My friend Betsy said something yesterday that blew my mind. (Content warning for people who really can’t handle depressing Covid scenarios right now.)
We know that the virus mutates quickly, and we’re already seeing regional strains. However, we don’t yet know whether previous exposure or vaccines to one type will protect against other types. This could mean that Covid pushes people to become more insular: we would interact with people in our local bubble but avoid outsiders. My writerly brain went instantly to the world-building implications: Communities would become more self-sufficient and inter-generational, with a resurgence of regional food, accents, arts, some people telecommuting, but a lot of needs taken care of within the local community. (Perhaps akin to the world of Marge Piercy’s “He, She and It.”) Cities would go back to their medieval roots: the place where people go to escape limitations and succeed beyond the possibilities of their home communities, but with a far higher death rate than the countryside.
Betsy, though, reminded me of the social justice implications: that if people become more suspicious of/distant from those outside their little bubbles, it will be harder to muster empathy for others or be willing to risk ourselves to stand up for those who are not in our own groups. The protests for black lives, the fight for indigenous rights, the need to protect refugees, to mitigate the damage we’ve done to the environment, we’ve seen in recent weeks how urgently needed these things are and how doable they are even in the age of Covid. We can’t let those muscles atrophy even if the new normal looks radically different from what came before.
Lisa Batya Feld 