We must not allow loneliness to become the cost of corona
While we are being urged to pull together – but physically stay apart – we need to resist the silent scourge in a world inclined to turn inwards
LONELINESS can be the silent, wicked symptom of a virus that has dislocated our lives. A world thought conquered by technological sophistication seems suddenly vast and unknowable again.
The global village has been blown asunder.
Measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus are drastic if logical, but they come with consequences that will be profound for many in our society.
At a press conference following Thursday’s announcement of escalating measures, the Minister for Health sought to reassure the public that nobody would have to face this virus or its effects on their own.
‘Our message to you is simple,’ said Simon Harris, ‘you are not alone. We are all in this together’.
He tried to emphasise his point through a familiar Irish phrase: ‘Ní neart go chur le chéile’.
The sentiment is admirable, and there has been evidence of a community spirit, harnessed most visibly on social media, and a willingness to help those having to self-isolate as a result of being diagnosed with the illness.
Yet the cold truth remains that one of the most effective measures in preventing the spread of this pervasive new menace requires people to remain apart.
As the Tánaiste said at the same conference: ‘The irony is that in order to pull together we are asking people to stay apart. The closures proposed will disrupt the everyday connectivity that makes us who we are.’
Social distancing is a life-saving phrase with unsettling consequences, a two-word injunction in which the first is contradicted by the second.
Keeping one’s distance might be no great burden to younger generations who self-isolate in worlds they create online, but that is not the case for older people.
Not only are they among the most vulnerable to the virus, but they are also less likely to willingly shut themselves away behind smartphones and tablets.
As a jarring statistic from Age Action Ireland revealed this week, over half of Irish people aged between 65 and 74 have never used the internet.
The very cohort most enthusiastic about traditional social interaction is the one endangered by it.
THAT cruel irony is only part of the social effect the coronavirus is having on the elderly. Because of their greater susceptibility to infection, they are advised to take greater care – and so are their families.
That means greatly limited access to children and grandchildren, so deepening their isolation at a fearful time when family has never felt so important.
Caution begets isolation, with loneliness sure to follow.
It is a price worth paying to keep people alive, of course, but it remains a high price nonetheless.
Research over the past decade has deepened understanding of the physical effects of loneliness, with studies suggesting it raises the levels of stress hormones, which can, in turn, increase the risk of diabetes, arthritis, heart disease and dementia.
The mental impact can also be devastating, but it is not just the aged or the infirm that will have to contend with loneliness.
It is, rather, an unavoidable part of the cure for those unfortunate to fall ill. And when the world adjusts to these strange days, when some altered version of normal slips into place in weeks or months, there may be a renewed appreciation of community, of what it really is to be a part of a society.
Ireland prides itself on its welcome, on the openness of its people, but that long ago became more of a marketing strategy than a lived reality. The truth is that the land of a hundred thousand welcomes has felt the isolating effects of social media and online engagement as much as the rest of the world.
Localised factors have also contributed to communities in which the needs of the individual became so great that engaging with neighbours became a luxury many did not seek.
Think of the parents rising early in the morning to rouse children for creche, who are living miles away from where they work because of the cost and unavailability of housing, and whose days start and end in darkness. Pressurised lives don’t allow much time for neighbourly concern. Days are so busy that many parents are grateful to see their children at all before bed-time. That is the lot of hundreds of thousands.
They are in contrast to traditional social organisations and rituals such as the meitheal, when neighbours came together and helped each other in their turn.
Those days are often mistily recalled, as if they were part of a purer age whose loss we continue to suffer.
But modern living often militates against not just the idea of a community working together, but the sense of community itself.
Perhaps a version of it will emerge in the coming weeks, as we pare our lives back in response to extraordinary circumstances.
Because for all of the distractions in the world today, and the demands it makes, the generosity of people has been a recurring feature of responses to the spread of the virus in Ireland.
From the Twitter movement encouraging people to help those obliged to self-isolate, to the willingness of right-minded citizens to support Government actions, it has been a reminder that most of us want to do right by others.
Loading shopping trolleys with toilet paper may not be indicative of the meitheal spirit, but the absurdity of these cases is heightened by how rare they have been.
Generally, the reaction has been enthusiastic, and it suggests that we retain an understanding of the needs of others.
That could be very important because only the hopelessly
optimistic can believe that come March 29, and the end of the initial fortnight of measures announced last Thursday, normality will fall on the country like rain.
There are, rather, sure to be weeks of readjustment before the effects of the virus are no longer putting a strain on public services, particularly in healthcare.
There was a spectral feel to the Taoiseach’s announcement of escalating measures on Thursday morning. He spoke in the Washington dawn, the news feeds crackling with interference as restrictions that were expected still caused great shock.
There has been nothing like this in living memory.
The chaos caused by heavy snowfalls at the start of March 2018 temporarily interrupted life, but it lasted less than a week and was treated as a novelty rather than a privation. Workers stayed at home, the buses and trains were halted and a strange national craving for bread is still being fondly recalled.
This is a very different situation. Crisis is a word that is often heedlessly invoked, but it has now become a part of the language of Government.
And stalking these troubled days is the possibility of worse to come.
ITALY is a modern firstworld country like ours, and while there are important differences that appear to have deepened difficulties there – an older population, a delay in first detections, even the levels of pollution in its northern cities has been cited – the aggressiveness of its initial response to the virus was not checking the spread.
Hence the measures imposed earlier in the week, which are being compared to war-time requirements.
Yet Italian society has reacted admirably. A country renowned for political instability is coping and refusing to buckle under the demands being made on it.
Irish life could soon be bearing a similar burden, but if the response to whatever awaits us is as measured as the one that has largely prevailed since last Thursday, it encourages the hope that we can emerge from this, ready to face a radically re-shaped world.
Because it seems certain our lives will be substantially challenged by the experience of the coronavirus.
The transmission and effect of the infection raises questions about the connectedness of our world, the health and environmental impacts of the enthusiasm for global travel, and it also raises the sensitive but vital topic of borders.
If it was no surprise to see president Trump’s nativist instincts govern the travel ban announced in recent days, it is also a fact that many who would find the prospect of closed borders abhorrent, have lauded the Chinese response to the virus.
That, of course, centred on shutting down large swathes of a vast country, while Italy followed suit in closing its borders, too.
This is not an issue of immigration but rather ease of travel in a shrunken world. A deadly consequence of that is the rapid spread of a desperate illness.
It is instructive, too, to see how cruise ships have featured in accounts of the transmission of the virus. This is a type of holiday associated with older, affluent travellers, but one that is also disastrously suited to spreading the illness.
The science journal Nature, carried a study in 2016 that highlighted the risk of cruise holidays.
‘Long-term personal contact, complex population flows, a lack of medical care facilities, and defective infrastructure aboard most cruise ships is likely to result in the ship becoming an incubator for infectious diseases,’ it found.
A hard-earned luxury, a holiday that can often be the reward for a life of labour, comes with the risk of serious illness or death.
That is the story of Covid-19, a virus that has become a part of urgent daily conversations, and that ruthlessly manipulates technological advances, globalisation and affluence.
Yet the suffering will come to an end. This, too, shall pass. In its aftermath, though, it will leave much to consider.
But until then, the coronavirus is not the only threat.
Loneliness must be resisted, even in a world all too easily inclined to turn inwards.