Will We Build Something Better?

Six weeks ago, when sheltering-at-home was relatively new, Sonya Renee Taylor shared this thought on Instagram, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

As restrictions start to open, what have we learned? Are we trying to get back to what we thought was “normal”? Will we take this chance to do things differently?

Some of what’s on my mind:

Amazing how many cruel things we consider “normal” can actually be ended on a whim.@yelix

It turns out all the sh*tty things companies do to consumers are made up and can be easily killed in a crisis.@jason_koebler

In med school, I took an elective called “Stress”, foolishly thinking I was going to learn about meditation and yoga. Instead the professor spent 6 weeks proving that being poor or a minority literally destroys your health on a molecular level, and I think about that every day.@jfitzgeraldMD

America is unique among wealthy nations in its inability to combat serious problems. From gun violence to pandemic response, we look like a failed state. One of our political parties conceives of this breakdown as freedom. @zachdcarter

Again: it didn’t have to be this bad. 15% of Americans didn’t have to be out of work. The economy closed because this administration wasted the two months of lead time it had instead of preparing tests and contact tracers that could have contained the outbreak.@juliaioffe

We locked down for two months so that we could emerge with new protocols and procedures in place to keep us safe. That time has been completely squandered. Be pissed. Be really pissed.@bschapiroMD

What. Did. We. Do. For. Four. Months.@justinhendrix

Social distancing was necessary to flatten the curve and give the Trump Administration time to invest in testing, tracing, and medical capacity. They have failed to do all three. Now we’re in even worse trouble. This is the answer to the bad faith whiners on barstool and fox.@lollardfish

More than anything, this pandemic has fully torn back the curtain on the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge. — Barack Obama, as tweeted by @ShannonRWatts

So many of us stayed home for 2 months – an unprecedented act of solidarity – only for this administration to squander that time and double down on a “plan” that’s a mix of “every man for himself” and “die for your employer.” This is all depressing.

A country that turned out eight combat aircraft every hour at the peak of World War II could not even produce enough 75-cent masks or simple cotton nasal swabs for testing in this pandemic.The New York Times

The government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant. The Washington Post

3| We’ve been trying to stay up to date on the border closings for France, wondering when our older children will be able to come to us. The last we heard is that borders will reopen first to citizens coming from countries where the pandemic is under control. With these conditions in our airports, I wonder when America will make that list?

Related, did you know that the U.S. has stopped issuing passports except for ‘life-or-death’ emergencies? I admit, that scares me. I know people throw the term “fascism” around, but that sounds like fascism to me.

South Korea has over 50 million people. They had their first outbreak before we did. They have a TOTAL of 262 covid deaths. Any Trumper, Republican, robber baron or “Freedom” sign waver who says 80K+ deaths was inevitable and the price of doing business is full of horseshit.@BeauWillimon

Staggering fact. The US has 4.25% of the world’s population. Yet we have 32% of the world’s COVID cases, and 28% of the world’s deaths. @ed_solomon

4| We’re at 90,000+ dead and counting. Many experts believe that official number is much lower than the number of deaths in actuality. But unlike I’ve seen for every other traumatic national catastrophe in my lifetime, we don’t seem to be mourning the dead as a country.

Certainly family and friends are mourning their individual lost loved ones (please don’t miss Elizabeth Warren’s heartbreaking account of losing her brother to Covid 19), but I haven’t seen a nationwide collective mourning. We lost 3000 people on 9/11 and there were profiles on the dead for weeks and months.

I don’t know what that means. Maybe the numbers are just too overwhelming. Or maybe we can’t mentally allow ourselves mourn until it feels like the danger is really past — which likely won’t happen until there’s a reliable vaccine.

90 thousand dead and it’s really very distressing. I don’t have anything reassuring or political to say, I just think it’s important to acknowledge all of the lives lost. It’s just so sad. May their memories be a blessing.@brianschatz

5| So what’s next? Well, I’ve been encouraged when I see people actively envisioning a better future. I’ve seen conversations about making sure every job pays a living wage. I’ve seen essays on how to broaden the societal safety nets through things like UBI (Universal Basic Income), and treating healthcare as a human right. I loved this segment from Samantha Bee’s show about how to imagine a better future nation.

