Hear me out: don’t freak out.

There is absolutely nothing that you can do as an individual to combat the following: mass inequality, race oppression, rape culture, and coronavirus. The facts are, you can hoard all the toilet paper you like, you can wear a mask everytime you go outside, you can fight people inside of grocery stores for the last carton of eggs, but you will still feel the social, political, and personal ramifications of a global pandemic because the health of our communities does not become elevated when those with capital protect themselves from us but depends wholly and completely on how well we take care of the poorest person in our neighborhood. In a global pandemic, there is no such thing as protecting yourself without protecting one another.

That means that there are some things you can let go of. You can let go of the anxiety that emerges from not wanting to be the last person in a line, the fear around not having the sense of responsibility to gather the right resources, and the desire to prove yourself through exceptionalism.

This is Taurus season with the Libra full moon—it’s Venus time. Venus is not about how you save yourself. Venus is society and society is an agreement between people about what is important and vital.

Have you seen the movie Train to Busan? In that movie, the zombification of society is a metaphor for poverty. The main character who the directors want us to emphasize with is a young father protecting his daughter. He is a stockbroker who, in the beginning of the movie, tries to find ways for him and his daughter to escape the mass chaos but calling on favors from his business associates. By doing so, he betrays the rest of the group who are risking their lives to protect his daughter. The father lives under the illusion that it is possible for him and his daughter to get out of this okay even if the rest of the world succumbs to the virus.

Pandemics are not forces of nature. They’re technological. They’re part of globalization. The worst pandemics are weapons of genocide.

The illusion of capitalism is this: that you are able to save yourself from poverty by being fast and strategic, even if the rest of the world becomes poor.

So, hear me out: stop freaking out. Coronavirus is the bogeyman. When we freak out, we create a public crisis moment in which those in power take advantage of the states of emergency that arise from people feeling like they can’t take care of or trust one another. We get bailouts in which billionaires rob the public and take money that could be circulating in our communities to put into the speculative market under the guise of “saving” our economy when, in fact, speculation creates a harder recession. We get surveillance technologies being tested for the first time—the tracking of people using mobile phone data. We get mass deportations as if moving people around during a global pandemic will save us nations with borders imagined and reinforced by politics.

The scariest thing about a pandemic is not the virus because pandemics are technological and political. The scariest thing about a pandemic, just like any disaster, is disaster capitalism.

Embrace Venus: c’est la vie, don’t try to reflexively grab when it does you no good, and always help one another.

Questions to consider in April:

What are some things that you can't heal unless you heal these same things in everyone?
Whose hand do you grab first when things go haywire?
What is normal but should not be normal?

Aries

If you are fortunate enough to be employed, give your money to other people. If you are struggling, ask for money from other people. Your wealth does not depend on you but on the well being of the people around you. If you prefer to go at it by yourself, you will continue to feel helpless. If you show up for other people and allow them to show up for you, you will thrive.

If you’re a fighter, then fight for others—not just one or two other people but for the common good, which is just the level of standards and stakes set by the people in your region. Survival is not something that you can achieve on your own.

Taurus

There’s nothing that makes you scale back from the mode of constantly feeling like you must achieve more than a global pandemic. You literally can’t be productive right now. That is a good thing. It gives you the time you need to sort out your priorities. It makes you realize that there are some things that you thought were necessary but aren’t.

The most productive thing that you can do right now is to take care of your body. Stop striving because striving is irresponsible. Make yourself stronger by eating as well as you are able and going to bed on time. Strengthening yourself is an act of community care.

Gemini

Your politics are not what distinguishes you from the crowd but what aligns you with it. There is no point in having edgy politics right now. Those will not save you nor lead to actions that give you strength. Do not feel aversion to “normie” or mainstream politics. Politics itself is about renegotiating the normal. Get in touch with the basic part of you. Cure yourself of irony poisoning by following your most basic and whole heart.

Your heart will lead you onto cliche and stereotypical journeys. These journeys will have a lot of meaning for you because you will discover people who are like you. There is a reason why people go on cliche journeys—they emerge from collective significance. Stop being niche and stop ironically distancing yourself from yourself.

Cancer

You will find that you have family when you find that you’re willing to suffer for someone else. Don’t just hole yourself up and collect supplies that will run out. Collect people who you would be willing to suffer for. There’s a quote from a yoonmin fanfiction by a03 user kyrifics that goes like this: love is when you are stuck on an island and only have one cookie but you give that last cookie to someone who is very special to you.

Stop collecting cookies and start collecting people who deserve your cookies. When you start collecting people, the amount of cookies you have suddenly stops mattering. You’re all sharing cookies anyway so where there used to be scarcity is now an abundance.

