I have an overactive imagination. A penchant for exaggeration. A flair for the dramatic. Some people love this about me. My hiking club recaps featuring death defying encounters with packs of wild animals and herds of hang gliders have become the stuff of legend. But others refuse to take me seriously for this very reason. Throwing me into a group with Chicken Little, Internet conspiracy theorists, and the Boy Who Cried Wolf. And that’s fair. I don’t always take things seriously. Quirkiness and silliness are often the Rule of Law in my world.
But this is different. For even though it will sound like hyperbole, like an overreaction, like a sky is falling proclamation, it is far from it. For when it comes to COVID-19 there is no need to exaggerate. The facts are scary enough on their own. Tens of millions of deaths around the world if we do nothing. Several million dead if we do half measures. And best case scenario: nearly 18 months of isolation while we wait for a vaccine because if we stop isolating at any point before then an outbreak resulting in millions of deaths could still occur.
The tendency is to compare this virus to the flu, to downplay it, but that’s not a fair comparison. The flu has a death rate of .1%. COVID-19 has a death rate of 1-3% making it at least ten times deadlier than the flu. What makes it even more troubling is the fact that it’s slow moving (symptoms may take five days to show up) and can be spread by people who are asymptomatic. And while 80% of cases may be “mild” that’s still a broad spectrum of severity with mild really just referring to anything that doesn’t require significant hospital care. Not to mention the fact that the virus may do irreparable damage to a patient’s lungs even if they survive.
Suffice it to say this is not good. Everywhere you look there is more and more bad news as the number of cases increases exponentially around the globe. Everywhere you turn there is more and more existential dread as governments take ever more drastic action to try to stop the spread. A gauntlet of seemingly insurmountable daunting challenges has been laid down before us. That’s not hyperbole. It’s really not. That’s our new reality. The new normal we’ve all been hearing about as we attempt to flatten the curve while sheltering in place.
That is some scary shit and that’s just focusing on the impact of the virus itself. But what about all of the ripples that will reverberate throughout society? Such as the impact on the totality of the healthcare system. All those people who suffer from any number of regular, run of the mill ailments, illnesses, and injuries. People who need elective surgeries. Who get into car accidents. Who suffer heart attacks. Who need what we would have considered as “normal” healthcare just a week ago? What about them? Are we only going to treat coronavirus cases and ignore everyone else? And if it comes down to it how do we do the impossible and decide who lives and who dies? Those excruciating decisions that Italy is already making are coming our way whether we like it or not.
The economic impact will be equally devastating. Possibly even more so as it is likely to impact every walk of life from trust fund babies dependent on a healthy stock market to hourly workers dependent on their latest paycheck. Logic would dictate that a recession is likely. Probability would suggest that another Great Depression is possible. Some estimates are predicting an unemployment rate of 20% or higher. Homes will foreclose. Bills will pile up. There will inevitably be civil unrest. Riots. Food shortages. Total anarchy. Carnage.
Even if that’s not the case and this is a relatively short lived event there will still be untold changes to society. Irrecoverable damage as millions of small businesses shutter their doors. As bars and restaurants close. As people lose their jobs. Their life savings. Their hopes and dreams.
The economic hardship facing the service class will be unimaginable to say the least. Waitresses, stewardesses, bartenders, hair stylists, beauticians, maids, comedians, entertainers, event planners, travel agents, personal trainers, Uber drivers, AirBnB hosts, the list goes on and on. Hard-working people from all walks of life looking for work. But that’s not all. Passion projects will also be put aside. Promising new ideas will fizzle. The creative class will crater as side hustles vanish. Free time a foreign notion as people focus on the immediate task at hand: survival.
In fact, society itself could shift. In profound ways. Similar to what happened after 9/11. Privacy gone. Surprise, surprise. Facial recognition software becoming ubiquitous, as governments track our every movement, constantly taking our temperature as we move throughout society, gauging whether or not we’re a risk to the general public. It’s already happening in China which could help explain why they were able to eventually contain the outbreak in Wuhan.