I’ve also seen lots of people talking about the benefits of working at home and how this could become more of the norm. (Obviously, I’m a big advocate for remote work — it’s what allows us to live in France but still work in the U.S..)

There’s no returning to “normal” after this. We should aspire towards something better—a society in which the dignity of every human being is upheld, the presence of justice is universal, and love reigns supreme.@CoryBooker

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that America has generous socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for everyone else. We must strive to strengthen our social safety nets for all.@RBReich

McDonald’s starting pay in Denmark is $22/hour, plus 6 weeks paid vacation, year paid maternity leave, a pension, national universal health care/sick leave. In the U.S. the same job can be $7.25/hour with no benefits. The Big Macs cost just 27 cents more.@DanPriceSeattle

My therapist hit me with a gem, yesterday. The pandemic hasn’t changed the things you can control, those things are the same. We were just under the illusion that we controlled more.@LaJethroJenkins

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48 thoughts on “Will We Build Something Better?”

  1. This was interesting. But I would actually really love to read how you think things SHOULD change – especially given your recent move to France and how that has (maybe) changed your way of thinking besides the obvious (social safety net, no guns etc).
    Loved the comment on working at McD in Denmark.

    1. The Denmark McDonalds stats were originally from a piece written by Nicholas Kristof from the NY Times headlined “McDonald’s Workers in Denmark Pity Us.” Definitely worth the read.

  2. So concerned about these issues. The passport one worries me personally since we need to renew some in our family, but there are some sad stories already about ex-pat families separated by this delay. Such dysfunctional leadership.

    1. I think it is helpful to see what the State Department says, rather than just the snippet from Time magazine. What it says on the State Dept. website is actually that you should expect significant delays for passport renewals or applications, and only emergency applications are being processed quickly:

      “If you apply or renew now, you will experience significant delays of several months to receive your U.S. passport and the return of your citizenship evidence documents (such as birth certificates or naturalization certificates). Unless you have a life-or-death emergency, please wait until we resume normal operations to apply for or renew your passport.” (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/have-passport/renew.html)

      I hope that is helpful!

      1. Anamaria Anderson

        What is frustrating is that to renew, you must submit your old passport as well as your documents–so that you are stuck either having no passport on hand for months, with no guarantee of getting a new one in a timely fashion (or at all, frankly), or not renewing and having your passport expire, which makes it more difficult and costly to get a new one. I understand that we are in a pandemic and everything is more difficult and costly, but having a valid passport (and what that means) is absolutely essential to me and my family.

        1. I renewed my expired passport about 18 months ago – it even still had my maiden name on it. As long as your passport has been expired for less than something like five years (I can’t remember the exact length), the process and expense are the same as they would be with one that is not expired. In fact, even with it being expired and the name change, my renewed passport was the first one of our family’s to arrive in the mail.

          I hope that helps!

  3. Living in France here; I’m a professor at university, I live in Paris, a 6 y old at school (but no right now). I can’t wait to have my normal life back; I love where I live, what I do, every thing. I would probably work less and travel less. But on the whole, I miss my life (I know and assume the fact that I’m privileged, I was able to choose my path).

  4. I’ve been thinking so much about this lately. It seems like all I’m seeing all over social media are variations on a)it’s time to get back to normal or b) we can’t go out, it’s not safe yet. Both of these bother me for similar reasons.

    The first bothers me because it seems pretty clear at this point that there is no normal at the moment, maybe not for a long time, maybe not ever. We have a very “power through it” attitude in this country when it comes to working while ill. I personally have never thought twice about sending my kids to school with a cold; my husband (a teacher) has always felt the same about going to work. That sort of attitude is going to have to change. That means that we’re going to have to change “work culture.” It’s no good to say “you need to stay home when you’re sick” if you’ll be fired if you do–or if you won’t be able to make ends meet if you miss a shift, which amounts to the same thing. This in turn means we’ll have to (gasp!) start paying workers a living wage so they can have $$ to fall back on if they have to miss work. It also means providing better health care for everyone, so we can actually start taking care of people who ARE sick.

