AS VIRUS SPREADS, LIVES ARE CHANGED
ALBANY, N.Y. — So this is life now. Until the risk subsides, this is how it’s going to be.
Shuttered schools and empty restaurants. Staying home as much as possible. Lightly trafficked roads. Cabin fever amid crowded houses for some, terrible loneliness for others.
Worry about what this coronavirus will do and ultimately mean.
The weeks and maybe months ahead will not be easy. That became clear on Monday, when the shutdown forced by the spreading pandemic took hold and the extent of the crisis became impossible to ignore.
What am I going to do? It’s a question being asked by working parents whose kids attend shuttered schools, by business owners alarmed by disappearing customers, by workers facing financial devastation, by sons and daughters who have elderly parents made especially vulnerable by the virus.
On Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that all bars, restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and casinos must close — the latest economic shutdown forced by the spread of a virus that had infected nearly 1,000 New Yorkers. Bars and restaurants can remain open for takeout and delivery only.
Some of you, I know, think this is all ridiculous. You think it’s crazy to let a virus shutter a country and put jobs at risk. On Facebook, I see that a few of you even see a conspiracy at work.
Others of you, though, understand the terrible and tragic consequences that will result if we fail to slow the virus’ spread and don’t, as the experts tell us, “flatten the curve.”
You understand that protecting those most at risk, the vulnerable and the frail, is a moral duty that we can’t ignore, because life is precious. You are worried, rightly, that too many people are refusing to take the pandemic seriously enough to slow its rapid spread.
“I’m wishing people would gain some perspective on all this,” Sara McDermott of Troy said on Facebook, after I asked how people were feeling about the changes in their lives. “People need to realize that the fact that their vacation is now canceled, or that they can’t go out to eat, is not the end of the world.”
Yes, too many people are refusing to stay home. Certainly, we have seen some of our worst tendencies in recent days, including the selfishness embodied by the hoarding of … toilet paper!?
But mostly, we should be heartened by the broader response to the crisis. By our willingness to risk the almighty dollar for the greater good of the weakest among us. By our willingness to sacrifice.
Other generations of Americans have been asked to give in much more significant ways, of course. We admire the Greatest Generation for how it stoically sacrificed to defeat a brutal enemy.
And all most of us are being asked to do is stay home. Is that really so hard?
In a society devoted to being busy, it can seem as if it is. We’ve unwisely built our economy around consuming and spending and staying frenetically active. Now, it isn’t easy for many of us to adjust to doing less.
But there are benefits. In my family’s neighborhood, we’re seeing more children playing outside in recent days, enjoying their newly found free time.
I don’t want to minimize the anxiety we’re feeling about the pandemic and its potentially devastating impacts. We shouldn’t forget the fears being expressed by business owners and all the many workers who may be hit hard by what’s to come. We must find ways to minimize the impacts, and we need government to be proactive on that front.
But perhaps, if we’re able to avoid the worst consequences of this virus, we’ll look back on this period of slower living with some fondness, remembering the joys of concentrated time with family.
Who knows? Maybe the slowdown will even lead to permanent changes that have long been overdue. Maybe we’ll be better, in the long run, for having to endure the coming period of sacrifice and struggle. Time will tell.
For now, we know only that our lives are changed. For weeks, perhaps longer,