My harabeoji –– which means ‘grandfather’ in Korean ­­–– has been hospitalized since the winter of 2016. I was out Christmas shopping with a friend after school one day when a panicked phone call from my mom, audibly trying to hold back tears, told me that harabeoji had been ambulanced to the hospital. He was out at dinner drinking with some friends when he suddenly had a stroke. No one had seen it coming. It felt like the whole world was suddenly on hold. We had no idea what could happen at any given moment.

The second we heard the news I had grabbed a cab home and my dad had plane tickets booked for the next day. We flew from Tokyo to Seoul and drove to Chuncheon, where my maternal grandparents live –– all in less than 24 hours. When we got there, most of harabeoji’s eight siblings, his friends, my aunt, uncle, and cousin had already gathered from across the country.

Harabeoji spent several weeks in a coma in the ICU after multiple surgeries. The hospital told us to gather the family and brace ourselves on multiple occasions. We spent countless nights sleepless, clutching onto our phones for any updates. After weeks of having our fingers crossed and waiting for good news, harabeoji finally regained consciousness.

But the harabeoji that opened his eyes wasn’t quite like the one I had stayed with last summer. He couldn’t take me out to the backyard to pick fresh tomatoes and make me smoothies –– he could only squeeze back and hold on tightly when I held his hand. He couldn’t tell me stories about what it was like when he was younger –– he could talk back only in barely comprehensible mumbles. He’d lost so much weight, the santa-claus-like belly that I was so fond of, always lovingly made fun of, and rested my head on, gave way to bony arms and knees. The wrinkles around his eyes that gave him a constant smiling expression now just looked exhausted.

He has been in the hospital for three and a half years like this in an extended state of uncertainty. We don’t know if he’ll get better, if he’ll get worse, when either of those could happen, and how. Me, my mom, my halmeoni (‘grandmother’ in Korean) –– none of us expected that he would have had that stroke, none of us got any time to have closure, do all the things we loved to do with him, tell him we loved him. But most of all, harabeoji never got the chance to tell his wife, daughters, or grandchildren anything –– before he wouldn’t be able to at all in the same way anymore.

…

Halmeoni still visits harabeoji multiple times a day. When I was younger, I would always say that when I get married and grow old, I would want to live like they do. I’d never seen a couple like them, so caring and loving to each other for decades. Through all these years that harabeoji spent in the hospital, my mom and aunt would always say that it was she who was the reason “he kept going.” She was his everything.

In the past month of March 2020, however, halmeoni hadn’t been able to visit the hospital at all. In the month of March, South Korea had become the new epicenter of Covid-19 in the world. To prevent the possibility of visitors bringing the virus into the hospital into already immunocompromised patients, the hospital had suspended its visiting policy.

An that same month of March had been the most challenging for harabeoji. In April, my mom got a series of frantic texts from my aunt. Harabeoji had suddenly developed a fever and dry cough, two common symptoms of coronavirus. He was severely immunocompromised and more than 80 years old. If he had the coronavirus, it would be too dangerous. Though he eventually tested negative, we were scared to open every text that our aunt sent us for the next few weeks. Just a week ago, he had surgery to have a part of his gallbladder removed. Yesterday, his heart rate dropped below 50. He lost consciousness. He can’t talk, open his eyes, or grab my halmeoni’s hand anymore. The doctor told us to be ready.

…

My sister and I frantically searched for plane tickets. We searched, called any and every airline that ever offered flights between Tokyo and Seoul. There was a single flight every day that went back and forth between the two countries. If we went back to Korea now, we would be quarantined for 14 days as mandated by the government. We would not be able to leave the house, much less visit harabeoji. There would be little we could do. My mom might not be able to see her father in his possible final days. She could be stuck in the house receiving news over the phone as we did when we were in Tokyo, even though he’d only be a car ride away.

I so easily took for granted the fact that travel was so accessible and available to me in the past. In the past, whether it be for vacation, emergencies like this, or any situation in which I simply wanted to, I could visit anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted. But today, in the age of the coronavirus pandemic, we couldn’t travel without countless difficulties, risking our own lives, and risking those of possible others that we come into contact with. Such a simple act that was a routine part of every summer or winter vacation was now almost impossible.

…

Even unrelated to the experience with my harabeoji and not being able to fly to see him immediately, this coronavirus pandemic has revealed to the core the aspects of “normal” life that we take for granted. Moreover, it has revealed to the world the inequalities deeply ridden in our society, government, and infrastructure. From the racial demographics of those getting infected or dying, the people who are unable to socially distance and protect themselves as they have to work, to the disparities that online learning creates despite the University and the teaching staffs’ best efforts due to students’ home situations. These inequalities always existed; but perhaps, this is one of the first times in history that everyone in the world faces the same challenge of health and contracting the virus. Because the virus does not choose who to target, and when. Wealth, race, gender, sexuality: none of the divisional categories and labels that we spend so much of our short human lives obsessing over matter when it comes down to the essence of what life is.

I’ve been more than lucky to be able to ride out this pandemic in the comfort of my home, while my dad is able to work from home, we are able to have food delivered to our house, and not experience financial difficulties. But the reality is that I know this is nowhere near the same for others; there are so many people whose lives and livelihoods are at risk from the virus. But it breaks my heart to see that more often than not, and especially in my own community here in Tokyo such as high school or family friends, it seems that those that are lucky enough to be the most unaffected from the virus are those that are most oblivious to it and the most careless about it. While those most at risk suffer, those least at risk perhaps further contribute to the problem, whether unknowingly or not.

…

These are the realities that I’ve seen in the past few weeks. But the fact that it took a pandemic of this size and severity and the deaths of thousands of people for society to realize how ill-prepared humanity and our infrastructure was for a challenge like this, despite the countless scientific evidence that predicted that a deadly pandemic was in the near future.

Reflecting on this and thinking about the various topics of philosophy, economics, policy, and action that we’ve been discussing in Expos, the coronavirus pandemic shows how equally ill-prepared we are for the challenges of climate change, some which we are already facing. Climate change, like the coronavirus, is an ecological disaster that does not discriminate along the lines of wealth, race, gender, sexuality, or any other division. However, our society does. Certain groups are fundamentally more at risk than others. We need to do more to protect the most vulnerable among us, guided by science and bipartisan politics. Without this, global inequality will simply be sustained and reinforced. Healthcare systems, governments, workplaces –– the basic institutions that guide our society –– must not be disproportionately distributed among socioeconomically unequal communities. They must be reorganized to fight a global issue in local terms. Because the coronavirus pandemic is already ravaging the world, and soon climate change will.