    The “it’s not safe yet” opinion also frustrates me. No, it’s not safe–it’s never going to be safe. The most liberal estimate for a vaccine is 18 months; it will probably be more like 5 years; maybe we’ll never have one at all. We have got to figure out how to educate our kids, take care of non-vital medical needs, go to church, and go about our daily lives with as little risk as possible to the people around us. I don’t know exactly what that looks like–but I do know it doesn’t look like staying inside for 5 years.

    1. Today was my law firm’s first day back in the office since work-from-home was hastily instituted in the middle of March. It feels inevitable and necessary, but also premature. It feels weird and impossible that I’m supposed to suddenly go back to my normal schedule while my kids are still out of school (indefinitely, and with every summer camp & activity cancelled or converted to “online”). It feels like a million years ago that I was putting my kids on a school bus every day before 7 AM.

      1. My problem with the “get back to work” is that, at least in the US, we are not doing what we need to be doing so people can take the precautions to go back to work. Until we have abundant testing and contact tracing, it’s never going to be even remotely safe and we are going to repeatedly see massive outbreaks. These 2 months at home were meant to be put in place while our government (local, state, federal – all aspects of government) put those processes in place. Instead we got nothing but platitudes and bullshit. So no – it’s still not safe. And until our leaders step up and take action, it won’t ever be and a lot of people are going to die that don’t need to. And why that isn’t causing people to be utterly OUTRAGED is beyond me.

        1. YES!! this so much, Bdaiss. Restrictions are easing up slowly where I am in the US, but basically nothing has actually changed. It’s maddening and discouraging.

  5. I’ve been teaching high school—from my living room—during the pandemic, and although it was a big adjustment, I have found it’s not all bad. Class discussions are not as consistently rich and interesting online as they are in person, and some of the students have difficulty concentrating. But those who are concentrating well have been able to dig into long-term assignments much more successfully in this format than they can at school. They have more time, fewer interruptions, and fewer distractions. When I assign small groups to work in separate breakout rooms, they have to work more independently than they would if they were in four different corners of a classroom, and they have risen to the challenge. I have also noticed that the teenagers seem to be doing more dinner prep and pet care than they usually do, and all of my advisees suddenly want to learn to cook. Some of them speak of the joy of getting outside, even for fifteen minutes, in the middle of the day—something that normal American high school schedules often do not allow teenagers to do.

    Normal high school life before the pandemic was hectic, involving rigid and elaborate schedules, commuting (some of my students commute 45-60 minutes each way), and many bits and pieces of time that weren’t good for much. Pandemic high school life is, in some ways, better training for adulthood: the teenagers have to manage their time and work more independently than they did before, and they have to pay more attention to household tasks such as food shopping and prep. They seem to be getting a bit more sunshine and a bit more sleep, and some of them are reading more, too. While everyone is eager to go back to school–and I am keenly aware of the drawbacks of too much isolation–I wish we could find ways to preserve some of these advantages.

    1. I love hearing a teacher’s positive experience!

      It would be so good for my kids to be able to preserve those things you mentioned, but I’m not sure how to do that.. I can see so many positives for their learning right now. They miss seeing people, but I feel in many ways they are happier, more at ease.

      My fear is we are going to jump right back in with an even bigger push to “make up for lost time”.

      1. What an interesting comment – it’s great to hear about a teacher’s real experience with this.

        As a parent of a 2nd grader, I don’t think the online part of the instruction has been at all a good thing for us, but there is one aspect of this I wish we could keep: it’s only been taking my son about 3 hours a day to get his work done (less, given the generous recess I usually give him) and in my opinion, he’s learning plenty for his age, and each day it’s pretty obvious to me that making him work more hours would result in less learning, not more. This means he has a lot more time for other things kids should do, like playing, being outside, doing family chores, etc. I wish much shorter school days, at least in early grades, were an option, going forward.

        I understand parents would be up in arms because of the childcare aspect, but really, if the school day is about childcare and thus the parents’ needs, why do we pretend it’s about education and the child’s needs? If the extra hours are just about childcare, let’s admit that and let kids spend that half of the day playing outside or building Lego or whatever, or go home if that works for their families? (Also, if it’s for childcare, the school day should really be a couple hours longer, anyway – not that I want that!)

