Plague Journal, Sunshine
The day dawned with spring sunlight streaming through the trees. I left for a short 5 minute drive to the outpatient lab for a fulfillment of a blood work order. For a diabetic the quarterly blood panel work up discloses the balance of health, or a possible downward spiral… I was met in the parking lot by two nurses with a questionnaire and a IR temperature device. No one with symptoms of coronavirus would be admitted to the facility.
Yet, another reminder of the potential lethality of contact, under these circumstances, the extremely contagious virus for which we have no treatment and no vaccine. Something taken for granted possibly as far back to the 1918 flu pandemic, – now is foreclosed if you do not want to risk a deadly infection.
Face to face presence, conversation, full bandwidth social exchange is something we cannot do withoug. Absent the exchange of facial expressions, how long can we maintain emotional well being? Imagine that you are a child, without the benefit of contact with your teachers at school, your playmates? What would your prospects be for the sustained focus that learning demands? How will you learn to read, to do math? Remove the motivation of others, and what is left? Full bandwidth contact is like sunshine.
And as to society….. Can you imagine a town without any independent restaurants? Just the corporate places, that offer only carryout or the drive through. What about the absence of any “finer” dining places? You know the place where you go for a improved menu selection, white table clothes, and the wait staff will call you by name if you come in often. Would your life be unchanged if all of those places went away?
What about the disappearance of all coffee shops? No place to order an inexpensive snack or a very good cup of hot coffee, where you are welcome to spend a while, in the presence of others who don’t know you, but appreciate you just the same. Is not a coffee shop the essence of a democratic society in miniature? Are not such places opportunities to step away for a few minutes from a technologized society, routinized workplace, to be reminded that you are a one-of-a-kind human being? There has never been one like you, and never will be again!
There will be an after. In the future a vaccine will be available, in addition to treatments for the coronavirus sickness. It is not too early to purposefully consider what we need in the transformed way of life which we will create, after covid-19.
Courage!
