BY Ava ABHELAKH, EEB4, S5NLA.
COVID-19, the virus that went from just killing the elderly in Wuhan China to killing over 180 thousand people worldwide (at the time of this article). By now every person will have surely noticed a dramatic change in today’s society… but are all these changes for the worse?
A new perspective on our social life:
People that used to work 40h a week, spending the rest of their leisure time at home on the sofa, are now beginning to realize just how valuable being able to go outside truly is. Hopefully, this accumulating enthusiasm to exercise (or generally move around, under the ‘bight blue sky’) will persist. Moreover, experts suggest that an increasing number of people would have restructured their priorities after the pandemic: from “live to work” to “work for a living”. On the note of rethinking important life decisions, several divorce attorneys prognose divorce rates to start peaking like never before, according to ABC News. During this confinement couples all over the world were ‘stuck under one roof’ having to deal with tension and unspoken issues. On the other hand however, before, when we had the choice, we often chose to DM-ing a person instead of going to them. Now that social media is our only option we seem to so desperately seek real life, physical connection/interaction with others. It appears that all those who insisted on “the importance of real-life communication” were indeed right in doing so, as we acknowledge how poorly social media manages to replace face-to-face/hand-in-hand, social interaction.
The Economy:
Travelling has most evidently decreased over the past few weeks, lots of airlines have gone bankrupt and traveling as a whole is expected to become significantly more expensive. There is no doubt the following year will be tough. In the US alone, 16 million people have already lost their jobs from various industries, predominantly in the tourism and leisure sectors. Furthermore, economists expect there to be a widespread recession, perhaps even more severe than “the Great Depression”; in addition to having lost their job, many have went through difficult losses of loved ones. Although, a lot of enterprises will have gone bankrupt, the people, currently staying at home, will most certainly experience an unprecedented desire to wonder off to different places around the world, rebooting the travel industries. As we are already witnessing ‘the value of living’ regaining its central role in our ‘fast-fast-faster society’, it is only natural to expect major reprioritizing in how we spend our income.
The Importance of health care:
Another recent acknowledgement, very impactful to the world in my opinion, was the separation of workers into ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’. This was especially notable as it became apart that it was the ‘common’ human beings like cleaners, nurses, and doctors, that would save us all. On the ‘front-line’, doctors from all around the globe are fighting to help us, but they also made something very clear: the importance of a functional healthcare system. Hopefully, as world leaders begin to realize that (“The NHS has saved my life” – B. Johnson, after recovering from COVID-19), we will soon see amendments for the better in the policies of this domain.
We’ve learned to appreciate the people around us, as well as the small things in life. But, until the confinement is officially over we should stay inside and take care of ourselves and our loved ones.
