We failed.
As countries around the world roll out mass vaccination programmes, the veil of uncertainty and frustration that has shrouded the planet bringing it to a standstill is slowly lifting. With a tentative but optimistic hunger, we are beginning to restart — people are planning holidays, weddings and social reunions. In a sense, we can dare to dream again.
But the past year has brought to light more than our reflexive desire for freedom, and as restrictions roadmaps continue to be laid out, an innate human failing remains.
When COVID-19 was first detected beyond the borders of China, many Western countries observed with bemusement — it was an abstract illness we knew little about, that seemed to be relatively contained, in a country thousands of miles away. The entitlement principle warped into a deluded sense of immunity: It won’t get here. It won’t affect us.
Now, the entire planet has been engulfed, millions of lives lost and our entire way of life halted for over a year. Even as cases across the UK began to surface and rise from the hundreds to thousands within days, many of us continued with little concern. Speculation about a lockdown meant that almost overnight, panic had set in.
Shelves were wiped clean of toilet paper despite there being zero possibility we would begin tearing our way through entire rolls at a rate biologically impossible for human beings. Hand sanitizer prices sky rocketed as bottles were bought in bulk. Flour, usually purchased once every four years and left to spill out into an abandoned cupboard, was suddenly a luxury find. People purchased deep freezers to squeeze in bags of frozen meat, and when that ran out, vegan alternatives despite not actually being vegan. But times are hard, sacrifices have to be made despite this being a vital source of additional protein for those who do not eat meat, because really, I could starve.
The irony of all of this is that we were exposed for the very flaws that would render it impossible to ease our way out of COVID restrictions sooner than we have. We were driven by want, not by need — and over a year later, I’m not sure we’ve learned anything about it at all.
Hoarding gave way to inevitable lockdown gave way to anger. Anger at the government. Anger at the WHO. Anger at Bill Gates. Anger at being denied the human right to breathe. Arguably, much of the frustration felt in the UK stemmed from conflicting advice, speculative promises and inconsistent responses. It took multiple attempts at hasty re-openings to realise a consistent nationwide lockdown was a crucial, if not the only, preventative measure. Perhaps, governmentally, we never grasped the scale of this. Perhaps we were remained in denial as the number of deaths continued to rise exponentially. Perhaps we thought summer would fix the problem.
Still, we were asked to be patient. We were asked to give 30, 40, 50% of what we were used to in order to save the lives of the elderly, the vulnerable, the healthcare workers. If we all give a little now, we can have it all back sooner. We were asked to please, understand that this was a dynamic, uncertain situation, that required universal responsibility, collective empathy, global selflessness. We were asked to think of others.
But the narrative remained the same — I want to go on holiday. I want to sit in a pub. I want to go and see someone I have never before considered going to visit just out of principle. I want to have a party. I do not want to wait. I don’t believe in COVID, not for any scientifically proven reason; it’s simply an inconvenience to my way of life and therefore I do not want to believe it. I don’t believe in masks either, they are an infringement on my air. I have the right to not stay at home because I won’t get sick.
Perhaps it was (is?) a by-product of living in a world of instant gratification. It’s something we have now come to demand, calling it freedom, a right, while overlooking the fact that wanting ‘now’ does not mean you are in any way entitled to it. The breakdown of the anthropological ‘community’ in modern day society has also meant we are less inclined to think of the collective, instead thinking of how best to ensure our own short-term personal, individual comfort and security. I can no longer do the things I’ve never even considered doing in my life and I refuse to accept that.
So people continued to break the rules. To deny. To feel so confident in their own invincibility that the impact on the rest of us was irrelevant. Politicians eroded the validity of their lockdown policies and vaccination programmes by using them as a means for power play, leverage, campaigns. Government funding abandoned entire industries it deemed pointless. Healthcare systems were inadequately supported, while billionaires continued to grow their wealth.
Even as we work towards a return to some semblance of normality — though I argue things will never be the same again — the complaints still continue. Those who want everything to happen sooner, simultaneously. Those who refuse to get vaccinated because they won’t die from it, even if they do get it. I recently had a conversation with a fully vaccinated individual who bemoaned the fact they would potentially have to pay for departure and arrival COVID tests in order to go on holiday. “Why should I have to take them at all, let alone pay for them?” I was left speechless.
The means of returning to the normality we all crave aren’t even good enough for some, because “this isn’t the world I knew, and I don’t want to have to give anything in order to retrieve it. Just give it back to me.”
And so it goes. We have missed the biggest lesson of all. That we are not and never have been simply responsible for seeking the personal fulfillment of our own desires. Everything we say and do impacts those around us. We are responsible for more than ourselves. We have forgotten. We have failed.
This is not to say everyone has been this way. For those who have sacrificed, who have worked to provide services throughout this pandemic, who have started community support groups, hosted Zoom weekly calls and classes, adapted to the way things had to be, thank you.
But I struggle to understand those who did not. Because it seems that even when lives are on the line, including your own, it still doesn’t matter. I struggle to understand how a life and death situation is still not enough to make us think a little less of ourselves and more about each other. I struggle to understand how, now we can sit outdoors with one another again, you expect me to be proud of you as you regale all the ways you refused to stay at home, how you travelled, how you have 50 rolls of toilet paper and no idea what to do with it, how you didn’t see the need to think of others, thereby preventing the rest of us who did from resuming our lives.
The ones who have now lost their jobs. Their homes. Those who have been indefinitely separated from their partners, their families. The ones who have diligently shielded in crippling loneliness. The ones who understood that the pandemic wasn’t about cancelled cruises and beer gardens, but about all of us, humanity, working to protect and care for each other.
