Archive

Building and tearing down walls

July 24, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

When all around us is inexplicable, we tend to make up our own answers and this is fertile ground for conspiracy theories to grow. We need to be wary of them. As news travels instantly across the whole world, such theories travel at the same rate, never to be tethered first for their truth levels to be tested. So, while the subject of those theories and random crazy news items, true or false: Coronavirus is spreading, so is useless and useful information about it. Mudding the waters.

Someone was telling me the theories she had heard of how the pandemic started: of billionaires manufacturing a disease that could reduce the world’s growing population of really old people. That sort of thing. A lady in her eighties, she cling to the theory with giddy fear.

Coronaviruses are not new but, as its name makes clear, this Novel (new) Coronavirus has not been seen before. Who could help but wonder at the universal reaction to it – to shut things down, on the one hand, and the exhausted rejection and rebellion against it, on the other? Whenever we talk about re-opening, we are keen to see it happen, one less business going under, but we shiver when we watch American numbers escalate as, they try to free their economy of the shackles, the only way Americans know how to behave: money matters first.

Outside of the world wide approach to containing the virus by shut-ins and lock downs, Sweden is the one country that did not enforce a lock down on its economy and, like the United States, has suffered for it, inasmuch as the numbers of cases and the death toll in Sweden are much higher than those of neighbouring nordic countries, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

Denmark has opened its schools, balancing the mental health of students with the need for regulatory conditions of smaller numbers in each class, bubble collections of five students to play together at recess, which do not change, and sinks for hand washing before they return to class. Parents worry but rejoice in how beneficial returning to school has been for their children.

The flow of government money and the inconsistency of regulations tell us all we need to know about how little authorities truly understand this pandemic and how they fear it. Not simply for their individual political careers, but, indeed, for their genuine concern to do the right thing by the people who voted them in, politicians in most countries really are endeavouring to get it right.

Not easy, when science isn’t always sure either – no need for masks in March; mandatory masks in May; yet, the general background of these viruses is clear enough to issue the big four: keep your distance; cover your cough or sneeze; really wash your hands; don’t touch your face. Wear your mask…

If, as I believe, particularly, here in Canada, our elected leaders are doing their best, with the ever changing information and numbers, now falling, now rising again, it behoves us too, to do our best, even with the frustration and the claustrophobia hanging over us. 

What seems to me to be of prime importance is that we not allow a “second wave” to follow and continuing with the policies we have is the best way to do that.

Many ladies were very sorry to see the beautiful clothing shop, Creek Side, close this month. When asked, the owner told us, “What if there was a second wave and I had to shut my business down again, with a full stock of winter fashion? I couldn’t take the chance.”

She is one of many, a shop keeper, a business person, to whom the personal touch was one mainstay of how that business ran. 

She said. “I’m not interested in trying to run this business on line.”

On line shopping certainly has its pitfalls: for clothing, surely, trying things on is the first dilemma: a size eight is not always the same thing…The face to face, the conversation, the whole tactile experience cannot be replaced by shopping on line. 

I think, once we beat this, once we get our world back – whatever that means – there will be a sudden plummet in on line shopping and people will return to brick and mortar shops, what’s left of them. I hope so. I hope other brave souls try again.

It is almost entirely up to us to do everything we can to stop COVID-19 by reading less of the rumours on the internet and seek to inform ourselves with the best science we can find. We have to be careful in our day to day lives, so that schools can open and our children can return to their classrooms, as it is clearly demonstrated that on line learning is definitely not as effective. 

Children need each other and so do we.

Let’s be sure to stop that Second Wave. So we can go back to the Theatre.

Readers Comments (0)