Popped into Asda today to find people giving every one a wide berth but sharing stories as they inspected the hand sanitiser shelves, devoid of any container other than some shampoo someone had discarded.
We have also seen incidents of people fighting over the last few rolls of toilet paper – necessitating arrest! This was in Australia. A further article discusses this here.
It’s interesting how the trauma of the “unknown” causes such reactions in us. Why do we fight over such items as toilet paper?
Is it our only rational response as we are uncapable of finding any other response in which we can control?
Possibly there are 2, even 3, generations that have never experienced such a time which has affected society in such a way. But equally this is just the incentive to show that the only way to tackle this pandemic is to work together, regardless of any prior boundaries. Countries are closing borders – the Czech and Slovak mains have closed their respective borders today for example, bar for workers within 30 miles of that border – but within communities surely this is a time when no borders exist, nothing should separate us: not racial, ethnic, religious…nothing.
For every person we might meet we need to ensure that they are supported, have something to eat, can still chat and are not isolated. Some Italians are even taking to sing from their open windows, sharing joy – dependent upon their choice of song and/or tone. Perhaps even our increasing dependence upon social media, especially during self-isolation, might cause a response – post the pandemic – that we might desire such one-to-one contact afterwards. In the meantime we can call on the phone, use messaging via WhatsApp etc, video link via Skype or Zoom – if that’s also an unknown we may have time to investigate the new methods of contact now. But ultimately, there’s one-to-one verbal contact which will return, and what joy that will be!
That’s something to look forward to.