COVID has taken and is taking more from us than we know or currently can imagine. Illness, death, and the disruption of the lives we knew have been only the most visible losses. It is the multitude of non-medical losses that will have changed us the most. Damage to the fabrics of our community and social psyche will linger long after the masks come off.
I begin here. None of my family members, immediate or across three living generations have died or been seriously ill with the virus. We have been lucky. The agony of those who lost family and friends or whose family members are seriously health-impaired due to the virus is both devastating and unimaginable. 614,000+ deaths so far and counting. Unimaginable loss is an inadequate expression.
For most of a year we have watched the health department’s weekly reports of positive tests, community infection rates, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID with a variety of emotions. In our county there have been 30 deaths, 111 persons hospitalized, 2,577 positive tests out of 18, 669 tests administered, as of this date. We currently have 30 active cases and our community has a moderate-high infection rating. Our county fairly represents our state, but both are well below the death, illness, and loss in other parts of the nation. These are matters of data and reported facts and, for a community with nominal effects, COVID has seemed more abstract than real.
The pandemic is not over. It is necessary to say that new variants, unanticipated surges of infection, and less than careful behaviors could again upend our quiet county data and the lives of our communities. As we continue to deal with medical disease, we need to consider all the other casualties of COVID. The damage to our society requires our attention and consideration. We are not the society we were.
To enumerate our losses, I am concerned with these.
- Civility toward fellow citizens
- Trust in leadership
- Greater economic gapping
- Polarization of discourse
- Economic resilience
- Family coherence
- View of the future
- Child/adult connections
Each of the above topics is dramatically damaged by COVID. Each topic is a small treatise of its own, but I will write only of one and allow a reader to consider how the pandemic caused sickness and behavioral disease in the others.
Civility is an older term that is never out of date. Wrap up courtesy, politeness, good manners, graciousness, geniality, and consideration of others rather than self and you have the meaning of civility. Civility is often expected, but it is a choice of how we act toward each other. It is very easy to be civil toward other people when we are are agreement. Civility is tested when we are in disagreement – how do we act and behave toward people we disagree with? COVID broke our civility and things were said and done that stretched and then broke the harmony of local civility. Can we get it back?
What happened? First, COVID changed our social harmony. Whether admitted or not, the presence and threat of disease and death touched everyone. Immediately, we were divided by our disagreement that we were at risk of sickness and death or we were not risk. Some friends said COVID was just a new and annual influenza and some friends said COVID was a new plague. No one I knew stood neutral on this question. Immediately our social conversations and behaviors were skewed by this single issue. Keep this conceptualization in mind – annual flu without much consequence versus plague that causes death – because civility cleaved on this.
Second, the protocols arbitrarily adopted for community health added gasoline to the fires of initial disagreement. Shut downs and closings were so dramatic and devastating to our “usual” that disagreement quickly elevated to anger. Friends believing that COVID is annual flu were angry that schools and stores were closed. Working parents lost jobs or needed to stay home taking care of children. Employers lost employees. Businesses instantly lost business and some closed forever. Friends believing that COVID is the plague were angry that anyone would not want schools and stores closed, because social isolation was the only way to contain a plague.
Third, things said and done can not be taken back. COVID is unrelenting in this. Lives have been lost and health has been ruined and there is not getting those back. The lack of do overs also holds for what was said and how we treated each other. Friends who usually spoke with smiles called each other crazy or stopped talking to each other. Friends who walked toward each other turned their backs and walked away.
Social media is so easy yet so indelible. Friends found it easy to make caustic and mean comments toward others on FaceBook or twitter or in e-mails. Once said or written, they could not be retrieved or changed. Social media created new channels for anger that further eroded civility. We are known by what we say and do – this is a fact of life with or without a pandemic. Now, it is more true than ever.
Lastly, life goes on. Regardless of where we live, urban, suburban or rural, we circulate in relatively small groups of friends and associates. These are the people we rely upon and who rely upon us directly or indirectly. I am happy to say that no one in my community circle died or suffered serious health impairment from COVID. That said, COVID split my community circle and anger flared and things were said and done based upon those angers. Civility in my circles diminished significantly.
One our human traits is the gift of forgetting and forgiving. These two traits are choices, though. Civility in our community may return but it will be by our choice. Personally, I tend to forgive quickly but seldom forget. COVID marked the generations of its survivors and only time will tell how we put our social and community lives back together.
In closing, do your own analysis of how the pandemic has affected your
- trust of government or any community leader,
- economic sustainability,
- connections across generations, and
- positive attitude about the future.
What has been lost? What has been gained? What will they be in the years to come.
COVID is affecting more than we know.