The coronavirus does not discriminate between rich and poor, but in a predominantly low-income area of Salt Lake City, the impact is immense.
It’s March 9, at the Vivint Smart Home Arena and a group of girls, parents, a staffer, a volunteer and two board members of Girls on The Run Utah watch a nailbiter between the Utah Jazz and Toronto Raptors. For International Women’s Day, for every shot he blocks, Rudy Gobert will donate $1,000.
Story continuesWhile workers in hazmat suits disinfected seats at the Chesapeake Energy Arena, Eldridge waited on the phone with the University of Utah Healthcare hotline. Her 10-year-old met Gobert and feels fine. But her 12-year-old daughter is tired, her head hurts, her throat is sore. Worse, could they infect their 68-year-old grandmother? “Like many Native communities, we live in extended households,” Eldridge said. “A lot of us take care of our elders in our community. There’s no place we can send them. We’re their primary caretakers, so to know whether someone is healthy or not is huge.”
“We know,” she continued, “we cannot rely on the healthcare system. We know that unless you are white, rich, privileged, how this kind of rolls out.” Four miles down the road from Vivint Smart Home Arena, on March 12, students at Glendale Middle School found out their classmates were part of the group that met Gobert on behalf of the UICSL and Girls on the Run.
Acosta has a close bond with her students. “I think as a health teacher, that lends to a very vulnerable, loving kind of safe space,” she says. In one class, Acosta draws a three-sectioned chart on the whiteboard and breaks the class into groups. But by lunchtime the next day, students pile into the office in a panic, demanding to be seen by the nurse. That evening, Utah’s governor announces the closure of all schools, kindergarten to 12th grade.Murray councilwoman Rosalba Dominguez returns from a conference in Washington, D.C., and hears from a school board colleague. He asks Dominguez if she has checked in on her friend, Samantha Eldridge.
Together, Eldridge and Dominguez exhaust different avenues — the University of Utah Health clinic, the Salt Lake County Health Department — while Dominguez relays Eldridge’s situation to a few colleagues. A friend involved in coronavirus policy-making gives her a tip: try doctors’ offices — they have more test kits.
Dominguez says their generation seems fatalistic. The kids at school are convinced the world is going to end somehow. She wonders if it’s because they’re hyper-aware of climate change. Either way, an earthquake on top of a pandemic strengthens the kids’ case. Dominguez suffers from asthma. She’s had pneumonia multiple times. She’s not feeling well. Chest pains. She tells her partner that if it comes down to it, she doesn’t want to be hooked to a ventilator. “I don’t want a tube shoved down my throat to survive this thing, because I already know my lungs won’t survive.”
Acosta has created a Facebook group, Comunidad, to help the community deal with the coronavirus crisis, connecting community leaders from Black Lives Matter, Latino groups and the LGBTQ pride center.
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