It’s probably too early for optimism, but our next issue is in September…
The truth is I am probably jumping the gun on talking about some of the takeaways of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are still people suffering because they contracted it, because others were careless, because people simply lived their lives without knowing that they were a risk. In some sense, the virus is an example of the state of our human condition. We really do hate to be thrown from our course, no matter how scantily charted it actually was.
Our day-to-day routines are now broken. We’re being told to stay inside. There’s a lot of patronizing humour floating around the Internet, saying how our grandparents were asked to go to war and we’re being asked to sit inside and watch TV. This is a different kind of war, one against a microscopic thing that’s not even technically alive. A virus is being stacked up against the weight of a lonely, quiet human mind. I’m not saying they’re equal fights; I’m just saying they’re quite different. War is easier to understand than infection, though admittedly, it’s easier to understand how staying inside will lead to survival this time around. Broadly speaking, we’ll make it out of this if we do it right.
In spite of this disruption, we are lucky that Canada made the choices it did as early as it did, because there are other nations who did not take this viral threat as seriously. Another chunk of wisdom floating around the internet now seems to stem from a school superintendent, who said upon closing that it will be impossible to know if we overreacted, but it will be quite clear if we did not do enough. Fair enough.
So this is it, we’re stuck in an indefinite period of self-imposed social distancing/quarantine. It’s up to us what we get out of it. I, for one, am one of those with a mind that has a habit of getting a little bit unruly, especially when I can’t turn down its volume in the company of friends. I suppose it’s finally time I learned to quiet it on my own. One of the only ways I can do that is by finding the light in it all, or at least, by finding the switch on the wall.
The first shred of light in this pandemic is that this has to be some sort of lesson in resource scarcity for those who step back and take stock of their own behaviour. Another amusing piece of humour floating around the Internet targets people who decided to buy out the entire shelf of toilet paper at their local grocery store. If you needed more than two weeks of toilet paper before the pandemic hit, you probably should have already gone to a doctor. Frankly, people have overstocked for fear of being under-prepared. Many of us are in a position now, stemming from a position of extreme privilege of course, where for the first time we are finding that our supplies are finite. We can’t just go to the store and get everything we both need and want. The fear of social interaction, and potential infection, prevents us from making the same decisions that we would have a few weeks ago. All of a sudden, we’re surviving off what we have. We don’t know how long it will be until our stockpiles are replenished, and we can go return to our usual levels of concern.
I also expect that perspective to extend to those who could hardly get by before the pandemic, and are now being faced with price surges and scarcity that render them deeply uncomfortable, if not paralyzed by their inability to get what they actually need. The only cause for that was greed. At no point was Canada ever running low on anything aside from maybe sanitary wipes and Purell. N95 masks were bought out by people who didn’t realize they don’t work the way they thought, and healthcare professionals are now running low on the same. The only thing Canadians were ever really short on was empathy.
This has nothing to do with toilet paper. I hope that in some way, people can look at the way that they’re buying in the future, and realize that taking only what you need is enough. Taking more serves only to deprive others who may not be in the same position as you. The fact that someone is selling toilet paper out of the back of their van at Yonge and Dundas is not a sign of economic ingenuity. It’s a sign that we took too much.
Second, I’m hoping that this pandemic provides us a lesson in human connectedness that we otherwise may not have gotten. The truth is, we’re staying home to protect people that, at least in my case, we may not even know. While my parents are technically in the risk group, I don’t really know anyone above age 60. Up until this point, most of us had no real reason to bridle the belligerence of our youth. The shroud of naivety and invincibility that most people around my age live under would not have needed to come off.
Before COVID-19, most people would not have thought about touching a door handle at work, and having the 62-year-old staff come in late at night long after you’ve left, only to open that same door and contract whatever you have. Perhaps they go home to care for their mother at the end of their shift. The way that some diseases work, they can sit on surfaces for hours. You’ll never know who or where you got it from. COVID-19 is a dark reminder that there are people living full, independent lives, sharing the same spaces that we do long after we cede the floor.
On a more depressing note, COVID-19 is perhaps a sign of the way that wars may be waged in the future. I’m not meaning to be apocalyptic, but this is how a significant number of people could be harmed using what’s effectively a microscopic tool of war. I’m not saying that someone is about to launch an attack on the planet, but what I am saying is that it’s possible. No one I know is enamoured by the response of the Canadian government, but their effectively shutting down the country when they did – while we still had a relatively low number of national cases – put us about a week ahead of most European countries. We will never know if we could’ve done any better. Or at least, we won’t know until it happens again.
Finally, I hope this pandemic serves as a lesson in the form of forced minimalism. I, for one, am learning exactly what I need to get out of every single day to feel like it was worth living. For all the increased productivity that this quiet time has afforded, I’m learning that I really do need people. And I know exactly which people I need. I hope that we can all take stock of what exactly gets us through the day, in the absence of frankly not having what doesn’t.
As usual, I could be wrong about everything, human beings often are. With that said, I do feel rather passionately that if we do this right, we’ll be far better off than we would be if we did it halfway. The world will be waiting for us when we can rejoin it, and we will be better citizens of it when we do.
We will literally kill this thing with kindness. Take care of each other, and do not underestimate the power of your own inaction. See you in a few weeks.