Only if you bravely face everything will there be a turning point*
It feels like the world is teetering on the brink of explosion. Protests have been erupting across the United States against the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. In Hong Kong, anti-Beijing protestors are being increasingly quelled by the police as the Chinese government plans to impose security laws. Donald Trump has pulled the U.S out of the World Health Organization. Need I go on? This morning as I scanned the papers and listened to my daily dose of podcasts, I confess I had one gloomy, terrible, persistent thought: Maybe the human race should just be extinguished by the Coronavirus. Maybe humanity does not deserve to exist when we cannot evolve as a society. When, in addition to being unable, possibly unwilling to fight racial and social inequality we are also trashing our own planet.
Suddenly, the issues I spend my days fretting about - whether we will be able to travel outside the region, whether the Covid-19 data being reported in the newspaper is accurate – seem null and void. The real question is, where are we even going? Where is the leadership? What will the world look like when this is all over?
Pardon my existential crisis, but the world news is nothing if not anxiety provoking. But as my topic is the pandemic, let me return to the subject of Coronavirus, which feels oddly easy to digest in comparison to the larger issue of our crumbling humanity. So, here goes:
Yesterday the Italian government gave the green light for interregional travel as of June 3rd. Yes, even the citizens of Lombardy will be allowed to travel. Remember that LDR you broke off a couple of months ago? If you are quite desperate after these months of solitude, you may want to reinstate it, though technically you still can’t kiss or hug anyone outside your immediate family – the government has made this abundantly clear. The other day I had a drink with a friend who asked me for advice about a first date. She lives with her elderly parents, so she was wondering what do should things go well. Could she, should she make-out with this guy? What does one advise a person in this situation? Certainly, the virus is a great excuse to get out of any unwanted intimacy, that’s for sure.
There is increasing pressure to investigate why the region of Lombardy was disproportionately affected by the virus. According to the Guardian Coronavirus has killed almost 16,000 people in Lombardy and infected more than 87,000 – the highest number per capita in Italy. The question is, did the regional government, and in particular the governor Attilio Fontana, bungle its response, or was Lombardy simply hit much harder than anywhere else due to ties with China, the presence of heavy industry and high air pollution? There seems no question that parts of Lombardy were not locked down nearly soon enough. There have been protests demanding an investigation. A graffiti of the words Fontana Assassin appeared on a wall in Milan a few days ago and after receiving death threats, Fontana was given a state security escort.
The issue of travel in Europe is still unresolved. Much to our dismay Greece will open its borders to all EU countries except Italy from the 15th of June. Can you really blame them? Greece managed the epidemic remarkably well, and Italy still has 500+ new cases daily. In closing, here is a superficial argument you can have fun speculating about:
My daughter Emma and I have observed that since the end of lockdown, we have been seeing a lot of more good-looking people around (boys to be specific in her case, men in mine). Have you noticed this where you live? The question is, why are people suddenly more good-looking? Is there such a thing as a “Covid glow-up”? Or is it perhaps that we are simply looking at each other a lot more closely? Did we take people for granted before, not even noticing them? Or, do masks make us feel hidden so that we dare to look unabashedly? Or do masks mask people’s flaws? Or have two months of solitude simply made us horny? These my friends are issues that are totally trivial but just a lot more fun to grapple with.
*Taken from a message circulating among Hong Kong protesters