Happy (?) Second Pandemiversary!

KN-95 masks, arranged artistically(?)

 

Happy Second Pandemiversary! 

No, wait, that's not right. Try this: I wish you a safe and healthy second pandemiversary!

Better, but still a bit weird. Let's just go with the pained irony approach: Happy (?) Second Pandemiversary!

Two years ago today the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 situation a pandemic. As I put it later, "And everything changed. Not even overnight. It was faster than that." As I've occasionally joked ever since, we never ended Spring Break 2020 (as I head into Spring Break 2022 next week).

About a week after the pandemic was declared, I reflected on what we might learn.

I would like to think that once we’ve flattened the curve (another nice phrase we’ve all learned recently) and maybe once there’s a vaccine and the world economy is on the road to recovery, that people will reflect on what really matters. Maybe we can make economies and political systems that prioritize people’s health and well-being, that can withstand a crisis without harming a society’s most vulnerable members. Maybe we’ll realize that wealth and work should be put into the service of life rather than life being in the service of wealth and work. Or as I put it on social media the other day, maybe COVID-19 will put the Protestant Work Ethic in self-quarantine for a while.

That first year was a lot. A year ago on the first pandemiversary I wrote:

Will we – as individuals, as families, as communities, as a country, as a world, as humanity – really learn anything from this pandemic? I hope so. I fear not. But in reality: I don’t know.

I still don't know here on the second pandemiversary. Alas, dear reader, I'm afraid I must report that I'm beginning to lose much hope that these larger lessons are coming soon. 

I'm horrified by Russia's recent and ongoing invasion of Ukraine, but also by the disproportionate attention to and sympathy from the media and the global community compared to wars outside of Europe (Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Myanmar, etc.). I'm also disturbed by some of the jingoistic celebrations of Ukraine's military fight, while also admitting the Ukrainian people have the right to defend themselves. But war is everywhere and always a tragedy.

To celebrate the fighting as if we're cheerleaders for a far-off sporting contest feels wrong to me. I'm reminded of a book I read many years ago called War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. The idea is something like this: we have to admit that in most societies today war is a source of meaning, and until we find other collective activities just as meaningful, we humans are doomed to constant war. 

MLK had similar thoughts, and I find myself considering again someday teaching a class on MLK, Gandhi, and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. Nonviolence is deeper, more nuanced, and more challenging than most people think, and perhaps as unpopular as ever. But maybe for all that, it's what we need.

Amidst all this, many governments, corporations, and regular people long ago decided the pandemic is over. And while our case numbers and hospitalizations have gone way down in the last couple weeks (at least here in the US), the pandemic is still happening both here and around the world.

We have lost almost one million Americans. And over six million people worldwide. Six million human lives, centers of consciousness, loved ones. Gone forever.

And those are just the officially counted cases. It's likely higher. All in two years. The scale of it is as horrifying as any war. And there are effects from long COVID that we don't even understand yet. 

And yet we are encouraged to ignore all of this. Or brush it off. "Get back out there, work, and spend money! Don't live in fear!" Masks, mandates, and vaccinations are as politicized as they were last year, or at least they would be if enough people even cared anymore.

And I don't mean to sound finger-wagging about any of this. I get it. We're all tired. And global politics and wars are confusing and scary. I don't blame individuals. I really don't. I don't have the energy for it. All I can do is lament the current situation on this planet.

So all in all, the lessons I'm learning about the powers that be and humanity as a whole are not great.

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But maybe the pandemic has, despite all this tragedy, taught me a few things. The surge of the winter of 2020-21, combined with breaking my shoulder in January 2021, forced me to slow down. And I was better for it. As I put it a year ago,

Life is too short to spend it scrambling around all the time. It’s okay if I don’t get everything done on time. I may disappoint people. I may disappoint myself. But whether there’s a pandemic or not, the best any of us can do is the best we can do. So, go easy on yourself and others.

But I don't want to sound like some sort of pandemic pollyanna: "yeah, there was all this death and suffering, but it was worth it to make me chill out!" I honestly can't say whether I've become a better person. More tired? Yes. Better? I don't know.

The pandemic has introduced me to anxiety in a way I seldom knew before. I used to get social anxiety in awkward social situations, but nowadays being around people at all, going inside a store, teaching a class in person, attending a conference, etc. can sometimes give me anxiety as I have never known. And this is not going away just because I read some lower local case numbers (which I still obsessively check every day, by the way).

I did go to a sci-fi convention in January in the midst of the omicron surge because they required vaccinations. I had some fun, but I also felt a lot of anxiety the whole time I was there. I tested negative afterwards and was fine, but that experience made me cancel a trip to a fully-vaxxed and masked philosophy conference last month. I also opted out of another sci-fi convention last month because they didn't require either masks or vaccination. 

Ironically the omicron surge started going down as these events were happening in the latter half of February 2022. I knew intellectually that I would probably be fine, but I just couldn't do it. Now that I've gotten used to not going anywhere, it will be hard to go back. I don't think I'll ever be the same person I was. And maybe that's okay. Or it is what it is. Or whatever.

A lot of this can be summed up by one of my recent random thoughts, "I worry about the ways this pandemic has changed us. I worry even more about the ways it hasn’t changed us."

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But for all that, I suppose I do have some hope. The greedy, short-sighted old men who run the world today will not live forever. The young people living through the horror of the early 2020's will be shaped by this. Maybe not entirely for the better. Let's not forget the human costs, medical, psychological, economic, and so on, borne mostly by the most vulnerable among us.

But if I have any hope, it's that in future decades some people will remember the world of 2022 with its poorly-managed pandemic, environmental degradation, climate change, war, militarism, police violence, injustice, oppression, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, fascist nationalisms around the world, violent conspiracy theories, hunger, poverty, and vast disparities that degrade our entire species. I hope these future pandemic progeny will remember this and say, "Enough. We can do better."