At the moment, I am in quarantine, as are most other people. When I think about the shelter in place that is happening right now, I also have to think about when it will end, and what will it be like when it is over. So, what do I think will change when we get out of quarantine? Well, I think some things will change, like video calling and noticing how close you are to people, and some things, in the realm of politics, that should change, but probably will not.
When in quarantine, lots of us have been connecting with friends and family through the internet and video calls. The thing is, some people are connecting with relatives or friends who don’t live in the same area as them, people who we wouldn’t normally be talking to. Personally, my family has had weekly zoom calls with people that we normally see several times each year. This quarantine has brought us together in the face of adversary, and I believe that this togetherness will continue even when the COVID-19 pandemic is over. Many people did not know that things like Zoom existed before having to use them for work and school. Using these tools, we can have realer communication with people who we have relations with.
A second thing that I think will change is everyone’s awareness of how close you are to someone. Currently, if I am walking in my neighborhood, there is a lot of thought that goes into the best way of staying the furthest distance possible away from people. Even once we get out of this, I think that there will be a heightened awareness of where people are in relation to you.
A thing that should really change is the United State’s policies on dealing with worldwide pandemics in the future. Our leadership did not do much at all when the virus was first starting to spread. There was, and is, a lot of false information going around about how to cure COVID-19 and where the virus came from. There are theories like it came from 5g towers, which is completely false. 5g towers can carry viruses, but those are computer viruses, not biological viruses like the coronavirus. People are also saying that it was a biological weapon created in a lab somewhere in China, or that one specific person brought it to China. Those are all false, as far as we know, and should not be presented as true unless we know that they are true. There is also a ton of misinformation on how to cure COVID-19. Hydroxychloroquine, bright light, and putting disinfectant in people’s lungs, those are all completely untrue and they can actually hurt you. Even our president is spreading this misinformation at press conferences that are supposed to be presenting true information, and then backing down and saying that he was being “sarcastic”. As you can see, there is a lot about our situation that has not been handled well, and that should not have been the case. Sadly, I don’t think that much change will actually happen. I think that it will be another empty promise in politician’s campaigns, but until another major virus shows up, I don’t think a lot will actually end up changing. However, we can change this if we work together to let those politicians know that we want changes to be made as protection from future pandemics.
Overall, this quarantine is going to change us, and we can’t let ourselves just forget about it after it is over. We need to make sure that we remember the good things, like connecting with video calls, and the bad things, like how unprepared the US was for this pandemic. If we all do the right thing, we can prevent a future pandemic from becoming as bad as this one.