As the days and weeks go by, it’s becoming harder and harder to remember what life was like before COVID-19. It’s also becoming easier and easier to picture a new normal. In some ways it will suck: undoubtedly the economy will suffer for a long time, shopping won’t be as quick & easy, travel especially by air won’t be a cinch, and large events like sports and concerts are probably going to change if not cease altogether for a while.
But in other ways I think our quality of life will improve. We’ve all seen auto traffic dramatically diminish, and while it will surely increase from this level in the future, it probably won’t go back to the 16-hour rush hour levels we saw in 2019, which is a good thing. Many cities are dedicating streets to non-motorized use so that people can social distance properly, and hopefully this proves to be worthwhile and catches on in more cities and towns. Options for home work, home entertainment, and home education have already multiplied, and this will likely continue. Air, water, and land will be cleaner.
Back to the dark side of things, some people are already getting impatient and frustrated, and a few are staging protests saying that their state or city should be “liberated”. They seem to believe that by ignoring the virus and its already-devastating effects, things will just sort of magically return to 2019 conditions. They don’t see that the world has changed irreversibly, and that even if everyone were suddenly free to go or gather wherever they wished, that alone would do little to revive the economy. These people are desperate to feel “normal” again, to turn back the clock and pretend none of this happened. They don’t see that no amount of “liberation” will accomplish this.
In contrast, what quarantine and social distancing are in fact accomplishing are the saving of human lives. This is difficult to show or prove conclusively, since you can’t know for each individual whether that person would have caught the virus and died without sheltering in place. Indeed, the trouble with social distancing measures is that when they are working, nothing happens, leading some to believe it is all an overreaction. But collectively, we know through scientific proof that social distancing saves thousands of not millions of lives (we just don’t know exactly which lives, and that really shouldn’t matter).
I’m all about freedom, and I can’t wait for our society to recover from this. But if you advocate for action that needlessly puts thousands or millions at risk, undoing the heroic efforts of our front line health workers, you can count me out.
Bike Newbie 