Societal Impact – Quarantine/Virus Reflections #2 (Written April 6, 2020)

Maybe this pandemic can teach us something valuable in our society and we can come out of this with more positivity, a renewed sense of cooperation and kindness, and more awareness for our environment, our world, ourselves and things that truly matter. The future is really in our hands and how we respond will determine who we want to be and how we want to change.

April 6, 2020

So it’s 5 days away from Easter and many small and ‘unessential’ businesses and just about all large events have been canceled and shut down. We can still go outside here in Colorado but now the CDC has recommended wearing masks as a precaution especially for older and more vulnerable people. I’m starting the third week of “remote learning” as they call it and all of our classes now will be online for the rest of the year. In-person learning is cancelled for this year. It’s really disappointing, annoying and somewhat demoralizing that I won’t be able to hook up with my friends. But that’s okay and I’m trying to adjust, as everyone else is. Some people still break the violations and give up the whole 6 feet away or more social distancing order. But so far, I haven’t talked physically or seen the faces of many people in a while. But other than the social aspect of the quarantine, I haven’t been having much to complain about. I’m slowly making progress on my personal life and if I can set myself to be disciplined and create good, realistic goals in a better structured format, I could really learn a lot and grow in a lot of things over the next couple months.

I think when considering the societal impact of the virus, there are a couple of interpretations and viewpoints.

#1: The first things to note is that inequality and the economic prosperity of a nation and of people in general largely determines how much of a chance of being infected or dying that they have. It’s kind of sad that in many major catastrophes, events and things like this (although I don’t consider this nearly as bad as some other things in history/things that will happen), the poor often suffers much worse than the rich. In places that have poverty, lack of clean water, food and other basic needs for so many people, it is nearly impossible to quarantine people and you just can’t shut things down and have people survive. Even though the death rate of coronavirus is pretty low, people who aren’t getting enough food, medical care or don’t have very good health to begin with will have a high risk from the virus and can die easier. This could wipe out thousands of people living in slums in densely populated regions around the world and there’s not much they can do about it (or maybe there is but it’s not very easy). In the U.S., as of today, we’ve only had 367,000 cases and 11,000 people die. And literally everyone is panicking here. The news and everyone are full of coronavirus and it’s like it’s the worst thing Americans have ever experienced. But just think of if we had 3 times as many people living without quarantine in an area one-third the size (referring to India with the largest population) !!! I just feel so bad for places around the world that have a large amount of people and high population density because it will be difficult to manage the pandemic. I also have sympathy for what generally poorer people around the world will be facing in the next couple of months because they don’t have the luxury of a nice home with basic medical care and food and water to survive. If we were truly striving toward equality, being ethical and trying to have progress in our world, we would strive for utilitarianism and wouldn’t ignore and neglect those who will sacrifice and endure the worst in scenarios like this.

#2: That leads to my next point and a more positive outlook to this pandemic which is if we in fact can strive towards things like these and work as a global community to solve this world economic crisis, we could have so much progress and it could have a major influence/impact on our ability to interact positively with other humans. Hopefully, people will cooperate, and we will get this over with and think “hmm, maybe it’s possible we could always be like this and have a world that always acts and works together.” Also, I hope this pandemic will allow us (especially us wealthier, privileged and more spoiled individuals) to realize all the unnecessary, negative or wasteful things in our regular lives that we have been able to give up in this pandemic. I hope we will take up all the positive, important things that we haven’t gotten to and have the time now to truly make change and progress on deciding what’s important, what we need and what we don’t for the future. The massive amount of free time people will now have will hopefully be used well and I think the increase in both time spent on technology and in nature will have different consequences and change how people do things. 

#3: It’s kind of interesting to see how much pollution levels have declined in the short term and how many fewer people are out ruining the world since the pandemic. As I’m in the environmental club and as earth week is soon approaching, activists and environmental contributors around the world will be leveraging this opportunity to raise awareness and spread the message and maybe people will wake up and do something about climate change. Of course, this will only last for the short term and the coronavirus will not buy us much time to solve our climate problems. And on the other side of things, large, ‘essential’ businesses, corporations and industries in opposition will also leverage this as an opportunity. But I am positive that people around the world will be able to appeal to issues that are truly important and be motivated to spring into action as soon as things open up again.

I took this photo last year at a nice little side lake in the Rocky Mountains. If you think it’s cool and want to see more photos, check out my photography website and instagram below!