This is not what keeps me awake
For some days, now, I haven't been sleeping at nights. I have statistics in my head, projections, exponential curves and numbers of deaths coming from all around the globe. I think of stock market dives, draconian measures of isolation, closed shops, closed parks, closed borders and empty airports. I think of the hospital beds we don't have. I think a lot about the word "triage". I play endless conversations with myself. I think of what it might be in one week, in two weeks, in six months. But mainly I think of what it might be in one or even two years. And numbers keep coming in, every evening, and people say things like: "wow, that's the highest death toll ever for one single day!" And then comes tomorrow and the deaths are more. Maybe double. And I know they will be more. Of course they will be more. This breaks my heart, but that's not what keeps me awake.
Most people think of tomorrow. Of how tedious it is to stay at home, of how one misses normality, of how the main occupation of the day is to keep your nine months old from crawling inside the dishwasher when he sees it open or realizing how many more meetings home office entails - paradoxically. Oh! How much we miss "normal life"! And that's on day two, or day three, or maybe day seven. Most people think of tomorrow, when this will magically be over and they will take the metro and go to work in the world they have known since they were born. I think this is foolishness and then I don't sleep at nights.
I see people, very clever people, being caught by surprise. First this conference is cancelled, then another one. Borders close. Countries shut down. "I have a meeting tomorrow at 9.30 to discuss a project that was happening before and I am assuming will be happening later. Right?" People need normality so much. They do everything to keep their minds set to the usual things and they brush off the numbers, or, as I said, let themselves be caught by surprise almost every day.
I didn't see this coming. My wife did. I listened to her only later, but I am always difficult to convince. From the moment I saw what this was going to be, I lost my sleep. I saw very early the event cancellations that were going to happen, the ripple effect, the shutdowns and the stubbornness of the people that were not listening (friends, colleagues, but also presidents). The blindness of "normality" of those who are not listening now, not even when it is happening here, not anymore in "a different kind of world" China, but just here, in Italy, Spain, UK, US...
We are still just at the very beginning. Almost nothing has happened yet. This is a virus that not even in the science fiction of world-ending pandemics was ever imagined. This is the most incredible and widespread social experiment ever made. Decades of global-warming warnings, predicting the possible extinction humanity in a not so far future, could not do even a fraction of what this tiny and not even so lethal coronavirus could do. Decades of financial craziness and reckless capitalism were lived as if this normality was here to stay. Something like this has never happened before: "normality" is not a thing.
The world will be a different place in so many ways, and I cannot begin to even think clearly. I just lose my sleep. I know one thing, though. Now like never before, people need to hold onto a sense of positivity. People need a sense of community and of belonging to something bigger. Only if we all start feeling part of a tiny, small, big, bigger, huge community we will be able to do the right thing. Only if we stay together we will be able to see through this change. Only as part of a community, we will finally feel responsible for each other. We need to start from our building - with all the "different" people that live in it and that we need to trust. We need to start from our neighborhood - that became more and more cosmopolitan every year. We need to start from our country - but not as dumb and blind nationalists and "blame-the-others" shitheads. We need to have a feeling of community that extends to all human beings. All over the world. We will go through this change together and this is not a matter of choice. Never more than now we need two things: coordinated action and loving solidarity, without the barriers of culture or religion.
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