So, here in my dutch golden cage, the pandemic is slowly going away.
It is true that images of death and destruction frequently feel irreal. Like when, after reading the newspaper carrying the last reports of our always amazing capacity to hurt ourselves, we close the pages, stand up and go shopping to a well stocked supermarket, having a reasonably far-away-from-red-numbers bank account. Today saturday I went shopping to the city market, around midday, and for all my money I could not distinguish one difference with any other saturday back in 2018. Terraces full, people cueing to get to the market stalls, smiles and the well known, very inelegant and also very relaxed dutch way of walking. So far away from the corpses burning in the street of India. And far away, as well, from the other inhabitants of this golden cage of us, who has died, or lost their capacity to go to enjoy the city on a saturday midday.
Of course, all this normality is possible not only because the vaccines are finally eroding the numbers of infected people, but also because the government supported plenty sectors of the economy. The restaurants and bars that were today opened at full capacity, were bailed out with state loans, in order to pay salaries and costs during the almost a year that they expend closed. If you get to think about it, this is a fairly communitarian, or perhaps capitalistic, way of dealing with a pandemic. The government helped the industry to survive, in the hope that if the industry survives, the country will recover.
Yet, in our years of (extreme?) individualism I wonder what are we doing, or what the government will do about the individuals that are directly affected by COVID19. Imagine that you lost your parents at highschool time. Or your breadwining partner. Or a daughter. Imagine that one, or more! of your family members is suffering from long COVID. What are we going to do about it? Are we really going to tell you “well, bad luck he? man up and carry on!”?
I don’t think we should.
We might as well look beyond the extreme cases of dead, or long term incapacity. By now it is well documented that the poor has shouldered the brunt of COVID19, even The Economist reports on that this week. We know that the nature of work is changing. We know that low skilled labor is less in demand that ever. So we need to organize our solidarity to make possible a new start for so many people that have been directly hit by COVID19. It does not even have to be handouts, even if I believe that many affected will need financial support for time not yet foreseen. But we also need to rethink our education institutions. Think in the impact of a year outside the classes for young people with learning issues. Think in the re-schooling that will be needed for many.
Nowadays we are happy to see some light at the end of some tunnel. But we need to see that this light that we see, is still far away for many. It is time to stretch a hand, and walk together. And not only by getting your vaccines, or wearying your mask. It is time to put our wallets were it matters.