        1. In Germany, where I live, first graders typically go to school from 8 to 11 am. The hours are extended with age, but my tenth grader still gets out at school at 1 pm most days. The school days is not padded with a lot of “fun”, though, like it is in American classrooms. And it has a detrimental effect on parents working outside the home.

          1. I’m jealous! And I hear you about the padding of the school day. To get my son’s work done in less than 3 hours, we’re being very businesslike and old-fashioned about it. Which my son doesn’t see as much of a loss, because those diffuse learning activities teachers design with the intention of having them be fun, usually aren’t actually all that fun, not enough to be worth the time they eat up, anyway.

    2. I’m both a high school teacher and a high school parent as well, and I can attest to all these things. While remote school w/ Zoom classes isn’t ideal for discussion, my students have risen to the occasion and they’re producing good work outside of class time. The kids have been alright.

      And my own teen is doing MUCH, much better, as she self-assesses. In “normal” life, she was getting far too little sleep, she was far too stressed, and wasn’t getting nearly enough outside/physical time. She’s much healthier now, and we can see it, outside and in. I don’t want her “normal” high school life again, yet we can’t do indefinitely what we did this spring. We need/want to come up with a new, life-giving normal.

    3. Another Darci

      I won’t deny you and the other people’s responses but please know that while classwork may be adequate or better than usual there are still a lot of children not thriving in this environment. The first month was fine for us (2 middle schoolers well used to online assignments). The second was harder but they soldiered through it. Now in the third month there are fractures in their social relationships with friends, fatigue and isolation, avoidance behaviors for various tasks and just plain loneliness.

      While some kids are alright I venture to guess many won’t share struggles with their teachers. We have a lot of kids who speak English as a second language at our school and they say they are losing their English language comfort already (despite being in online classes). I know the rigor is not as great as it was before either. And we are in a high performing school that was ready to do virtual school on Day 1. I just wanted to comment that while some are certainly thriving (no after school activities, fewer demands, less academic intensity-at our school at least) some aren’t and some are probably failing.

    4. Darcy, thank you! I love this perspective.
      I was thinking I was the only one who saw my child thriving, making better grades, sleeping more, spending more quality family time with us (we only get 18 summers with them!) and helping out more around the house.
      I agree that administrators need to value these lifelong lessons much more.

  6. I’m not surprised we haven’t collectively memorialized the deaths yet, for several reasons. First, memorialization is a meaning-making process; we craft a narrative to make sense of trauma. This is a retrospective process, and isn’t done in the midst of the tragic event. Comparing this to 9/11, while first responders are still dying from illnesses caused by the toxic dust, the actual attack was a concrete event with a definable end point. 9/11 is an anomaly in how quickly we memorialized the atrocity, but even the national memorial opened 10 years later and the museum 13 years later. Second, the U.S. is particularly bad at memorializing shameful events. While the government didn’t cause the virus, they are certainly responsible for the terrible response that is killing thousands of people. Memorialization–on a national level–would have to involve acknowledging their responsibility. Conversely, events like 9/11 can fit into a Manichean divide between good and evil, allowing the U.S. to easily maintain a narrative of national innocence.

  7. Whether or not America builds something better from all this remains to be seen. I think a lot of it depends on the election in November but I’m not terribly optimistic. One mass shooting after another had absolutely no effect on gun laws for decades. The current administration is talking about 100K+ Pandemic deaths as a “success” and yet we seem surprised. It’s all more of the same. I’m so disheartened. If we could make immigrating a possibility for our family, we’d do it. We don’t want to raise our kid here. Nothing ever changes.

  8. What I want to know is where are people still getting it?? We are told the grocery store isn’t that unsafe (for those not working there anyway), nor are the outdoors. (One recent article in the NYT discussed a study in China, where one out of 7300 people got covid from outdoor transmission.) But in so many places the curve is flat or climbing. We’ve been locked down for months. Where are people getting it? (Genuine question! I’m trying to figure out what activities are too risky. Group activities seem easy to rule out, as do indoor restaurants arguably. But those things haven’t been happening.)

