funding: The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Contributor Information

Braden Leap, Mississippi State University, USA.

Kimberly Kelly, Mississippi State University, USA.

Marybeth C Stalp, University of Northern Iowa, USA.

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December 7, 2021

Heroes or victims? Public perception of essential workers in the pandemic

by Brian Flood, University of Illinois at Chicago

Essential workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic have been praised—and rightfully so—as heroes since the very beginning of this global crisis. But how are they faring? Does the perception of essential workers as heroes overshadow their own suffering?

The pandemic has infiltrated lives across the world for almost two years and a new study from the University of Illinois Chicago College of Business Administration evaluates public perceptions of essential workers.

The goal of the study, which is published in the Journal of Applied Psychology , was to compare the implications of portraying essential workers as heroes (i.e., working on the frontlines of the pandemic) versus victims (i.e., suffering from inadequate support and protection).

"The concern with the widespread heroism narrative is that as essential workers are portrayed predominantly as heroes rather than as victims, this may inadvertently lead third parties such as the general public to overlook their suffering. Our cultural construction of a hero is someone who is willingly making self-sacrifices. Therefore, in calling essential workers heroes, we may go down the slippery slope of taking for granted their sacrifices and suffering," said Zhenyu Yuan, UIC assistant professor of managerial studies and lead author on the paper.

Through a series of surveys, Yuan and his colleagues tested whether portraying essential workers as heroes would desensitize observers regarding the workers' difficult work situations.

The researchers found that portraying essential workers as heroes led to lower levels of perceived injustice, sympathy and outrage, compared with acknowledging essential workers as victims of inadequate support. Further, observers who considered essential workers as heroes were less likely to take political action to support them.

"Our findings suggest that portraying essential workers as heroes creates the risk for observers to overlook their sacrifices and suffering. What we ultimately want to emphasize from this research is that in addition to portraying essential workers as heroes, we should take effective measures to support them. Otherwise, the uplifting heroic stories will not do much to help improve their work conditions," Yuan said.

The researchers hope the findings can help lead to a more balanced and empathetic understanding of essential workers, but also bring about resourceful support for them and others operating in different occupational and family roles during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

"At a broader level, we hope to provide a cautionary note regarding the cultural practice of normalizing individuals in certain occupations (e.g., essential workers in the COVID-19 pandemic ; teachers paying for equipment out of their own pocket) and roles (e.g., moms as superwomen) as heroes and expecting them to make personal sacrifices, as such subtle cultural perceptions may contribute to inequality and only add to their burden," the researchers write.

Journal information: Journal of Applied Psychology

Provided by University of Illinois at Chicago

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I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

More from TIME

Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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Viral Heroism: What the Rhetoric of Heroes in the COVID-19 Pandemic Tells Us About Medicine and Professional Identity

Affiliations.

• 1 Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MS, USA. [email protected].
• 2 Department of Philosophy, Millsaps College, Jackson, MS, USA. [email protected].
• PMID: 33550499
• PMCID: PMC7867860
• DOI: 10.1007/s10730-020-09434-4

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the use of the term "hero" has been widespread. This is especially common in the context of healthcare workers and it is now unremarkable to see large banners on hospital exteriors that say "heroes work here". There is more to be gleaned from the rhetoric of heroism than just awareness of public appreciation, however. Calling physicians and nurses heroes for treating sick people indicates something about the concept of medicine and medical professionals. In this essay, I will examine three aspects of the social role of medicine exposed by the language of heroism. One, if a hero is someone who goes above and the call of duty, then does that mean exposing oneself to risk of infection is no longer a duty of physicians (as it used to be)? If so, does that mean the "profession" of medicine is much like any other business? Two, physicians and nurses are not the only "heroes" this go-around. Anyone deemed essential to the US "infrastructure" is designated by the US government as having "special responsibilities" to remain at their posts for the public good, which explicitly puts physicians in the same category as sewage workers and grocery store cashiers. Three, what does it mean to belong to a profession that does (or does not) have self-sacrifice and risk-taking as part of its mission-especially a profession that rarely gets called upon to practice these obligations?

Keywords: COVID-19; Heroism; Pandemic; Professional duties; Utilitarianism.

• COVID-19 / epidemiology
• COVID-19 / therapy*
• Health Personnel*
• Professional Role*
• Professional-Patient Relations*
• Self Concept*
• Social Values
• United States / epidemiology