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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DP here, we do need some kind of national mourning and recovery.  There should be a program like Teach Across America except it's therapists helping people process the last 15 months.  Mental Health Across America.  Give people a sticker or a snack for going, like they do at the blood bank.

I also love the idea of a culturally agreed upon quiet time when everything is closed and you just stay in and reflect.  The concept of a Sabbath is valuable even if you don't attach religious significance to it. To PP's idea, I would love for us all to agree that we'll buy our groceries early or eat our leftovers and back-of-cupboard foods for a week, and refrain from flying or driving except in emergencies, so that as many essential workers as possible can have a break. Subsidize businesses that close or go to drastically reduced hours during that time (like we should have paid businesses to stay closed during covid).[/quote]

I just don't see the need for a 'recovery' person for workers who sat at home in bath robes and zoomed to work. I think the essential workers - grocery, doctors, firefighters, EMS, nursing, police, infrastructure, virologists, pathologists, morgue workers, factory workers, and epidemiologists - should be the absolute priority.

Pay all of them 3 months of salary and tell them not to come to work for 90 days. Tell the hospital workers or essential staff who quit or quietly moved to different fields just as Covid started to come back and take on their job (with pay) during that time.

But the people who really saved this country deserve to be lauded. And yes the dead and the family caregivers deserve time to mourn.[/quote]

This is such an American response, to be worried that someone might get a benefit they do not "deserve."  We would rather have nothing, than let everyone have something.

First of all, the only way that essential workers get a paid holiday is if the rest of us stay home. Much like the Feds closing on a snow day to help keep the roads safe for everyone else, office workers and the rest would need to stay put and do little -- no shopping, no commuting, no travel, etc. -- in order to give essential workers a break.

Second, you are pretty cavalier about the mental state of people who lost loved ones, who worried they might, who had covid early on without a diagnosis, who tried to do and keep their jobs without childcare, who worried about the mental health and education of their children, whose relationships with loved ones and children need a reset after too much fighting and stress, who took paycuts or worried their jobs would be cut, who scrambled to sift good medical information from bad in the face of an indifferent or incapable government, who faced shortages of various kinds, who worried that casual interactions could lead to their death or the death of a loved one.  The fact somebody could work from home did not negate any of that.

We watched the death toll in Italy, and the morgue trailers in New York, and wondered if our trip to the grocery store would kill us.  We wondered if our long distance relatives would die alone -- and some of them did. You can sit here now and know that the DC area was never as bad as NY, but for much of 2020 we didn't know.  And add to that, the last year has seen immense political upheaval (whatever your party) and increased violence.

So yes, people need to recover.  What exact form that takes, matters less to me than acknowledging it.  [/quote]

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