This is personal.
I can't stop her. I couldn't if I wanted to. And I don't.
She's the soul living on this earth I love more than any other, without whom I can't fathom a day of life.
She's of an age, mid 60s. A cancer survivor. Immunocompromised. More importantly, she's a doctor, an infectious diseases specialist with 40 years have having worked clinically with patients. Never mind that as of January this year, she'd officially "retired" from hospital rounding and on-call service and ICUs, downshifting to a 4-day week, 8 am-to-4 pm, seeing patients in the office.
That 4-day week in the office went out the window a little over a month ago, which now seems like a fading memory. Now, it's 7-days, 24/7 in three area hospitals whose census grows by the hour, whose outdoor tent intake stations, whose temporary pop-up units, and whose supplementary facilities are all creaking under the current levels of increased demand. Health officials are modeling a possible peak in our "hot spot" market in the next 7 to 14 days, literally scaling the steepest front face of a precipice we'll have to cross one way or another. Over the hospital PA systems, unavoidable in the hallways, the words, the patient rooms, the ER, and the ICU, and the CCU, a clang every moment or so, signifies a Covid-19 test that shows positive. She can hear that clang, and its steadily increasing rate of frequency, in her sleep now.
Her N95--one of two masks she wears, along with a face shield, gowns, gloves, and an inner suit of armor--may be one of the ones home builders have made available. She thanks her lucky stars, grateful for the generosity of people like you, who've sacrificed to try to help keep her in the personal protective equipment she needs for the crucial next 7 to 14 to 21 days of the novel coronavirus pandemic. I thank you too. It's personal.
I think of you too, as she and I take Spring day walks on the tow-paths and trails in the environs near where we're lucky enough to live. I feel all the strength of her weight against mine, sometimes, as we cross paths with other walkers. As lovingly as she can, she forces me off the path into the woods as we drift past oncoming hikers.
"I'm trying to protect you from me," she hastens to explain to someone who strays defiantly close to us, as we leap to the side. Covid negative or asymptomatic positive, she's taking no chances, with them, with us.
For her, this is personal. She's 67 and going to work every day where her colleagues--nurses, doctors, technicians, porters, etc., etc.--are getting their asses kicked. There's no question about this in her mind. She just does. I couldn't stop her. "I signed up for this," she says. "It's my job." This is not even about her financial well-being. This is about what she does being who she is.
Essential? It hardly can be any more so.
This brings me to why this message--this story for builders, for manufacturers, for supervisors, for project owners, for design, and investment, and development partners and all of those who work for you, who work for others who work for you, with you, around you, especially in this crucial week or two or three ahead--is personal.
My job--among the home-bound; among those feeling powerless to help; hanging out to dry; cooped-up and stir-crazy and waiting to bust out and show my worth--is to stay home, if only, in part, so that she doesn't have more 60-something men with pre-existing conditions clogging into the pipeline of those people whose test results are clanging a tone over the PA system in the hospitals she's working in these days.
Our job, at BUILDER and with #buildersareessential, are to try to do the same for you, for the same reasons. You, going out of commission while you're seriously sick--or worse--because workplaces, and jobsites, and construction processes, and communications, and liabilities, and who-owes-what-to-whom? and how-does-this-move-forward-if-we-can't-get-approval? haven't quite caught up to the breakneck pace of infections, deaths, risk, lack-of-testing, and economic dysfunction is no good to anybody.
Think about this.
- #buildersareessential was true, long before the morning of September 12, 2001, when the world awoke to the long-black line of smoke that blew south offshore of the New Jersey coast, for miles and miles, and after.
- #buildersareessential was true, long before--and after--Katrina landed like a bomb on New Orleans and the Gulf, turning the streets into Mississippi River tributaries at second- or third-story roof levels.
- #buildersareessential was true during the 2006, 2007, and 2008 collapse of the housing, finance, and global investment markets during the time of the Great Recession.
- #buildersareessential was--and is so--in the wake of Sandy, of Harvey, of Irma that have wreaked holy havoc, and killed, and destroyed, and disrupted, and devastated people living in wide bands of geography on and around the coasts.
- #buildersareessential was--and is still poignantly true--in the days, weeks, months, and now years, following cataclysmic natural fury in the form of killer wildfires that have assaulted California, the Southwest, the Northwest, and the southeastern U.S. over the past several years, tragically landing full-force on Paradise.
Like doctors and nurses and their armies of dedicated medical health people, builders do essential work, some of it even lifesaving. What we're talking about is that the people--as well as the work--are essential. Register now for our live program, exploring Why Essential Matters Now, at 5:40 pm EDT by clicking here.
Like my wife, many a builder may feel that his or her work, and the call to do it supersedes the fear of risk, to himself, to herself, to their family members, and/or their community. In the face of the pandemic--and its still-rapidly ascending curve of cases, very serious cases, and fatalities--you, personally, may say, "This is what I signed up for."
That's noble.
However, it's our job as your trusted network of decision-support, to say this to you and ask you to join us to discover and learn.
We are all caregivers now. The Covid-19 pandemic has given each of us a part in its unfolding drama, each of us a role in how the pathogen will either take or spare more lives.
Many of us fear, right now, that if we don't have a means for a livelihood, it doesn't much matter whether we're sick, or die. We're here to tell you, in the most heartfelt way we can, that it does matter. It matters not only for you and the people you support. It matters for the people working around the clock in the hospitals now, and their families, and their friends.
it matters to your own family's wherewithal--your health and safety, and theirs--for as long as you are healthy, a livelihood under any conditions and circumstances is possible.
#buildersareessential is about minds and hearts. Yours. Your mind is where decisions happen, assessments take place, judgment kicks into gear, and options open up.
Your heart is deeper. It's about choices, tough ones. It's about defying odds against success. It's about resolving, and acting--no matter what--to do what needs to be done.
It's not a question--for us at #buildersareessential--about whether we'll get through the turbulent, traumatic, troubling fortnight or more as Covid-19 climbs to the top of its curve of destruction. We will come off that curve, down the other side of it, to safer, less scary times. We will beat this. We will come through it.
It's how we do it, not if. It's how we firm our convictions of what we mean by #buildersareessential, and why that term is so crucial now. That matters. So join us as we become an open source for exploration, learning, and discovery, and turn that back into tools and decision-support for you in the days ahead.
