What is there to talk about these days but the Coronavirus and its effect on the world?
We are living in a world where an infinitesimal particle from a sneeze carrying an even smaller virus can cause damage to global health, economy and general confidence in people’s minds. “Global” effect we have so glibly talked about when it comes to climate change, industrial or financial conglomerates owning factories, insurance companies or small but, to us, important local employers which may be closed or moved elsewhere, has now achieved quite a new threatening meaning.
This virus has all but forced the world economy to its knees and it’s nothing to do with computers where we’ve probably expected this kind of effect happening sometime. For months now we’ve been following the spread of Covid-19 from country to country at a speed and virulence we haven’t experienced with the earlier pandemics. We do realise that the disease doesn’t kill everybody infected and some may not even know they’ve had it but when the figures from populous countries run into hundreds of thousands of cases, it’s difficult to understand how it’s possible.
The governments have been fighting a losing battle in many countries and we won’t know the full extent of the final outcome for a long time because many poor countries have no resources to count their cases, let alone treat them.
I think that, here in Finland, the society was very quick in restructuring the normal activities, transferring the work and learning online wherever possible. We’ve been complaining about the young people spending so much time on their phones and tablets but now it has come in very useful. The teachers have done an admirable job in jumping from classroom teaching to contacting their students at home and keeping them within the curriculum and interested in the daily lessons.
It’s not to everybody’s taste and if a student has lacked motivation in the classroom, it must be much more difficult to achieve it at home. Nowadays teaching is more challenging than it was in my day – or so I think! I met a classmate decades after we left school and he remembered me as a very diligent student, always listening to the teacher, which was very good to hear because I’ve always assumed I was a typical, lazy boy without any particular talents.
I wish well to all the teachers and their scholars in these strange times; I hope the children learn more from this than their school lessons and find that they are able to apply themselves to tasks in unusual circumstances and gain confidence so that they can cope with life’s challenges in the future.
This is a particularly demanding time for the health care workers because they are there at the sharp end of the system and have to rise to the occasion day after day, always being professional, compassionate and calm, even when they’re worried about their family members and friends.
We ask a lot of them at the normal times but now their workload is heavier, especially from the mental point of view because relaxing away from work is harder despite all the sympathy and concern shown by the family and friends – from the safe distance. Sometime this emergency will come to an end and that will be yet another new situation to all of us. Having kept the safety distance to everybody and conducted our social activities online or on the phone, how easily will we get back to normal?
Will this period of staying two metres apart create a vacuum that will make us awkward and uncertain in social situations? Will we need psychological preparation – online or on the TV – as to the code of conduct for our first meetings with the best friends or colleagues? (I wish I hadn’t thought of that!)
We will defeat this virus eventually. The experts say the world will – or at least may – be quite different post-Corona. I wonder if that will be so in the long term. Old habits die hard and after a year or so, our human resilience and wish for a comfortable living may reassert themselves and we’ll look forward to the holiday flights and visiting exotic places like we used to.
Somebody has said that the past is another country; the same can be said about the future. Let’s make it a healthy place!
PAUL DOCKREE
Kolumnin kirjoittaja muutti Lontoosta Ylöjärvelle vuonna 2012.
Author is British, moved from London to Ylöjärvi 2012.
