It’s time to grapple with our response to Covid
Cambridge’s annual Dance Party was Friday at City Hall. (Photo: Dan Eisner)
Cambridge didn’t have an official end to the pandemic, but if we had to choose an unofficial date, last Friday seems to be an excellent option. That evening, the city hosted its first Dance Party since 2019. The spirit and joie de vivre that the pandemic and government response took from us were in full force, and good vibes stretched for blocks. Nary a mask could be seen. People were living their best life.
It’s tempting to want to put the pandemic and everything associated with it in the rearview mirror. Those years sucked. The economy didn’t shrink for a sustained period, but we lived through a depression. Enjoying the happier times that are upon us is far more appealing than grappling with the mistakes our city’s government made and critiquing the ways our community reacted. Revisiting those bleak years is an unpleasant prospect, but it’s an exercise we must undertake.
The pandemic was a monumental event. It shook the foundations of society, altered our lives permanently and left behind a wake of trauma that many are struggling to address. Even though the pandemic is over, its impacts, along with the effects of the policy response, are still felt and will continue to be felt for years to come, if not decades. The actions that were taken will inform the response to future pandemics. It would be irresponsible to not conduct a postmortem.
Our leaders should convene a commission that solicits input from a variety of experts and community members across the city, from infectious disease specialists to elementary school teachers and humanities professors; from public health professionals to business owners and residents. A broad range of perspectives and opinions should be sought and welcomed. Successes and failures would be discussed. The pandemic and the policy response touched each and every one of us in profound ways, and we ought to have a thorough understanding of what we did, how we were affected and what we should do differently in the future.
The city government typically requires a great deal of public engagement before doing anything significant. Community meetings for building a two-mile bike path can go on for years. Yet we had none of that before the rash decision to upend society was made. Even if you believe it was necessary, the government response was nevertheless unprecedented and shocking. The city should engage with the public on pandemic preparedness so we won’t be caught so flat-footed next time.
Even though it’s impossible to disentangle our local Covid response from the state and federal response, we still need to have this conversation. Other nations, such as the United Kingdom, have launched Covid inquiries, and our federal and state governments need to do the same. But Cambridge shouldn’t wait for Washington and Beacon Hill to act. There is plenty to discuss, and it could spur action at other levels of government.
Recently, Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui said that “if something like this happens again, we will be much more prepared.” What exactly does that mean? What will the government do next time? What successes will it repeat? What mistakes will it avoid? Our community should be included in determining the answers to those questions.
I shudder to think what “more prepared next time” means. More prepared to strip us of our basic rights to assemble and access spaces like schools and libraries? The city’s covid response was an authoritarian, unscientific disaster, yet the officials are patting themselves on the back for a job well done.
Sumbul hid in her condo for the first eight weeks of the pandemic. For the political set it was a race to the bottom. Once the orange clown said schools should be open the progressives raced to close them and lashed out at parents begging for sanity. Sumbul and Allana tried to close businesses a second time in November right before thanksgiving without notifying anyone and lashed out at Tim Toomey for exercising his charter right. They took the hoops off basketball courts and the nets off tennis courts and locked all the kids parks. They put more restrictions on businesses and restaurants. I remember fighting to allow curbside delivery for our local florists. They championed construction closures which almost bankrupted me personally and put 1000’s of people out of work and put many subcontractors out of business. Better prepared Sumbul says? Ha! They haven’t learned a damn thing.
“They” learned a lot Pat! How the govt can take over an entire city and country. Yes correct playgrounds had caution tape around them. Schools public ones closed while all the Cambridge private ones remained open. Scores plummeted and now the push to drop testing is as large as ever.
Really sad things you read about in history books. Let’s get ready for flu season!
I approve all these rants.
Now get off my lawn!
Would it be possible to propose some type of city council hearing to look into the covid response? In Canada, a National Citizens’ Inquiry was founded to provide an independent and citizen-funded and led investigation. https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/
Perhaps that is what is needed here, but our local government needs to be aware of the effort and of the desire for accounability.
The City’s response (when separated from that of the state and the federal government as well as local business owners) was mostly reasonable, although there are a few decisions in the early months that proved in hindsight to have been excessive or missteps.
There are still issues that should have been handled differently and having a permanent record of what was done, and why and how it impacted events to act as guidance for city officials in the future to reference to and understand needs when such an event occurs again would be useful since there was a failure to have such from the previous pandemics that have occurred.
It is also important to understand that there are STILL people who are being impacted by those events and choices.
Some folks here are sounding the usual complaints of the Financially well off and not understanding how it impacted families and social structures and will for years to come.
Don’t forget how we all had to walk clockwise around fresh pond
Amen, while the city I think overall did a decent job in retrospect, I’ll never ever, ever trust cambridge public schools and the union ever again.
I think overall the city did a good job, and I think the author’s idea for a commission is a good idea. For those who are critical of the city, please remember that early on, very little was known about the virus and how it spread. A commission should therefore include what the state of knowledge was.