    1. Places where people are working closely together indoors – factories, warehouses, meatpacking plants – and deemed “essential”. This has kept the virus circulating so doing things that should be safer, aren’t necessarily so. That’s at least been my take. As for what is “too risky”? Others can jump in but that seems like a very localized question depending on number of cases in your area (with the big assumption that testing and tracing is adequate). I can’t imagine large indoor gatherings would be considered safe anywhere at this point.

      1. A different Jen G

        And public transit to those jobs. In my city many essential workers don’t have the option to drive to work (either lack of parking or lack of vehicle in the first place). And that is certainly an enclosed space for an extended period of time. My guess is you also have people who are ignoring the stay at home orders, or interpreting them more loosely than others. We definitely see packs of school kids roaming at much less than six foot distances.

    2. A fair question, Sam. I think it is overwhelmingly people who have to go to work. And then, especially if they are pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic, spread it to their family members/household.

    3. One look at social media shows all the people NOT social distancing. Plus some leaders (like pastors) continuing to encourage large group activities. And the big box stores jam packed with people without masks. Finally I think in places like NYC where lots of people live in apartment complexes there is still spread with everyone home….. maybe not thru the air but on shared surfaces like elevator buttons and laundry facilities.

  9. I’m curious as to how you feel about France’s response to the virus. I really don’t know much about it. Also how do you like their government? Does it feel a lot different from America there? Are citizens more overall happy with their government?

  10. I live a life of immense privilege with a single family home, a large yard, no worries about losing a job or a reduction in income and at this moment no covid illnesses for my loved ones – and yet I live with underlying sadness that even this moment of so many dead, so many without an income, so many unable to feed themselves or their family, even with this virus being one more indicator of how where you were born dictates your access to health and educational resources – even with this 100 year opportunity to reboot to a more fair and just society – I am not hopeful that enough people care enough to “take a loss” so that all humans will have equal access to basic needs such as decent health care, equal education, and a liveable wage. And I wonder, how much would I give up, how much privilege would I let go of, so that others could reach a baseline of human decency. I would pay more taxes, a lot more taxes but, I wonder what my limits would be.

    1. My position and thoughts are similar to yours. I don’t think we will say any big, structural changes to our country as a result of this situation. We should, but I doubt we will.

  11. Months ago, I read a post on Kottke about how traveling through Asia made him feel like America was a rich country that felt like a poor one (or something to that effect). My instinct was to bristle at that, at first. But it seems to ring so true to me now. The pandemic has made all of our weaknesses and failings that much more apparent: leadership, politics, jobs, healthcare, etc.

    My own immediate family is fine, even lucky, all things considered. But I’m discouraged about the bigger picture rather than optimistic right now.

  12. I have been thinking a lot about normal and how it meant shushing my internal dialogue about: stress, billionaires vs poverty wages, violence, etc. So many ways that we pretend that our world isn’t harmful to children, adults, the environment, all the stuff we know in our bones is happening. On a more micro level, I was thinking about how I usually pretend that there isn’t a constant battle to work and to parent and that now at least it’s not considered weak or a failure to admit that lack of childcare is a huge barrier to work. It seems we all usually plan like mad and hope that it all lines up. I want something better.

    1. Love your comment. How normal is shushing ourselves… or not even seeing there are other possibilities. I see my kids thriving at home (while we as parents have double duties now with working and being there for them at the same time).

  13. I think the “red states” opening up in disorganized ways will unfortunately be a quick study in what many right wing people have mused about inflicting on the imagined “Other”: having no government to protect you.
    So the question becomes: Is this what you want?

    Meanwhile “blue” states will have a more ordered response and will be experimenting at all levels (state, cities/towns, workplaces, schools) with different ways to organize these communities. Because we do not know when this will end, we HAVE to make up new laws, rules and norms to protect our communities as we head into summer and then, back into fall when the virus might strengthen again.

    At the federal level is where it things are a mixture of no response and some response, the latter mostly thanks to the Democrats. We have a chance to really get the ball rolling at the national level toward a more just society in November. So let’s all vote that way.

    I personally believe the United States has revealed itself to be a third world oligarchy masquerading as a first world democracy (forgive the old, rather racist terminology, but it is what keeps ringing in my head). Once we see how backward we are, we can decide if we want to change direction and go forward.

