Coronaware: A Story of Malaise

In the beginning we had Fear.  Fear and Novelty.  And that amounted to a bracing dose of quasi-Solidarity.

The fear was first conceived as mild disinterest in a foreign malady that would never find its way Here.  It gestated in the womb of skepticism (“This will not affect us.  We are different.”) and false reassurance (“We learned from SARS.  We are prepared.”).  And then, suddenly, driving home from a normal day of work, we heard government announcements of a province-wide shut-down.  States of emergency.  Clean out your desk.  Tomorrow will be your last day.

That was when the Fear was birthed, attended by financial panic and the stomach-gutting realization that People Would Die.  Real people.  Our people.  Right here.  Everywhere.  Store shelves emptied as the masses stockpiled toiletries in preparation for Armageddon.  Doors closed.  Everything stopped.  It was Unreality, unfolding in unreal time.  Things changed hour by hour.  We hovered, breathless, over our devices, awaiting the latest statistics.  Following the spread from one network to another, and eventually to Here.  These are “unprecedented times,” said our bewildered advisers.  We slept last night, and woke this morning in a blind Unknown.

But “unprecedented” has a flip side: Novelty.  Curiosity.  For some, a guilty stirring of excitement.  Something new is happening.  Things are changing.  We are part of it.  And we are not helpless.  We have Experts, who tell us what to do.  There are graphs and predictions.  There is science and mathematics.  There is a call to arms: “Flatten the curve.”   It is our new mantra.

A society with a mantra takes on an element of Unity.  “We are all in this together.”  Children write it in chalk on the sidewalks and driveways.  Cheerful drawings appear in suburban windows as communities become makeshift art galleries.  Signs pop up on civilian lawns and in store windows, thanking our front-line workers: our selfless troops in a bloodless war.  Our common enemy is microscopic, invisible, insidious.  Medicine falters.  Casualties mount.  Corpses are stored in arenas, trucks, homes.  Fear escalates.  And here, on the home front, we combat it with shots of Inspiration.

Songs are sung.  Fees are waived.  Operas are livestreamed.  Benevolence is normalized.  We can do this.  We are resourceful.  We are creative.  We are heroic.  “Stay Home” is our battle cry.  We can do this.  We can even make it fun.

Slowly, we shift into our stoical “New Normal.”  States of emergency are extended, and we are not surprised.  Contingency plans are made.  Pseudo-school starts up.  Emergency funds roll out. We work from home.  It’s inconvenient.  But it’s doable, for most.  Isolation becomes trendy.  Complaining about isolation becomes our new comedy.  Quarantine becomes funny.  It is how we cope.

For a while.  For a long while.  For a long, long while.  Until, gradually, the Novelty that fueled us runs low, and dries up altogether.  It is replaced by Tedium, and a new kind of Restlessness.  Not the initial itch to socialize, which we quickly remedied with family Zoom calls and driveway visits, but a dawning awareness that this has gone on too long.  We used to have a world of handshakes, hugs, and high-fives.  Soccer games and concerts, spectators and fans.  Playgrounds.  Classes.  Events.  Enough is enough.  Two months is enough.  We are tired of bleaching our groceries.  The Martyr phase is over.

“Reopening” becomes the new catch-phrase.  Opinions are divided.  Don’t do it, some say.  It’s too soon.  It’s too dangerous.  It will just prolong the siege.  Take heed.

It’s time, say others.  Covid is a part of us.  It will never really leave.  We might as well invite it in.  Create some policies to keep it in its place.  Assimilate, reasonably, in increments.

This is where we stand right now.  The Solidarity conceived by Fear and Novelty is disintegrating.  It is sliding into a new suspicion: a questioning of our alleged vulnerability.  We begin to toy with the idea of Immunity.  Not of a biological sort, of course.  None of us likes the idea of being herded into sickness-induced health (we await the vaccine to do that work, in the much-too-distant future).  But we start to dabble in a kind of psychological immunity.  The crisis has passed.  The numbers are stabilizing.  Others have suffered, but we are untouched.  This draconian confinement might just be an embarrassing excess of prudence.  Maybe we should just relax.

We continue to disapprove of others’ recklessness.  But we stop wearing gloves to the grocery store, assuming there will be cleansers at the door.  We wear our masks obediently, and frown on those who don’t; but we stop holding our breath.  We worry a little less.  We lower our shields and lift our visors, just enough to let the Outside in.  There is an end to this, and it has now begun.

And so, in the beginning, we had Solidarity, borne of Fear and Novelty.  Now we doubt the Fear, shed the Novelty, and embark on a new dispensation of cautious Hopefulness.  But we have forgotten that we still live in the domain of the Unknown.  And we seem not to care.  There are premonitions of second and third waves.  There is talk of a resurgence, and we shrug.  In the end, we have Optimism and Complacency, amounting to a weary Fatalism.  It took a mere two months, and we were vanquished.

Our New Novelty will be that of a plexiglass future, neatly divided into social cubicles that give us the illusion, if not the assurance, that all will be well.  Our New Economy will be driven by our desperation to resuscitate our former way of life.  We will inaugurate the Era of Recovery; but we will do so with an undercurrent of angst that hounds us from behind.  The malady has made its mark on us.  We are Branded. 

Now, on the Edge, we look within, without.  We, the Vanquished, set about vanquishing ourselves: our residual doubts, our beleaguered pride, our discomfort with the New Uncertainty.  And here we hang, suspended.