Covid - 19

In 1997 when Tony Blair came to power in the UK after 18 years of Conservative rule, I really felt 'part of something'. More specifically, 'part of something important and bigger than me'. But, as a first time voter and one of those who had lived under Tory rule for their entire lives, that bigger something also felt significant on a small scale too. A something that would impact not only my country, but my own life as well. It had the added Bruce-y bonus of being so dramatic and atypical within the UK political landscape, that it was a guaranteed essay question on any of the upcoming sociology/politics/economics exams I'd have to take over the next five years. It was something I read about, I was interested in, I was impacted by and it changed my world.

Much like the current Coronavirus will be for our teens and our academics today. And, actually, every other person on the planet. Because unlike the '1997 Labour Landslide Election' in the UK, the current pandemic affects the entire world. It also reaches beyond the spheres of sociological and political interest too - capturing imagination, insight and insanity on an economical, humanitarian, biological, chemical, and pretty much every other academic level. Beyond that, it impacts us on an individual and a daily basis as we strive to secure supplies of toilet paper and rice, home school our kids and work from home and er, not go fucking mental and bankrupt in the process.

While we have seen big things before, either in our own lives or through the lens of history, we may have never seen anything quite like this before. A big thing that will cause us to question our entire ways of living on a global scale as well as a household scale. And remarkable as that is as a concept - and hey, when I'm teaching again, I'll probably set questions on it - it is terrifying too.

Right now, in the midst of this insane global pandemic that is seeing us re-evaluate the way we have worked as a culture of 9-5ers (at best) or humans who require social interaction and contact, it's hard to see the woods for the trees. The media is terrifying. 150,000 plus dead already from this. Hundreds of thousands infected. No cure. No vaccine. No idea when life will ever, if ever, return to normal. And it is from that thick forrest of unknown and fear I write to you today...

...a me for whom the social, economical and political landscape is about to be burned down. A me who is homeschooling a prep kid whilst trying to keep a 2yo busy without leaving the house. A me who is missing my gym and drinking too much and eating all the crap I keep baking to pass the hours and hours of time I never knew I had and actually, don't really want that much.

When this first began, like most, I was lackadaisical and in denial. It was a far away disease that affected old people. Over time, as the virus crept closer, affected more and more of all ages and my government began to restrict my civil liberties, I began to pay attention.

I noticed the face masks appearing at the supermarket and the prices creeping up. I noticed the shelves emptying and the resources I had taken for granted becoming scarce. The flights cancelled. The weddings shrunken. The schools closing. The hospitals filling.

I began to incorporate into my daily consciousness and vocabulary terms like 'flattening the curve' and 'social distancing'. My uncle's factory went from making gaskets to face protection. And just like that, I started to understand...

At first, I was angry. Loss and restriction surrounded me. And many of the most vulnerable that I was washing my hands nine million times a day and wiping my weights down at the gym to protect were all at bloody Woollies popping out for a packet of biscuits, touching park benches, having fags and not caring in the slightest about what was unfurling around them.

At this point, I did actually berate an old man for not standing on the green spot away from me and the next lady he'd pushed in on, declaring 'if you're not on a dot, you're on a suicide mission.' Which while true, was probably unnecessary. After all, we're not used to being 2m away from people, even strangers, when we're in their physical presence. Hot tip: I've since learnt feigning a coughing fit is kinder and much more effective.

But given that I'd spent years in public panicking if anyone sneezed within a 9ft radius of my amyloidosis suffering, immunocompromised, chemo enduring mother, I got it. We needed to keep germs away from those whom the germs would kill and I was onto it. I didn't understand much else in the early days, so I focussed on what I could and should do.

As I read more and looked deeper into what was happening, I became philosophical. An entire restructure of the sociological, political, economic, environmental and medical structures that had shaped our world for more than the past hundred years would be welcome after all. At every level, I'm sure that anyone outside of the top 2% of people who run and own the world could attest, these are categorically NOT WORKING FOR US OR OUR PLANET. And despite the best efforts from activists who tirelessly campaign to get us to do better (I'm looking at you Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai) change is just not happening. Or, it wasn't.

For decades, those of us in positions privileged enough to, have gathered and used resources with the kind of gay abandon usually reserved for kids with $100 to spend in a sweet shop. We have sought not only our own comfort, but the spoils of decadence, before ever turning our charity to those less fortunate.

We have created a market economy that forces us out into the workplace each day and away from our villages as we run ever faster and faster like hamsters on their wheels into debt looking around only to see what the other hamsters have in comparison. We measure ourselves more and more in what we have, rather than what we learn, and our desire for 'stuff' has created a world in which who we are has become secondary to what we own.

And the cost of that is immense. Not only to those below us in the pecking order who we no longer see to advocate for, but to the very structure of our societies as we read articles about the best face creams over those revealing our politicians being corrupt and self-serving. To the planet we are stripping bare. Or the medical research that we focus less on where there is need and more on where there is profit.

We have not, all too often, been looking at what we should have been.

As I look ahead from the world I knew burning down around me, I now see hope. I see neighbours ringing doorbells and running, having dropped lemon drizzles onto the steps of the old man they never spoke to before in a much kinder version of 'king of the knockdown gingers' we played as (horrible) children. I see people 'checking in' and 'shopping for' and newspapers and craft kits posted through letterboxes to alleviate the boredom for those in self-isolation.

I read about acts of bravery - from the doctors and nurses on the front lines, to the 90 year olds refusing ventilators in favour of keeping them for the young because they've already lived beautiful lives. I listen to podcasts where the philosophical concerns about our changing world are debated in ways that are increasingly seeing us all as one - as humans - the arbitrary divisions of colour or culture or gender or wealth finally falling away as what unites us, is finally revealed to have always been the same and stronger than what divides us. I imagine, going forward, a world in which how we consume, we live, we move and we connect are considered in ways that they were not before and that the impact of that heals us as people and planet.

I want to believe that we'll come out of this better. That we'll care and appreciate and value and tolerate in ways we have struggled to do before.

My dreams however are smudged on a daily basis when I hear the news of fit and healthy people actively trying to get Covid-19 now in order not to have to worry about it later. Or when I see the prices slapped on the more scarce products by profiteering businesses.

And yet, as I watch and endure and wait I have to believe that in the end, whatever the world looks like after this will have to be better. That we will start again with a deeper insight and understanding of who we all are and what we all need.

What more foolproof way is there to fundamentally reshape things than to strip them back to nothing and start again? Is this the silver lining hidden in the Covid-19 cloud? Only when we have lost control of our economy and obliterated the way we have lived at a social, an emotional and a practical level will we really be able to reassess, reawaken and restructure as humans.

As part of the earth we must strive now to exist in a mutual balance with it and with one another as allies facing the same enemies and terrors. We have believed that we somehow have a right to control that planet, harness its power and utilise it for our own good. We have competed across borders rather than worked together. Created hierarchies and value systems based on where we come from, what we do and even our physiological traits.

But look at us now. Look what we believe science can really achieve if we share knowledge and research...see how connected and alike we really are in our enforced distance. How dependent on one another. How vulnerable. How brave. How awful. How brilliant.

Oh what fools we have been!

At the end of the day, Covid-19 might well be the brutal catalyst that allows us to recognise that truth. The real question is, what will we do with that knowledge?