Because COVID-19 is a new virus, everyone is vulnerable. We know we’re physically and economically at risk, we don’t know for how long, the threat is everywhere, we can’t see the threat, and contracting the virus could kill us.
If these circumstances (what we might call temporary unprotected status) are strange and unsettling to many, they are all too familiar to people in the US’s Temporary Protective Status (TPS) program, as well as others in immigration limbo.
We have few protections from this novel coronavirus. Only a few national governments rapidly implemented effective strategies to contain the spread of the pathogen and even in those places the virus has killed hundreds and remains a significant threat. Other, slower-to-react governments, such as in the US, have left millions exposed with alarming, and rising, death tolls.
On the front lines, health-care providers, retailers, grocery store workers, truckers, garbage collectors, and other essential workers have found themselves exposed because they lack adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). On the streets, people must socially distance and isolate to stave off the threat of contracting COVID-19. Economies have been shuttered and shattered, threatening the basic livelihoods of millions of people.