It is as if somebody pulled the emergency lever on every train. Life was chugging along, and then suddenly it lurched to a scrunching halt. The halt was separated by a few days in different places, and the brakes worked more quickly in some aspects of life than others, but the end result is much the same, a pause in life as we know it.
New York City is at the bleeding edge of the virus within the US, and we have suffered all of the usual bleeding edge problems. There has been lots of denial and chaos and U-turns as well as lots of courage and creativity and leadership. Overall, Cuomo and De Blasio seem to me to have done a good job so far.
The bizarre inconsistencies have been striking, most notably at supermarkets. We have been told for a while now to practice social distancing and to manage personal hygiene, and most of us achieve some of this some of the time. But at other times a more primal urge has overwhelmed all of this; we see some scary news on the TV, and we panic and rush to the supermarket to buy yet more toilet rolls and Lysol.
Twelve days ago I went to Costco to get a normal shopping list – so far we haven’t seen the need to panic buy anything. I was a little bit later than usual because I had a chat with my daughter in Dubai that took a bit longer than normal. But it was still a weekday morning, and usually at Costco that means a half empty store, short lines and getting in and out within fifteen minutes.
Not this day. Once I had finally secured a trolley by stalking somebody loading up their car, I made my way in, but 10% into the store the checkout lines started, snaking all the way around the store into rarely used nooks. Navigating around the store to shop became near gridlock. After ten minutes I decided to abandon ship, judging the checkout time to be perhaps two hours, so I navigated the gridlock in reverse to return my goods and get back to the entrance. By now, the entrance itself had been closed by staff to try to limit the chaos inside, only to create now chaos outside of people lining up to enter the store.
If only a few of us had the virus when we set out for Costco, probably most of us had it by the way we got home. But, once the primal shopping urge had been sated, we duly went back to our new careful routines, perhaps achieving tiny marginal reductions to the risks we had just spent hours recklessly maximising.
This is how the train stopped, in fits and starts, with missteps and waves of panic. It was probably all too late anyway, and once the criminal absence of testing is fully dealt with, we’ll discover just how much too late and just how extensively we allowed this to infect us.
At least by now, two weeks in, people having started behaving intelligently and our providers have implemented new protocols. This morning at Trader Joe’s we all lined up in the street six feet apart before a few at a time were allowed into the store.
But it strikes me how limited even a so-called lockdown really is. It is not just supermarkets and pharmacies that are open, but also banks, hardware, laundromats, pet stores, car repair, medical facilities, fast food and convenience stores and so much more, as well as all their supply chains and mass transit. It is justifiable, but hardly feels like a lock down. The only things really shut are the indulgent stores of malls. Still, the people have responded and traffic at most of the open establishments is way down, and the roads are clear of cars. Take away commuters, schools runs and everyday hustlers and roads empty very quickly.
Our apartment suddenly feels to have shrunk to half its size, with three of us at home nearly all the time, seeking out our own niches to work and avoid disturbing each other. I have even set up a little desk area on the terrace, and hopefully soon it will be warm enough on most days to use it.
I have plenty of time to reflect. Firstly, it is a chance to be thankful for what we normally have but take for granted. On the Sunday before the emergency brakes were applied, I spent six glorious hour singing beautiful music with three different groups. The memory still lingers sweetly. After this blessing returns, it will be a long time before I complain about early call times or long homilies.
I have also come to appreciate the small routines that used to punctuate my day, such as trips to the old-folks home or the gym, or breaks to watch live sport. I find that I really need these punctuation marks, and have had to work to spread things out and to find new habits.
This time also offers opportunities to rediscover joys we might have forgotten to utilise in normal times. It is good to have more quality time as a family, and also to connect more regularly to wider family and friends. These connections somehow seem more valuable now.
Then there is nature. I have rediscovered the joy of long walks, and have found four great new ones within an hour’s drive from home, all to beautiful places that have not been at all crowded. How lucky that the mild and dry winter has left the paths largely clear of mud and has accelerated the lovely tree blossoms.
It will be interesting to see how trade-offs are handled around the world. For now, avoiding the overwhelming of hospitals has to be the dominant consideration. But before too long there will be arguments to restart more activity to support economies and livelihoods, and also from limits to social tolerance.
You already see hospitals in some places deciding who to treat and who to let die, and we have that ugly reality ahead in many more parts of the world. But essentially politicians, guided by society, will have to make exactly that trade off at a macro level. How many extra deaths is a fair trade off for retaining jobs, enabling education, and relieving social tensions? All medicine comes to this really, despite nobody being willing to talk about it openly: we could keep some 90-year-olds alive for a few more weeks by giving yet another expensive operation or drug, but there has to be some limit on the cost benefit. Such calls will come starkly into focus in the coming weeks.
It is early to predict long-term effects of this crisis. Probably, it will accelerate existing trends. Workers and educators will come to realise that quite a lot can be achieved remotely. For education, we are blessed to have a 20-year-old doing a technical subject; for him I suspect remote working can achieve as much as 80% of a campus approach. If we were elementary school parents, we would probably see that home schooling will struggle to achieve more than 20%, with our own sanity compromised to boot. Then there is e-commerce. This might be the deathblow for many of those shuttered malls, while Amazon will probably emerge even stronger.
Then we can wonder how this might change general attitudes or political priorities or the global balance. Some are already suggesting that this could be the Suez moment for the US, signalling the start of decline and being overtaken by China. We can hope that those people who live in their bubble might come to realise how interconnected we are and how counter-productive it is to have so many living so poorly, but I somehow doubt that. Similarly, climate change action will probably be put back on hold as soon as we are free to consume again.
But one benefit could come from a wider appreciation of live performance art and other ways humans connect. Being deprived of something is a sure way to highlight its value. Once employment practices change permanently and we all finally have more leisure, art will emerge as a fine purpose for humanity, and this crisis might just accelerate that trend a little. Lots of people will be at home at getting out their old guitar or their piano scores or paintbrushes. The potential blossoming of all that creativity is one vision to help us through these tough times.
No comments:
Post a Comment