The New COVID world

Don't know about you but this Corona/lockdown thingy pretty much destroyed all of my habits. Reading, walking, running, early wake-ups are gone. In a span of a month and a half, I'm back to square one.

It's even worse. Two days ago, I walked two flights of stairs and actually had to pause a bit to catch my breath. Two months ago, I could easily run up a hill. I wasn't ill or anything in the past few weeks, I've been just stuck at home ... 😔

There's no playbook here. Every self-help book that was written before 2020 is pretty much useless at the moment.

The second locked down we are currently in is much, much worse than the first one in March. And as far as the data for Slovenia shows (on 2020-12-06) we are in a stationary state of the pandemic:

yes the number of currently infected has been pretty much stable for over a month in Slovenia.

Unless something revolutionary happens in a short time, we'll be in the current situation for several more months (if it doesn't get worse with holidays approaching) and this sucks. But that's our new reality.

The New world

I was in Frankfurt a few times right before the first lockdown in March. One Friday airport was packed. I waited at the security check for one hour with 20 security gates operating with German efficiency. Thousands of people went through.

A week later. Frankfurt airport was empty. So empty that the security guards asked me if they could re-scan my fancy heated water bottle just to see how it looked on the inside.

In a span of weeks, most of our assumptions about life changed. Covid was one day something far away in China than a few weeks later something in our neighbour Italy. Then at our doorstep. Now we are under the second lockdown, and the end is not on the horizon yet ...

For the first time in human history, we had the technology (planes) that allowed Covid to spread like wildfire. Historically Covid is not the first disease that spread so widely although its spread was probably the fastest.

How long?

How long? That's probably a question for a fortune teller. But the world isn't getting rid of Covid-19 anytime soon. Even when the vaccines become available, we won't get Covid under control for a while.

Sure we'll get the situation under control eventually, but before we get back to the pre-2020 situation, it could take months most probably years.

Simply look at the dynamics. Even if we get the vaccine, it will take a lot of time to reach most of the world population. Hopefully, not whole humanity has to be vaccinated for us to get rid of Covid.

On a positive note, Covid is the most monitored disease up to date. There are so much available measurements, statistics, scientific articles that it's crazy. Yet we still have trouble tackling the situation.

The pandemics economic consequences will be enormous. There's no doubt about it. Nobody dares to predict how big.

Consequences

Covid recession is wiping out years of progress that was made in reducing poverty and inequality. According to some estimates, only 30 people out of 700 will make it through the pandemic without the need for government help.

Small business are getting destroyed one by one.

Economist cited that travel won't return to the pre-Covid-19 era for years( Covid-19: why travel will never be the same | The Economist ). Whatever will be left of the airline industry. Travel will be different than what we compared to what we were used to. At least for a while.

So yeah the whole thing looks really dull ...

Community response

During the first wave of Corona when we started the Help Your Neighbour project, I was amazed at how well people organised and helped each other. Many initiatives sprung up.

One of the currently most successful ones in Slovenia is Sledilnik.org . Non-profit group of volunteers that collect and analyse the data about the pandemic in Slovenia.

Since it turned out that Help Your Neighbour was not needed in our community, I decided to join the Sledilnik team in November. To land a hand with modelling (since I do this for a living), but mostly to be part of a team. To have daily contact with a group of peers.

I would be lying if I said that this isolation had no effect on me.

Isolation

Thank god that I have a good reflection strategy in place otherwise I would probably go nuts already. I wrote almost 100 A4 pages in the last month, the same amount of reflections that I wrote in 2020 till October.

When I chat with friends, we usually exchange a few pleasantries and ask each other how we are. After the occasional fine and how fucked up the whole situation is we usually steer towards more pleasant topics.

Sure if you're older, you're probably accustomed to mentioning less social connections but don't dig in and forget about other humans 😉 Force yourself to be at least a bit social. I know I have to.

Try to catch up with friends and family. Keep in mind that they are as isolated as you are. Try to recreate some of the social experience with the technology that's available to you.

After all, we'll be stuck in this weird version of the world for a while.

What can we do?

The normal citizens. The small fish. We need to stay positive. Accept the new reality and adapt. We adapted pretty well so far, but it might not be enough.

Governments are succeeding and failing in tackling the situation, but to be honest, I'm not surprised.

In a situation that Covid created centralised systems can help but unless change comes from within, from people it won't work.

The most extensive test that's still coming is how we'll behave around New Years. If I'm in isolation for the New Year in 2020/2021, it won't be for the first time. But I'm afraid that too many people won't be willing to accept the new reality.

So be smart and follow the Swiss cheese approach, respect the government restrictions and stay safe:

Instead of making far fetched unrealistic plans think what's realistic.

Plan for the future

I started 2020 with a really long travel plan. Then Corona came and wiped out three months of travel plans in an instant. That was in March. Today is the 6th of December, and I have no clue what I'll do next.

Sure I'll open the company and finish the PhD, but without all the travel I feel like my wings were clipped.

I don't like that even remotely, but there's nothing I can do about it at the moment but stay home and adapt.

So if you've been procrastinating on something because you are telling yourself, Covid will be over soon. Stop.

Accept the new reality and move on.