But there will be other shifts. Office culture gone. Replaced by full-time telecommuting. Movie theaters gone. Only streaming options remaining. Public meeting places gone. All cultural delivered virtually and electronically as AR and VR technology proliferates. Just like life in The Stacks in Ready Player One.
More troubling is the idea that certain borders between countries may never re-open as this virus is used as an excuse to enforce racist policies. Referring to it as the Chinese Flu or worse as the Kung Flu as Donald Trump has isn’t going to help matters. Eventually, policies of isolation could become standard as countries turn inwards and lock out foreigners. Accessible global travel could become a thing of the past. The tourism industry damaged beyond repair. The world becoming less interconnected as the spread of the virus gets blamed on globalization.
But that’s not all. Birth rates could increase as young couples in isolation kill the time the old-fashioned way. Divorce rates could increase as well. And what about all those people stuck in isolation with abusive partners? They’re literally imprisoned with no where to go for weeks or months. Same for parents who now find themselves simultaneously trying to work from home and home-school their children.
Perhaps people will finally realize just how hard educating young people is paving the way for teachers to earn higher salaries. Grocery store personnel might even get classified as emergency workers as we realize how essential their roles are in keeping modern society humming along. We could even see Universal Basic Income get implemented as governments pay civilians not to work, first to encourage a policy of isolation, but eventually on a permanent basis because of how impactful it winds up being.
All in all, it’s likely that a prolonged period of isolation could have an untold number of side effects and consequences. Just look at the impact alone on the sports world. The NBA season has been suspended. Possibly indefinitely. It’s easy to get upset about how easy it is for basketball players to get tested when the rest of Americans have no idea how to go about getting tested themselves but at the same time you could point to Rudy Gobert testing positive and the NBA shutting down as the turning point when the national conversation changed. Because right after that every other major sporting event followed suit and people began to take this outbreak more seriously.
So much so that March Madness turned into March Sadness as all spring collegiate competitions were canceled. Major League Baseball ended Spring Training and delayed the start of their season. It may not even take place at all. Everything from golf tournaments to tennis matches were postponed or canceled. Even the UFC was put on hold and Wrestlemania moved to an empty performance center over two nights. Unprecedented courses of action. Which begs the question: what will ESPN even cover for the next several months? Corn hole? Axe throwing? Pie eating?
But that’s the least of our worries. As important as sports are to our culture, our identities, our civic pride, they are still at the end of the day, just sports, just games, just a mere form of entertainment. There are bigger issues to be concerned with.
Such as the fact that profound psychological issues could emerge as this saga drags on; depression developing as loneliness creeps in. Cabin fever emerging over time. Friendships waning and potential romances fizzling as the weak bonds that hold loose social groups together break.
Generational resentment between Millennials and Boomers could set in as well as lifestyle choices gain scrutiny. All in all, the full extent of the impact on society may not be known for years as tensions brew and bubble beneath the surface. There’s even talk that the Internet may break! Bandwidth buckling under the strain of billions of people all trying to stream video at the same time.
Meanwhile, IRL restaurants that switch to take out only may survive but bars that are forced to close may never re-open. Would entrepreneurs even want to open up new bars in the future if the risk of future pandemic driven shutdowns still exists? Will public meeting places become a thing of the past? What about live entertainment? Will Broadway survive? Will concerts, conferences, and events of all shapes and sizes? I don’t drink, somewhat have social anxiety, and usually prefer to be alone than with others, and even I’m clamoring to go out to a bar right now after only socially distancing for less than a week. I can’t imagine what social butterflys might be going through. For people who crave social interaction this whole ordeal must feel like torture.
On the opposite end of the spectrum there’s the impact on loners, recluses and people who prefer to be alone. For them there’s no where to run, no where to hide. You can’t screen calls when everyone knows your sitting at home with nothing better to do. You’re stuck. Thanks to technological breakthroughs you’re now forced to engage in an endless stream of horrifying video chats featuring close ups of your unshaven face. An introverts worse nightmare even if everyone thinks that a quarantine would actually be tailor made for them. In actuality, that’s not the case at all. Preferring to be alone from time to time is a lot different than being alone on a permanent basis.
Just ask single people. An overlooked aspect of this drama is the effect on the dating scene. Can you still go out on dates? Is it even save to meet up with someone? How do you know where they’ve been, who they’ve been in contact with, or if they’ve even been quarantining at all? How can you trust someone you’ve never met?
People in relationships and people with families may be lamenting their circumstances as they are stuck in close quarters with people who may get on their nerves but single people don’t even have the option of getting annoyed with someone else. For them there is no one else. And it may be weeks or months or years before they can start dating again. Before they can interact face to face with another human being.
I get the sense that people don’t realize or fully appreciate the full extent of shutting down society yet. It’s still early days. Reality hasn’t really set in. People are still spreading memes about social distancing, still telling jokes, trying to make the most of a situation that they think will soon pass. But the surreal will soon become real. For the worse is yet to come. It’s only been one week since this started. One week out of what could be dozens of weeks.
Ultimately there may be unforeseen side effects of isolation that trend towards the positive though. Consider the new idea of grocery stores having senior only hours before the store opens to the general public. This is a great idea that ensures that seniors, the most at risk segment of the population during this outbreak, get the care and supplies that they need. Even after this outbreak passes this practice should continue.
But we can think even bigger than that. Think globally. Such as considering the environmental impact of suddenly shutting down society. By some estimates we only had about twelve years left before a catastrophic climate catastrophe. So, while it sucks to potentially spend a year or two of that time stuck inside it may ultimately be what saves us with air quality improving and global warming subsiding as less emissions occur as modern civilization grinds to a halt.
But that’s not all. We’ve already seen animals, such as deer in Japan and monkeys in Thailand roam into new areas in search of food, usually provided to them by the tourists that no longer show up. Will there be other examples of nature reclaiming land lost to industrialization? Will our overheating oceans cool down? Will coral reefs rebuild themselves? Is this global timeout exactly what the doctor ordered for the long-term health of our planet?
This is what I find most interesting about this entire outbreak. The irony of it all. That exactly what we needed to do to halt Climate Change we’re doing, not because we want to, not because we chose to, but rather, because the choice was made for us, out of necessity, thanks to something naturally occurring, a virus. Is this Mother Nature’s way of course correcting? Does it imply that nature is actually intelligent and not just driven by benign biological processes and the laws of physics?
On the other hand, it isn’t enough to just consider this a natural disaster. There was, as there often is, human nature that muddied the waters. For this virus may in fact be man made. Possibly produced in a laboratory and possibly released on purpose. At the very least its existence was covered up by China preventing the rest of the world from being able to stop its spread. Could that gross negligence be what starts World War III?
Instead of playing the blame game one could instead choose to look at this as a glass half full situation. As an opportunity. Because with our backs to the wall humanity will have to pull together like never before. Philanthropic and altruistic efforts will emerge. 3-D printers could finally come to the forefront as they produce much needed ventilator parts. Similar to how car racing has produced untold automobile innovations as the desire to go faster and faster necessitated further aerodynamic and engineering breakthroughs so too could the race to cure this virus lead to untold medical innovations and healthcare breakthroughs.
Could our understanding of virology increase ten fold as a result? Could we create therapies that cure other illnesses? Put in place new policies and procedures that improve hygiene and save lives? Perhaps we could even continue with the practice of fast tracking treatments, skipping over animal testing and going straight to human volunteers so that inhumane animal testing becomes a thing of the past. At the very least we’re washing our hands more often and for longer amounts of time than ever before. If nothing else this crisis has improved our ability to prevent other illnesses from spreading. And given us the impetus to do away with that awkward social custom of shaking hands.
Speaking of unnecessary customs this pandemic has also pointed out several flaws within society. Proven that a lot of meetings could have been emails. Proven that working from home is possible. Proven that the size limitation on liquids that can be brought on a plane was an arbitrary decision in the first place as the FDA suddenly allows for larger hand sanitizer bottles to make it through security checkpoints.
Handshakes and toiletries aside at the end of the day the important question that we really should all be asking ourselves is what this does to our risk tolerance. Going forward will we take drastic action to stop the flu or other run of the mill infectious diseases from spreading on an annual basis? Will seasonal quarantines become a part of modern life? Will we hibernate during flu season the way a bear hibernates through the winter? Or will we go back to the way things were. Accepting a death rate of .1% (tens of thousands of deaths) even though a single death should never be acceptable.
An even more pressing question might be how much risk are we willing to accept to get back our lives in the short term? If this saga drags on for several months we will collectively decide to go back about our business at a certain point? And at what point is that? As soon as we flatten the curve? As soon as there are treatments in place that make recovery possible in just a few days? Essentially, if we can’t outright contain the virus do we just accept it and take our chances with it popping up as simply a part of modern life?
That seems to be the case in Japan where they haven’t really seemed to be that affected by the virus. Are they truly not affected or simply hiding the true extent of the virus’ impact so that they can put on a brave face to host the Olympics? In other countries it has so far seemed to take about 6-8 weeks to get the virus under control. But for other countries that weren’t prepared and who didn’t take immediate action the process could be a slower burn. Perhaps as long as 18 months even. Which may be the case here in America.
If this does play out over the course of the next two years it raises some interesting logistical questions. How often we would have to go through painful nose swabbing testing? Would you need to get tested weekly? Daily even? And once you get sick can you get the virus a second time or do you develop immunity? If you do develop immunity will we get to a point where half of society has gotten over it and the other half hasn’t gotten it yet and has to remain in quarantine?
In that scenario what do all the people who have recovered do? Stay in isolation even though they are now perfectly healthy? Go back to living normal lives while the rest of us stay hidden? Could this create a society of haves and have nots? Those that have the virus and those that don’t. Or do we go a different route and just quarantine seniors and other high risk individuals with compromised immune systems such as cancer patients, diabetics, and those with high blood pressure? Do we start segregating large swaths of the population so that the rest of us can get back to work? What if new data comes out that shows that the virus is actually only affecting people with the same commonality such as people who all share the same blood type? Do we start hunting down people with Type A blood before they can get infected and become super spreaders?
It’s an interesting dynamic to say the least. As are the choices that humanity makes in times of need. The run on toilet paper. The hoarding of perishable goods. The desire to still go on Spring Break and out to bars and restaurants in spite of the risk. The foolish mentality that I am invincible. That it won’t happen to me. Or even if it does I’m young so I’ll be fine.
Future sociologists will have a field day studying human behavior during this time. Were we our own worst enemies? Did we exacerbate the situation? Or in the long run did we make the most of it? Emerge on the other side with a new found appreciation for the little things in life? Become more tolerant of different cultures, put aside all of our differences – having learned the very valuable lesson that a little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing? Absence making the heart grow fonder and all that.
Which brings me to the most pressing question of all: where do we go from here? What do we do with our new found “free time.” Do we panic? Hoard supplies. Wait for the world to end while filled with despair? Or do we buckle down and rise to the occasion? Tackle our To Do lists? Attack life with a renewed vigor and sense of purpose?
Shakespeare wrote King Lear while quarantined during the plague. Perhaps modern day creatives can use this as an opportunity to follow their dreams. To put pen to paper. To dust off an old canvas. To see where their creative juices can take them when there aren’t any time constraints, deadlines, or pressure.
That’s what I intend to do at least. Catch up on my writing. Start a hiking blog. See if maybe I’m really not as bad of a painter as I first thought. I may even look to start a business. Why not? After all, time is of the essence. It’s now or never. The world may be ending. Might as well make the most of the time we have left. Might as well embrace the new normal.
How will the world respond to the COVID-19 pandemic?
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