My wife had a pretty disturbing story to tell me:
She works part time for the Dept. of Health in Plainfield, NJ. It's a poor/working class town in Central New Jersey. Her usual job is pretty mundane - she works 12 hours a week keeping track of folks who have and haven't gotten licenses for their pets; but with the current situation it's pretty much all hands on deck dealing with the virus. The number of cases in Plainfield have almost quadrupled in the past week. That's not the disturbing part.
Apparently the way it works is a person tests positive for the virus, the medical facility alerts the state and the state alerts the township and the township calls the individual to provide guidance on what they should do. They also ask them where they work and if they've been in contact with other people recently (the quarantine has been going on in NJ for about a week and a half now). Many people are refusing to answer questions, others are just flat-out hanging up the phone. Obviously these people are still functionable enough to go to work and are doing so out of fear of losing their job. Others might have a "questionable" citizenship status and are worried about getting deported.
I don't know how to editorialize this without sounding melodramatic - I see this eventually becoming a disease associated with class/status. Given the present climate I can only imagine how ugly things are going to get.