Leo

Because of the way you are integrated into the lives of those who you love, your struggle is not only your struggle but also the struggles of those surrounding you. Your setbacks don’t just affect you. They also affect those who rely on you. Stop trying to be the strong one. You can also rely on anyone who relies on you.

Stop feeling like you have to keep every anxiety in your heart and smile when you see people and start being authentic about how you might need real support. If you need someone to go to the store for you, someone to get you medicine, someone to give you money, just make it known. This doesn’t make you a charity case. It makes you strong because wealth is not something that you generate on your own but something that is shared between you and your people.

Virgo

Now is the time to strike, organize, and find ways to live for free. Coronavirus is not an abnormality. NASA estimates that, by 2050, 50% of the world population will die from disease as a result of climate change. The only thing that distinguishes coronavirus from the rest of late stage capitalism is its event based nature—it came on very suddenly and, as a consequence, it induces us to approach it by exchanging some norms for new ones.

Change up how you regard the normal. Re-examine the parameters of a rent based society and privatized healthcare when the understanding that global pandemics are a new normal. Don’t be scared. You have known that certain things will fall apart sooner rather than later.

Libra

Now is not the time to give into social pressures. What we have commonly regarded as normal—a competition based society that sacrifices lives to sustain the economy—is actually just not cool. If your abusive family is trying to make you come home not because it will help matters but because they want you to be visible and under their control, tell them to fuck off. If you are called upon to caretake for men in your community who you know will never take care of others, give yourself the agency to resist even when it makes you feel wrong and selfish.

The truth about the pandemic is: it will have consequences for feminism. DV rates will rise as folks are trapped with their abusers and others will give up their means of supporting themselves in order to provide much needed and unpaid care. Poor people and femmes of color will be disproportionately affected. Do not give into the public freak out moment and compromise. Compromise is the act of throwing the most vulnerable among us under the bus.

Scorpio

The way you think about other people is also the way you think about yourself. Coronavirus is not about fearing your neighbor. It’s about understanding that both you and your neighbor are part of the same community and that taking care of yourself is the same as taking care of them. People are not disease carrying potential threats.

Don’t fear your neighbor—not just your personal neighbor but also your global neighbor. As Banu Subramanium writes, “In this age of global pandemics in many parts of the world, the border is a site of intense surveillance…The desire for the “pure” migrant, vetted and sanctioned, is shared across species lines.” Pandemics are not new and never have been new. Take care of impure migrants.

Sagittarius

It may not seem like it, but April is the best time for you to learn how you want to reside with and by other people. Decide for yourself how you want to exist with people. Relationships are not something that happens to you but something that you feed. The health of your relationships fluctuates according to your own health. When you take care of yourself, you’re able to be around other people. There is no need to sacrifice yourself for someone.

Because of the coronavirus, you are forced to take care of yourself. This is a good thing. Any compromise to your personal immune system is also a threat to the people you love. Boost your immunity and take care of your community by pleasuring yourself and by feasting whenever possible.

Capricorn

The most important thing for you in April is heart. As the recession hits, more and more people are recovering from the coronavirus, pollution drops as the western nations shut down, and more people get to spend time with their kids. Money is a made up fantasy that we have learned to indulge. If this moment is a crisis, then the crisis reminds you to not confuse your survival strategies with your love languages.

Live with love as your number one and biggest priority. Your retirement fund is not a stock that is controlled by the very rich but the people who are willing to care for you. Heart matters are real matters. When the rest of it all collapses, it is possible to feel relief.

Aquarius

Your politics emerge directly from the place where your ancestors are buried. Crisis is not a new thing for most of us. We have been through it. We understand that crisis occurs when technological and political plans see some populations as more expendable than others. The pandemic does not have to be a crisis but is beginning to emerge as one because we have decided to pretend our systems are rational.

You are important. What this means is that your existence, as a person in this time and place and as emerging from the timelines that you emerged from, is capable of generating meaning in the now. Your perspective is important and your lens is important. Don’t grow apathetic and inconsequential. Emerge.

Pisces

What you are dealing with right now is just fear. That’s it. Fear is just an emotion. What do you do with emotions? You understand that, while you are not capable of changing them by doing the same things that generated them in the first place again and again, you are capable of changing them by changing your circumstances in some way. Fear is just a mood shift. When you make your decisions, make sure that nothing in your environment induces fear.

Fear is also this: the projection that nothing matters after all and that things will remain hopeless. Nihilism is irresponsible because there are, in fact, things that you can do to shift your fear. There is meaning to be created in a pandemic. Exercise discipline and stick to your mental health routines.