In the fall of 2018, I returned to my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to help arrange a faulty fitness service. Among other scandals, the company has not monitored the lead poisoning imaginable among local children.
As the only black woman in the state’s fitness officer, the brilliance of this role quickly dissipated. Above all, I found myself praying that things wouldn’t get any worse.
Fast-forward until late 2019, we were paying attention to Wuhan, China, but like other emerging deadly diseases like Ebola and SARS, we suspect that COVID-19 is anything that simply doesn’t manifest itself, or at least spread widely, here in the United States.
Then January and February 2020 arrived and we learned that the new coronavirus, in fact, had infiltrated our country, it doesn’t matter, right?This happened with Ebola, but we were able to prevent it from becoming a pandemic. At first, I was sure of myself, having been concerned about Ebola’s reaction as a fitness manager at the University of Wisconsin.
Then, the first case of COVID-19 detected in Madison, our state capital, and south of us in Chicago.
And then, like a bad movie about a pandemic, we detected our first case in Milwaukee on Friday, March 13. COVID-19 spread from that moment on.
We temporarily incorporate our unified city-county emergency operations structure, which means I’ve become guilty of decision-making not only for my city, but for the entire county. Milwaukee County has 19 jurisdictions and a total population of one million. it’s not a county-wide fitness branch: 11 smaller outdoors than mine.
Wisconsin is also a “home” state, which means that the lowest point of government has the right to give your local communities the opportunity. In essence, this technique perpetuates inequality because Milwaukee is hypersegregated. Some of my colleagues were aware of this, because we had taken the step towards america’s first city to claim racism as a public fitness crisis in 2019.
We were still preparing to make five movements similar to this statement when COVID-19 hit, so we tried to think early and about racial injustice as we addressed the epidemic. On the one hand, we provide public maps to the network, one for the city and one for the county. It was new for us to report knowledge of the outbreak so temporarily and in this format. We were also among the first public fitness agencies in the US.
This allowed us that the first hot spot was in our African-American community, in fact, it was in the same community where I grew up, Sherman Park, I was horrified to see this and felt powerless because we couldn’t save it. coming down so fast We just didn’t have the resources.
Remember that the fitness branch was in poor condition, so there were still a number of vacancies and unmet technical needs. We were expecting millions of dollars of federal investment to do something. The evidence was rare. The EPI a little to have, I mean, we were looking to resolve suspicious requests from KN-95 and valid batches of PPE to respond.
And it was only for lifeguards and physical care staff at the time, as the federal government told us the masks weren’t for the public. Obviously, that’s changed.
But if the message above was confusing, we also fought misinformation.
We have faced persistent myths, spread on social media and through word of mouth, that other black people may simply not contract coronavirus. Soon we had a valid knowledge that proved it was a lie. In the first few weeks of our reaction to COVID-19, 70% of our instances and one hundred percent of our deaths were black. My network was angry, scared, tired. Me too.
We soon learned that other communities did not first have the knowledge to disprove or verify what we were seeing. When they began to share their knowledge of the race and ethnicity of COVID-19, we discovered a horrible trend across the country. these other people did not contract COVID-19 and died because they attended the same meetings; we saw racism manifest itself through the social determinants of fitness as a pandemic.
We had to spread the message on the street, but we didn’t have any investment to do it. In addition, the dissemination of data through the mouth to mouth is a little more sensitive than a pandemic. Fortunately, the personal sponsors came here and invested in the community. COVID-19-based approaches, and a local hospital established car testing. Later, federally approved fitness centers presented evidence in various parts of the city. It is possible that our fitness branch simply does not provide evidence because we had no staff or an electronic medical record system.
Despite our efforts, it would be weeks before we had community tests, no appointment, asymptomatic and symptomatic on the north (black) and south (latinx) sides of the city, which the state arranged with our local reaction and with the National Guards.
At the end of March, we issued a local “stay home” order and then the state issued theirs the next day. Despite this, we had a primary election in April. You might have heard of it: crowded polling stations, especially in black communities, a furious pandemic. The state Supreme Court made the decision that we deserve to have the election, which concerned the potential candidate or county executive, the city attorney, and a number of other vital elected roles. enough voting staff because many of the senior officials were “at high risk” at COVID-19 and could not work. We had to organize polling stations from around 180 to five.
Fortunately, the fitness branch and staff of the electoral commission, as well as a large number of other partners in the city, intervened to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. We trained workers, got rid of the ranks and provided PPE and stepd forward. cleaning, among others. But we know that many other people didn’t vote on the user because they feared it wouldn’t be safe. It’s a real shame that partisanship has had such a horrible effect on our communities, basically citizens of color.
It would be the last time that politicians in our state capital would give in to us locally.
This election resulted in a management replacement: our mayor, a white man, stayed, but we had our first black men as county director and city attorney, two Latino councillors and a new controller, the daughter of immigrants. diversity of leadership to replace, especially in Milwaukee.
Then they beat us across other borders. The state Supreme Court ruled against the governor’s “stay home” order in May, leaving many public fitness staff members stagnant. do their own work, many did not, for worrying about legal problems. Fortunately, my mayor and my city’s attorney supported our ability to follow orders at the city site, even though a unified order was abandoned in Milwaukee County.
The paintings were also personally irritating. It’s been a constant struggle of strength since day one. I was micro-assaulted, explained through a boy and “Karen” beyond the believable, and prone to passive-aggressive primary explosions and double standards of boys. I have several autoimmune diseases. I took two weeks off in poor physical condition while another key member of the company took several weeks off and no one asked about it. Like other fitness officials across the country, I gained threats of mail damage in my workplace before COVID-19 and, of course, later, adding written emails through far-right white supremacists.
Last week, I filed my resignation. I have the opportunity to paint on national fitness policy with a view to justice for a glorious organization in Washington, D. C. I still think that being a fitness painter is a noble company, but even the best professionals of delight. I will have to admit that our joy in responding to the non-unusual science and meaning under this pandemic has been heartbreaking. Actually, I don’t know what the long term of the race will look like while silencing public fun and formal education. and rejected.
However, there are other talented and passionate people who keep the line, and we will have to continue with them. For now, I pray that the vaccine progression procedure will not be manipulated to create false hope while safety is compromised. There is an explanation as to why the drug Trials are as giant and complex as they are. We have to stick to the script. We have to get it right.