    But even without the election, we have imagination at work at the state level and below. And if the press can capture those experiments in a way that helps us to understand our options, we can really forge a path forward toward a more just world, even if we don’t know exactly what that should look like yet.

  14. thank you so much for your excellent (as usual) post. The quotes you posted are so vivid and heartbreaking. I’m 72, so considered “vulnerable”. My daughter lives in Brooklyn, in an area hit hard by the pandemic. Have NO idea when I can see her again. My Mom just celebrated her 100th birthday in Phoenix. My sister and I both in California could not go see her. Aside from the danger of travel, Mom’s senior living residence is allowing NO visitors except caregivers. A virus is a virus and as such, not a person’s or nations fault. But our country, as far as I can see is doing just about everything wrong. The rich are getting to line their pockets further. The poor are suffering economically and sick/dying at a higher rate than the wealthy, Trump is a lying idiot sociopath, for the life of me I don’t know how he gets away with it. Fox News is incredibly effective at spreading lies and dis-information. Men with military style weapons are freely allowed to carry out terrifying demonstrations against elected officials and state governments trying to enact safeguards for the population. Medical workers are touted as “heroes” but put in the most dangerous positions of working without adequate PPE. This is total gaslighting. People losing their jobs, and therefore their health insurance just when they might really need it. The Navajo nation in my home state of Arizona (plus, NM, Utah and Colorado) has been hit hard by the virus, exacerbated by the appallingly poor sanitation and health services there. The list goes on and on. I don’t know the solution. I think it would help to vote Trump and his fellow gangsters out of office as well as Mitch McConnell and most of the Senate. But that wouldn’t take effect until next January. In the meantime we are stuck. I think people should continue wearing masks when out amongst other people, and continue to keep 6 ft (at least) distance.

  15. This crisis in the US seems inevitable. We have socialism for the corporations, and painful capitalism for everyone else. The wealthy will be fine.

    A perfect example – Elon Musk ordered his employees to return to his California factory today despite a county directive not to do so until safety measures were met. Musk is a billionaire and could invest the time and money in making his factory safe before reopening. He chose not to. Instead, Musk called the safety restrictions “fascist” and said they took away people’s freedoms.

    To people like Musk, his freedom to make money is more important than his employees’ right to be free from harm. He can afford to pay a hefty fine. In contrast, his employees have no choice. They showed up because they were threatened with job loss and told the company would fight their unemployment claims.

    What can be done when such a big portion of the population is at the mercy of their employer? Without a proper social safety net, everyday workers have to choose between their economic security and possibly their lives. Instead, Trump praises employers like Musk and attacks governors like Inslee (Washington state) who try to protect their residents.

    I’m at a loss…. my husband and I have job security and our kids are safe and at home for the foreseeable future. But, I worry about those who are not safe – the people who make our country run. Farmers, grocers, truck drivers, health care workers, bus drivers, factory workers…NOTHING is going to change for them until our government stops catering to huge corporations and ensuring the uber-wealthy stay wealthy. And, that’s not going to happen under Trump.

  16. This post sums up so much of what I’ve been thinking/grappling with the past few weeks. Elizabeth Warren’s account made me cry- and hit home for me. My beloved grandpa (seriously, I don’t know anyone who didn’t love him) died in late March. He didn’t die of COVID-19 and he died at home during the night, but we weren’t able to have a funeral. Or get together with family. Two of his kids were there with him (he lived with one of them, the other was visiting as things started to shut down due to COVID-19). But the rest of us have had to grieve from afar, all separated because we can’t travel. We can’t be with my grandma, who just lost her husband of 63 years. We can’t be with each other. And to think that all of this separation, this added pain, was possibly for naught because of the way the government has not used the time to prevent more deaths from happening in the future…it’s all just really frustrating and disappointing and incomprehensible.

  17. As an aside, have you read about New York Governor’s Cuomo comment that we should “reimagine” education, and go to more of an online model even after this is all over? I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. I’m a teacher in upstate New York and what I know for sure is: this is not working for a large majority of our students; it is NOT equitable or fair; our students are struggling (if not academically, then emotionally/mentally).

