14 Days of inaction in Vancouver’s poorest postal code yields predictable results.

It’s been just over two weeks since I started writing these status updates; they weren’t overly detailed nor did they capture anything more than raw emotion at the time. I think my brevity was originally misunderstood as “the anger of the privileged”; we live in a two bedroom place in downtown Vancouver, so it would be natural to think that someone distraught about the homeless and people with addictions is upset about property values or some bullshit like that.

My inability to communicate at the time was because I was overwhelmed by a catastrophe happening in slow motion less than one hundred metres from where I sleep. The community that has been here far longer than I have–in fact, almost as long as I have been alive–is something I was aware of when I moved in, and if I have had any motivation in regards to it, it was to understand this place, the people in it, and how I could use what I have been given in life to make things better. It’s not my job, nor do I consider it some sort of purpose, but if we do not strive to make the world better for those around us then what point is it in living anyway?

I took the time to clarify my point: this community is vulnerable. It is ignored. It has been marginalized and paid lip service to for over 30 years. Countless hours have been spent on the same treadmill as the people here have weathered the storms: HIV, the opioid crisis, and now COVID-19.

As the “Four Winds Trading Post” market closed–the market that is seen with derision by many as a haven of stolen goods, by those who sell things there as their only life line to the drugs they need to stave off withdrawal, pain, and personal trauma, and by some as a testament to the utter ineffectiveness and indifference towards those with addictions and the homeless–as this market closed, those who had come to depend on that income setup their own rogue market on Hastings St, between Abbott and Carrall. All this during the dramatic rise of COVID-19.

The market was a hit. Every day for the last two weeks the area was packed with between fifty to one hundred people in a strip one hundred metres long by two and a half metres wide. It took up the whole sidewalk, with people crammed in, looking over things for sale, talking closely with each other. There have been a handful of fights, a collection of coolers full of beer, and at least one barbecue. This market was right on top of a stop for the 20, one of Translink’s busiest bus routes. Folks have started to skip that stop now, but for the first week you had countless people waiting for the bus, surrounded by market goers. Social distancing, or physical distancing, or “just stay the fuck away from me” wasn’t happening, no matter what you called it.

I have said, over the past two weeks, that we will look back on this moment as a flashpoint; there will come a time when we will see Dr. Bonny Henry, Dr. Theresa Tam, Kennedy Stewart, John Horgan, and Justin Trudeau in history books. We will listen to their speeches. I wonder what they will say when they reflect back on the death toll of Canada’s poorest postal code.

I ask this because it’s begun.

It’s just after 6pm on March 31st, 2020, and the Downtown East Side is sick.

We have a dog. His name is Solo, and he’s a good boy. So good, that we can’t get him to do his business on either of our patios, despite buying pads and coaxing him with treats. He begs for us to take him outside. That’s what good dogs do.

And so, just after 6pm on March 31st, 2020, I took him outside. I have an N95 mask that I bought when the province was burning a few years ago. I have nitrile gloves that I bought to paint small figurines. I don’t touch anything that I don’t need to, and I take him out onto Hastings St.

There is still a crowd across the road. It’s been there, off and on, for the last two weeks. When I call the city to tell them that people there aren’t social distancing, to beg them to tell the folks there just how dangerous their casual conversations are, to try to stop this virus from ripping through an immunocompromised community… they send the VPD. The VPD cruises up in a single cruiser, usually, hits the deterrent buzzer, and gets on the loudspeaker. They’re usually told to fuck off. Sometimes they can get the crowd to move on. Most of the time they can’t.

But today, just after 6pm on March 31st, 2020, the small crowds are different. They’re a little farther apart. And they know.

Because there are people walking up and down the street, coughing.

It’s not the dry rasp of someone who has done too many stimulants, or the throat clear of someone who’s already smoked a pack today.

It’s different.

It’s deeper. It’s more wet. And it scared the hell out of me.

I made eye contact with the man closest to me who let out one of these coughs. He was about 5 m away. He looks to be in his 30s, but around here you could be over by a decade and you’d never know. His eyes were red-rimmed; there was no effort to cover his mouth. He just stood and coughed and swayed, as he looked up and down the street, unsure of which way to go.

I cut in the other direction, anxious to get back inside. There’s an alley that my building backs on to that has two doors I can use to get home. There are usually a few folks back there, finding shelter in the doorways or picking through the garbage that has been left there.

I could see fewer feet that usual sticking into the alley, but what I heard was more telling: that same cough, on repeat, like a gouged record echoing between the buildings.

[Edit: 5:17PM, April 1, 2020] It was brought to my attention that a “wet”cough isn’t one of the symptoms of COVID-19. I’ve taken the time to go and listen to what I was hearing yesterday again. The cough isn’t a productive, wet cough — there’s a rasp as the person inhales. I should also note that I am not a medical professional and that I am being told the flu is running through this area right now. Please allow those pieces of information to inform what you take from this piece.

It’s a strange release, one that I’m sure is known to all of the social workers and support folk down here, to scream as loud as you can, to try to stave off something terrible, only to have it happen anyway. The VPD buzzer just sounded outside as I write this. I laughed.

It’s too late. COVID-19 is in the Downtown East Side.

If this area has an epitaph it should read “I don’t know what else could have been done, but what we did wasn’t enough.”