Humans are social beings. We are hard-wired to share, touch, nurture, communicate, emote. Without human contact we fall ill with mental and physical illnesses. Hugs strengthen the immune system. Covid-19 has forced a physical distancing, and yet we are not alone. Can you recall any other phenomenon that has united the globe in a grand awakening of our higher consciousness? Darwin’s principles of competition, survival and reproduction are alive and well.
For many of us, Wednesday, March 11, 2020 represents the day Covid-19 went from a global emergency to a pandemic. Planes were cancelled as Prime Minister Trudeau ordered Canadians to return home, ensuring some would be stranded as international borders were closing by the hour. Weeks earlier a major Texas film festival, SXSW 2020, cancelled its annual event after worried headliners began to pull out—the beginning of extensive closures for every type of live performance. It was whispered that the Olympics might be rescheduled. The Olympics! That week in March, we were all asked to stop, stand still and social distance because of a threat so intangible it verged on the surreal. The mythic quality became harsh reality when a parade of unidentified coffins wound through the streets of Bergamo, Italy, a frightening sign of what was to come. In January, China had built a dedicated hospital in seven days to isolate the afflicted, deeply concerned by the alarming levels of severity and spread.
That should have been the alarm bell that woke the world. It wasn’t. In mid-March, we Canadians were happy to quarantine if we had been travelling abroad, lulled into a false sense of fantasy because the Director-General of the WHO told us, “Now that the virus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real. But it will be the first pandemic in history that can be controlled. The bottom line is that we’re not at the mercy of the virus.” Those comforting mislaid words contributed to a sluggish approach by many a world leader, a reluctance to accept that containing Covid-19 would entail drastic measures.
On that fateful March 11, when a stampede of travelers rushed the airports, I was in London having lunch with my British stem cell donor, William, and his husband Michael. Like most joyous reunions, there was hugging and kissing, and plenty of clinking of glasses—DNA was shared by all. The following day William was rushed to hospital by ambulance with breathing issues. He had also lost his sense of taste and smell, symptoms as yet unidentified with coronavirus. He was not tested. There were no tests. Boris Johnson had the mistaken idea that transmission was containable in the UK, underestimating the threat even though Italy and Spain were exhibiting a rising national crisis of deathly contagion. William called me in a panic. Had I too fallen ill? I drove to a Montreal test site near Place-des-Arts and was ushered into a white tent by a police officer. Six days later I received an email, “Negatif.” I had already reconciled that when God sent William Ashby-Hall to save my life, he would not send the same man to kill me.
As March turned into April and the worldwide cases continued to surge there was an oxygen-sucking aspect to our creativity. The perilous unknown momentarily overtook the need to write our own stories. Our attention was diverted to the untenable situation of people dying alone or saying goodbye through mobile devices. The loneliness of death was a relative newcomer in our collective consciousness. Nothing seemed relevant when senior care homes were decimated, tourist meccas like New York City and Venice had become ghost towns, freezer trucks were quietly parked outside hospitals to house the body bags too numerous to be processed by funeral homes. The ghastly implications side swept our voices. We stayed home and baked bread, home-schooled our children, and happily paid for Crave and Netflix. We shared memes that made us laugh. Zoom became a new verb. Thank God we eventually stopped hoarding toilet paper.
We reconciled that Mother Nature had called us to become accountable for our disregard of the oceans, the skies, our excessive use of fossil fuels. The Himalayas were suddenly visible from great distances. There was a silver lining, we all said. Our planet might be in recovery for the next generation, after all.
We were asked to distinguish between essential, necessary and expendable. Alcohol was considered essential, but crossing the border to be at the birth of a first child was not. Thankfully nurses, cashiers, orderlies, shelf re-stockers, and medical teams were and are essential. The material world has taken a back seat to the substantial, illuminating what is and what isn’t expendable: our human possessions. Will it be sustainable?
In the midst of surging cases, George Floyd’s homicide from traumatic asphyxia gripped America, and then the entire world. His brutal death unleashed an essential outcry about human rights that will reverberate for decades. We can thank the pandemic for this forward propulsion. That echo may very well dictate the American presidency, regardless of a final tally of votes.
Public events, live theater, schools, award ceremonies, book fairs, workshops, lectures and residency-scholarships were cancelled. Movie theatres, bars and restaurants were shuttered. Unemployment numbers began to enter the stratosphere. Yet history has shown that we have the capacity for great resilience. Everyone suffers, it’s how we react to our suffering that dictates the outcome. Inch by inch we got back to the business of being writers, athletes, and architects, caretakers of our stories, caretakers of our purpose driven lives.
As we approach the six months mark, each country grapples with measures to contain the spread. Canada has imposed staggering fines for individuals who break quarantine. People caught maskless in Indonesia are forced to lie in a coffin to atone for their selfishness. In India, baton-wielding police officers have beaten the flouters of curfew and physical-distancing. Our desperate need to socially integrate has made us law-breakers. Meanwhile, vaccine trials have been expedited while vetting for safety and side effects, no easy task when speed trumps efficacy.
A vaccine carries the coronavirus genes in order to deliver them to human cells. The intention is to incite a protective immune response that would be “awakened” if the actual coronavirus were to invade and infect a human being. Our immune system would then produce antibodies against the virus. North Americans are six months into pandemic mode. In that tiny stretch of time 37 vaccines are in clinical trial, and a further 91 are in preclinical active research with animal testing. On the clock, the greatest scientific minds have been tasked to save us from a further thinning of the ranks. Once the air is out of a balloon, is such a task even feasible? How will small towns in rural South Africa, or war-torn Syria be able to offer their citizens this magical elixir? Can a dictator be counted on to save his countrymen? Perhaps the solution cannot be found in science.
In the absence of a resolution from a petri dish, we fall back on hope, compassion, and kindness, supplies that are virus-resistant, even infinite. We might never again have the luxury of a hand clasp, or feel the intimacy of a warm embrace, but the camaraderie of our collective need to remember and record humanity will ensure we touch many others.