It doesn’t feel like taking action-it feels like doing nothing. Instead, the best thing each of us can do, unless we’re one of the relatively few people on the front lines of the pandemic response, is to implement the recommended social-distancing protocols and wait. There is no dragon to slay, no Death Star to destroy, no supernatural boon to wrest from the underworld for the community’s salvation. No individual action, no matter how heroic, is going to turn this tide. The very real possibility that billions will be infected, and millions will die. But the scale of this crisis is paralyzing. We’re hardwired to respond to threats against our safety and the safety of others. Things are changing so rapidly, its pointless to bother with details even a broad-stroke summary will be hopelessly out of date by the time you read it.Ī crisis demands action. Every news update brings word of more deaths, and more disruption-school closures, remote-working directives, event cancellations, travel bans, an entire European country quarantined, panic-buying, the global economy not so much slowing as slamming into a brick wall. Confirmed cases are increasing at exponential rates. I mean both the noun, in the sense of action or intervention to produce a particular effect, and William Gibson’s latest novel.Īs I write this, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread in the United States and around the world. It’s a strange time to be contemplating agency.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |