How do I know that after nearly a year under the shadow of COVID-19, I am getting used to this pandemic life? Let me count the ways.
For starters, I no longer need to find an extra half hour in my day so that I can go part-way to my destination, slap my thigh, go “dammit,” and then trudge back to my car, or even home, for a PPE mask.
When I don one now, I no longer fear that I resemble Bane, bug-eyed and hyper-ventilating, in The Dark Knight Rises.
When I leave a place of business, walking amidst the other masked-folks, I can go blocks before remembering that I even have my mask on.
There are other things: how I now seem able to recognize people from the eyes up. How I instinctively give folks their two metres of space, while waiting in the coffee shop lineup. How I greet even old friends with the awkward elbow bump.
Which is good since, from the looks of it, we will be doing some of these things for a long time to come.
But, as you know, I am an expansive thinker, who takes the long view on things. So, what I really wonder is what of the COVID-19 era will endure when the danger finally passes — how, moving forward, the coronavirus will change our lives?
History tells us that global pandemics have always transformed the world in massive ways. This has been the case from the Black Death, which The Week magazine has written forced authorities to institute such health measures as routine medical examinations, and helped end European feudalism, to the 1918 epidemic, the so-called Spanish Flu, that “revolutionized public health, spawning the new fields of epidemiology and virology,” contends the same publication, while leading several Western European countries to adopt universal health-care systems that are still operating today.
I imagine we all expect that, when the danger passes, mask-wearing will die off as it did after the 1918-19 epidemic when the authorities stopped punishing anti-maskers with fines, prison sentences and having their name printed in the newspaper.
Before long, since it is human nature, we will again be invading each other’s personal space, butting into lines in the supermarket like we always used to, bear-hugging and cheek kissing just like in the good old days.
Since we, as a species, have always craved the clamour of crowded places, I expect that, as soon as is humanly possible, some of us will cram into bars and clubs again.
Some of us, though, will never get over living through the plague. From here on in we will seek more space, not less. We will never quite walk the same way into a crowded elevator or a seething music venue again.
Other things will never be the same again either.
Can anything but sweeping change be ahead for the educational experience now that virtual learning and e-classes have risen to the fore?
After almost a year of online buying and curbside pickup, will the more-intimate consumer experience of in-person shopping bring people back to the malls and stores?
I cannot offer any sort of educated opinion on whether the collapse in air and cruise ship travel will end with the pandemic, but I strongly suspect that the staycation trend will continue for wary travellers.
I feel safe in saying, as well, that the way we work has surely changed forever.
More people toiling at home means employers will have to become more flexible, the demand for office space in a building somewhere will plummet, while the need for home offices becomes imperative. (A Halifax residential real estate website I looked at recently said that a home-office set-up is a necessity for anyone looking to cash in on the city’s climbing home prices.)
I suspect that how we dress, in this age of the “soft pant” and the Zoom business meeting, has also been transformed — although I have not donned a tie since 2019, so that could just be wishful thinking.
Based on a recent New Yorker magazine article about how the coronavirus is reshaping architecture — personal spaces in residences that are both “virtually connected and physically enriching” in case of another pandemic lockdown, neighborhoods in which density is avoided, “pedestrian streets” that counter the dominance of the automobile — that where we live will be different.
So will how we are tended to, since, in my experience, a virtual medical appointment is just fine for straightforward health matters.
I boldly predict that, in the days ahead, more of us will take our leisure outdoors, since the pandemic has shown that we are safer out there, and because basic things, like getting exercise, are better when no walls surround us.
We will — because hard times are as illuminating as self-interest — have a better appreciation of those who keep us safe and comfortable, who educate our children, and look after our seniors.
At least that is my hope, I suppose it is everyone’s.
