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I was talking to a doctor friend of mine the other day and he said something simple yet profound: “Covid is probably here to stay. There is no going back to normal.”
My friend and I chatted for a while about various bits of research we’d both been reading, especially the emerging consensus that the vaccines we had hoped would be miracle cures turned out to be only partially effective at stopping the spread of Covid-19, especially the stubborn Delta variant. Of course the vaccines are breathtakingly effective at preventing severe Covid infections, as evidenced by the millions of people who have received the mRNA vaccines who have a vanishingly low probability of becoming hospitalized or dying.
There is, however, a big difference between stopping a virus from killing you and preventing it from infecting you entirely. I’m afraid we’re all going to have to adjust to life with Covid, at least for the next several years. So what does this unsettling, yet increasingly apparent reality mean for places like schools, churches, and other places where people not only gather, but where gathering is the entire purpose?
How will we modify our meeting spaces to accommodate the fact that, at any given time, some number of people will be unable to join in person? This is one of the driving questions that guides my work these days. In the classroom space, it is a formidable challenge to simultaneously teach a lesson to a group of students present in person, while at the same time providing a meaningful experience for classmates who may be Zooming in from home. Churches and community venues face a similar challenge; camera and microphone equipment can be expensive to purchase and difficult to install in buildings that probably weren’t designed with global pandemics in mind.
As a technology expert, a lot of people depend on me to have all of the answers to these sorts of problems, but I have to admit there are some problems even I can’t fix immediately. The one that hurts my heart the most is this: How can we create a video conferencing solution that allows people to play musical instruments and/or sing a song together remotely? I’ve tried many ways to facilitate live music over Zoom and all of them have, to one degree or another, failed.
But even more important than the technological challenges are the human challenges we face. Now that much of our world has reopened–perhaps a bit too quickly in many respects–how can we adjust our expectations about people being present? Whether we are considering workplace rules about reporting for duty, school attendance policies, or quorum requirements for decision-making bodies, we would do well to challenge assumptions we may have made in the past about people being late or absent. In our fractured world, it should be obvious now that a person isn’t necessarily missing a meeting because they are lazy or uncaring. To be frank, perhaps that should have always been obvious, even long before anyone had heard of SARS-CoV-2. To quote the Dread Pirate Roberts, “Life is pain…. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
Covid has destroyed countless lives and ripped so many loved ones from us, to be sure, and I cannot make light of the human tragedy unfolding all around us. But I suspect it may also help us part ways with some cultural attitudes that were never very helpful in the first place. Chief among them is the idea that a single silver bullet will save everyone from the proverbial werewolf, or that one caped superhero can single-handedly save the world from a shadowy nemesis.
No, I doubt very much that the problems of the 21st Century will be solved by epic superheroes, fantastic technological breakthroughs, or even . Rather, whether we are considering Covid-19, or climate change, or the worldwide threats to democratic freedom, the solutions are much more likely to come from small acts of compassion, courage, and critical thinking multiplied across the population.