In fighting the systemic virus of racism, they are risking their lives and the lives and health of others as they have ignored all social distancing rules designed to keep the physical virus from infecting them.
And it seems that this systemic virus has exhausted a lot of other people as well.
The dual viruses are flourishing because they have infected and attacked the spirits of people who suffer from poor health care, economic inequality and poverty, poor education, and poor housing.
Baldwin said in the same essay cited earlier, “we live in a country in which words are mostly used to cover the sleeper, not to wake him up …” In other words, this nation’s maturity has resulted in this merger of the dual viruses because it has insisted in living in the myth of American exceptionalism.
In this light, over 100,000 people have already died due to the work of both viruses, and we have yet to see how many people will be affected by the physical virus even as they are fighting the systemic virus which has already caused so much death and destruction.
