Who Gets to Stay the Fuck Home? (by François Furstenberg)

“So there is an aspect of this crisis that I have not yet seen addressed very much, though perhaps I've been reading the wrong analysis. It is the ways in which this virus is likely to have a dramatically different effect on families based on social class.

This is a pretty banal insight for historians of medicine but worth thinking about for our moment. Those of us who have the ability to work at home will be able to protect our families amazingly well. We have huge control over whom we come into contact with. We have stocked up. We can keep our kids at home or take them on socially distant walks in the park. We can carefully select which people we can come into contact with. We can have our groceries delivered if/ when our full pantries start to run out, and we have income enough to stock up for weeks on end.

Then there will be the people delivering those goods. They will be coming into contact with dozens if not more per day. There are the aides at nursing homes. There are the check out workers at grocery stores. There are the staff crammed in tight kitchens at the carry-out or delivery food stores. There are sanitation workers clearing our trash out. There are the prison guards. Many of those people will have to drop their kids off with friends or relatives while they go to work, where the chances of contracting and sharing viruses keep growing. They will be taking buses or subways to work. Then the children and workers alike will be bringing those viruses home, where an elderly relative might also live.

None of this is to address the issue that the work-from-home folks are also likely to have fewer conditions making them high risk should they contract the virus, and also much likelier to have better access to care if they do get sick. That part we already knew.

But the point is that what we are soon likely to see is high levels of isolation from the virus for some, juxtaposed with high levels of exposure for others.

This will be a familiar story for those who have studied plagues in the past.”—François Furstenberg