    1. Also struggling here with remote learning. First there was no instruction for half of March when schools first shut down. Then everyone took off time for spring break. School is scheduled until June 3 but my daughter (high school freshman) said her classes are wrapping up this week. We rarely get updates from staff and administrators and my family is losing motivation. At least my children are learning a lot about technology, but this isn’t what homeschool should look like.

  18. I’d love to see the world creating a new ‘normal’ after this. The statement at the start of this post really resonated with me: I love the idea of using this as an opportunity to ‘stitch a new garment!’

    If you’re interested in how Covid has influenced scientific research in some positive ways: I recommend the recent episode of the 99% Invisible podcast ‘The Natural Experiment.’ There’s a supporting article here too.

    It’s a fascinating discussion about research that’s possible now, that never seemed possible – or justifyable – before. One of the things they discussed involved air pollution in India, where hundreds of thousands of people die from causes associated with air pollution every year. But now, as a result of Covid, the air is cleaner than it’s been in decades. They argued that because people have now experienced clean air, it’s more likely that changes will be made to protect it.

    I hope that attitude will transfer to other parts of life too. As you suggested: there are so many ways we can make life easier. And now that we’ve experienced some of those possibilities as a society, maybe we’ll actually be able to make big changes that didn’t seem possible before.

  19. The opening quote really spoke to me as I consider a big life change prompted by the pandemic. I’ve been on work leave to care for my 2 small children and am considering not returning. It feels like a crazy decision when so many are losing jobs and I have one that I can keep, but I’ve seen a different way of life that seems to be better for our mental health, the environment, and our relationships, if not our income or the national GDP. How could each of us better care for each other and the community if we carve out the time in our lives to put energy toward those things? I wonder if others have considered similar changes.

  20. I’ve thought a lot about that quote and the idea of how to rebuild better. Thanks for all the links and the great comments here. I have to say, I’m sadly not optimistic that the U.S. will emerge from this a better place. Our leadership has made one bad decision after another in this pandemic. But just as bad, I feel like we’re barely talking about the long-term big picture – what we can learn, how we do better next time, how to emerge from this stronger than before. I don’t expect Trump to lead the way on that, but even Democrats have been very disappointing on this score. Warren has posted some ideas but there’s no real national conversation happening about this. This is the moment to think BIG and to discuss massive fundamental changes in how we address inequality, health care, education, climate change, etc. Some countries are doing this (NZ considering 4-day workweek, many European countries talking about changes to the social safety net, emloyment policies, mental health, agriculture policies, etc.). But we are not doing that in the U.S. We don’t have an FDR who is going to rally the country for fundamental changes. I have never been so disheartened. Even in the midst of all the policies I disagreed strongly with over the last two decades, I’ve always believed the fundamental goodness and resilience and ingenuity of Americans would ultimately prevail. But I’ve lost that faith now. I think we’re too divided, everything (even mask wearing!) is political, there’s no trust in government institutions, we’ve become a nation of every-man-for-himself. Whereas other countries might emerge stronger and more united from this, I fear that will not be the case for the U.S.

    I do think there may be some changes on a personal level. For those of us fortunate enough to have jobs and health and relative stabilty during this time, many have enjoyed the slower pace of life, the increased time with family, the return to hobbies and outdoor time and little pleasures. Some of those changes might persist, and that’s a good thing. Tele-work will become more common; online education will increase (not sure if that’s good or bad); and maybe families will scale back on overscheduling. I just wish some of those changes would translate into policy ideas. At the end of the day, without policy changes, this will just mean an even bigger divide between those with resources and those without.

  21. What I hope comes out of this is that everyone everywhere realizes how interconnected we all really are. Many countries like the US where there’s emphasis on the individual over society as a whole need to realize that public health trumps individual wants. That every member of a society needs to follow the same guidelines for everyone else to succeed (or just live), and that we’re only as strong as our weakest link. That means making sure that the most vulnerable has as much support as the least. I don’t think anyone realized before this how one part of life affects others and shouldn’t be taken for granted. That without school for children, working parents essentially cannot go to work. The true cost and how our food supply works. How truly global our world has become, so that we must pay attention to what’s happening in other countries because it will affect us somehow. To look beyond ourselves every day, whether we live in a rural or suburban area, or on this side of the world or the other.

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