Coronavirus might be a catalyst for change

As my first full week of social distancing concludes, I have had an awful amount of time to think and reflect.  To think about how much the life of my family and I has changed in less than two weeks.  To think about what this portends for our immediate and not-so-distant future.  To think about how we as a society and as a world community got to this point, how we may overcome this pandemic, and what changes may be in store.

As I am not a medical expert, I’m not going to focus as much on how we can address the immediate need of fighting and successfully controlling and defeating this microscopic threat known by the clinical term COVID-19.  I have little to provide beyond my limited knowledge as it relates to apparent solutions:  widespread testing, continued social distancing and ultimately developing treatments and a vaccine for this virus.  Rather I’m going to focus on my theory as to how and why this pandemic will cause a seismic shift in our society moving forward.

In my 49 years of life on this Earth, I have witnessed events that dramatically changed the trajectory of how we conduct our lives, our philosophies, values and interactions with others.  When I was 30 years old and engaged with my current spouse, September 11, 2001 rocked the foundation of security that many Americans had felt up until that Tuesday morning.  The financial meltdown of 2008 which altered the faux security in terms of finances was a second major event – I remember many people in the neighborhood I reside in living off of adjustable rate mortgages, the equity in their homes to purchase luxury cars and SUVs, take once was thought of exotic vacations halfway around the world, and display the facade of opulence.  Six months later witnessing the number of homes go into foreclosure, people that I knew struggling to find employment, and those that were able to remain house poor with an underwater mortgage.

This pandemic however is dramatically different from the first two events I’ve mentioned.  9/11 largely affected a population that had grown up feeling secure; a number of my suburban acquaintances never experienced their security (physical, emotional, or otherwise) perceivably threatened.  They never faced the lack of security those that lived in economically depressed inner cities or rural areas dealt with daily.  Or what minority populations had to face in terms of discrimination or institutionalized prejudice.  No high crime, failing infrastructure and poor access to transportation and education for their children to worry about.

A large percentage of those individuals that tragically perished that day in the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon were comparable to those in my community as it relates to socio-economic status.  And people that were ethnically and culturally different flew planes into the symbolic strengths of American nationalism – our financial prowess (WTC) and that as a military superpower (the Pentagon).  The response to these threats befell to the 1% of our population that are part of our active duty armed forces – who were required to serve multiple tours of duty in both Afghanistan and Iraq – military operations that continue to this day nearly 20 years later.

As with the financial crisis in 2008, it severely impacted those that not only were living beyond their means, but unfortunately those that were victims of predatory capitalism – people in inner-city neighborhoods or those that had owned a farm that had been passed down generationally encouraged to refinance into sub-prime mortgages or extract equity out of their homes to suddenly watch Wall Street and the Big Banks receive their bailout, but were left holding the bag and losing what they had owned, the crisis of which accelerated gentrification in many predominantly African American communities.  Or facilitated the collapse of the family farm – and the large corporate agri-businesses to dominate our food supply chain.  But like the fallout of 9/11 placed the burden on our volunteer armed forces, this burden fell on another subset of our population.

This pandemic, the coronavirus, does not discriminate based upon one’s social-economic status, one’s celebrity, one’s race and ethnicity or one’s religion and politics.  It is the great equalizer in terms of our entire humanity being threatened.  It does not recognize county, state/territorial or national boundaries, it does not distinguish the homeless person in Los Angeles from royalty or the PM office in Britain.  It doesn’t care if you are a millionaire NBA athlete or a grocery worker stocking shelves.

If you have been mandated to socially distance yourself from friends, extended family and acquaintances; to shelter at home, you are NOW a part of the response to combat this pandemic.  COVID-19 forces all of us to reconcile with our mortality and what we have in common as humans and obliterates the fault lines we’ve constructed between us.  It may in fact push us closer as a society and a world community to work to together not only to fight this immediate threat to all of us, but to work together to build a more egalitarian world for all of us.

I feel that over that last 20+ years our society has drifted into valuing celebrity over consciousness, ignorance over intelligence, crassness over compassion, and wealth over wholeness of spirit and well-being.  At the very moment we look to our institutions to help rescue us from this menace, we see the structural and moral weaknesses appear against the backdrop of the fallacy.  We are turning to our first responders, our health care workers, our grocers, or warehouse workers and truckers to sustain us in the midst of failed leadership at our Federal level and with some at our state and local government tiers.  We are already beginning to place more of an emphasis on our scientists, our medical experts, our research community to not only triage the immediate threat, but to discover medial treatments and a vaccine to eradicate this virus.

Maybe this will lead to us relying and trusting experts who not only warned the upper echelons of our government (months ago) the threat this posed when it was a far-away afterthought in Wuhan, China, but to listen more attentively to the threats posed by climate change, economic disparity, and social injustice.   Maybe this will force us out of our bubbles we’ve constructed around us, to seek truth over affirmation of our prejudices and religious beliefs.  Value talent and skill over sensationalism and salaciousness; compassion over cruelty and finally intelligence over sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.   Maybe I am naive into thinking this will lead to a seismic change – but what would be the purpose of living if I were not optimistic about a pandemic triggering change in the human condition?

Here is an interesting link that has additional thoughts on how this crisis may change our world:  https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/19/coronavirus-effect-economy-life-society-analysis-covid-135579