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When Coronavirus Quarantine Is Class Warfare

A pandemic offers a great way to examine American class inequities.

Credit...Illustration by The New York Times; photographs by Getty Images

Mr. Warzel is an Opinion writer at large.

It’s been a big week for what I refer to as “Hermit Tech.” Stock in technology companies that facilitate working from home have soared in a spiraling market otherwise anxious by an impending coronavirus pandemic. Netflix is preparing for the server strain of the bored but quarantined masses. Expensive Peloton stationary bikes and streaming workout services are seeing substantial spikes in interest. Tech guides are popping up suggesting everything from noise-canceling headphones, Wi-Fi signal boosters, and productivity hacks for families who’ll need to make close quarters work and life livable.

As a Hermit Tech aficionado, this makes sense. I’m a Times employee living in Montana and so social distancing is closer to the status quo for me than I care to admit. I work from home. I show my disheveled face in meetings via Zoom and Skype and Google Hangouts. I FaceTime my therapist, who practices in New York City, where I used to live. I chat endlessly with co-workers, sources and friends via Slack and 49,000 other direct messaging channels. Recently, my partner and I calculated that we’d save on gym membership if we splurged upfront on a $2,245 Peloton. Hermit Tech has made my (definitely not typical) life wildly efficient. Thanks to technology, human contact has unexpectedly become a luxury I can choose to seek out.

And my lifestyle is a luxury. I’m incredibly fortunate to have an employer that allows remote work and to have access to the sometimes expensive tools that help me get my job (and even mental health treatment) done. The same goes for the disposable income that allows for the bike and Amazon Prime. I don’t use Instacart or DoorDash for delivery (mostly on principle after pieces like this from my Times colleagues) or need a service like Wag for an on-demand dog walker, but those services are accessible to me, should I want them. Partly because Silicon Valley has been building them for someone just like me for the last decade.

In The Atlantic recently, Ian Bogost argued that “contemporary society has been bracing, and even longing, for quarantine” and that “being holed up at home has never been more pleasant.” He’s right, but only for some.

That pleasantness is heavily underwritten by a “vast digital underclass.” Many services that allow you to stay at home work only when others have to be out in the world on your behalf. Worried the grocery store is a petri dish? A contract Instacart grocery shopper will go in your place. That overpriced Purell you panic purchased today from Amazon will show up at your door tomorrow thanks to a small army of humans who showed up at work because they can’t afford not to. Same goes for the instructor leading the on-demand high intensity interval training spin class that saved you from dealing with that guy who won’t stop coughing by the free weights at the gym. He may not be a gig worker, but he can’t lead your class from his home.

This is by no means exclusive to tech. Turns out, a pandemic offers a great way to examine American class inequities. There’s something especially clarifying as it pertains to the gig economy. Silicon Valley has long faced criticism for building products for itself, which is to say, products aimed at solving problems of upper middle class men who spend far too much time working and crave microefficiencies and greater convenience. Much has been reported on how that convenience has created a precarious under-economy of contract workers, dangerous working conditions and same-day delivery environmental concerns.

It’s unsurprising then that Silicon Valley seems well poised to deal with the creeping pandemic. Microsoft, Amazon, and Twitter were among the first major companies to encourage workers to stay home (to be clear, this is a responsible way to approach a viral epidemic). Many have led the way on backing out of work travel to conferences. Recently, BuzzFeed News reported that tech companies are looking at the outbreak as a test case for the “long-gestating but never-arriving moment when working remotely will broadly replace working in person.”

Should Covid-19 usher in a newfound work-from-home movement, it could intensify these inequities. Working from home is a privilege afforded almost exclusively to knowledge workers. More flexible work could take the burden of some families with regard to child care and make part-time careers or balancing work and family life easier. But scaling back on physical workplaces could also mean fewer stable building facilities jobs. Those employees could then be forced into a gig economy with few labor protections that expands to fill the needs of an increasingly homebound work force.

Of course it doesn’t have to happen this way. As the Times’s editorial board wrote this week, “Congress can help by mandating that workers receive paid time off if they fall ill, or if they need to care for an ailing family member.” Companies — especially those in the gig economy — can do the same by offering paid sick leave, by relying less on contractors and by allowing employees to unionize for protections so they aren’t forced ignore advice to stay home.

Those like myself who are fortunate enough to have workplace flexibility can do something as well by not transferring our burden to prepare for a pandemic onto others. We can be mindful of the people underwriting and powering our convenience. We can patronize establishments that support employees. We can develop a conscientious culture around working from home that doesn’t submit to our worst impulses. That means using all that time saved via commutes to improve our lives but also the lives of those around us. This can mean small things like cooking our own meals or walking our own dogs. Or bigger undertakings like volunteering, protesting and getting involved in our communities.

It’s contradictory but, during a pandemic, conscientious isolation is actually a social act — one that protects others by flattening the outbreak curve. If we’re mindful, the same logic can apply to world where more of us are remote. Social distancing doesn’t have to mean distancing ourselves from our shared humanity.

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Charlie Warzel, a New York Times Opinion writer at large, covers technology, media, politics and online extremism. He welcomes your tips and feedback: charlie.warzel@nytimes.com | @cwarzel

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: Quarantine as Class Warfare. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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