12 March, 2022
THINGS WE LOST WITH COVID
Aside from the losses of family, friends, and loved ones to Covid, the survivors now live in a very different world. Young children never knew a world without masks. There was a State law mask-mandate in New Jersey until this last week. Masks are now optional and as crowed as our city-scape is, I would guess maybe only half of all people still wear them. For some like me, it is situational. If I am in a crowd or someplace I am not comfortable with, I wear it. When Covid number rise again, which epidemiologists are certain will happen 1. Due to increased summertime travel (after two years of practically no major vacations outside the US border), and 2. The normal rise in general infections come fall and winter. I am supposed to go to a family wedding (my rare opportunity to see both of my beloved sisters at the same time) in Upstate New York in August, assuming I can get a cabin with its own bathroom. You know me, my sense of adventure and the great wild way is going to Short Hills Mall before the store doors to Chanel and Cartier are open and I am navigating oblivious women with strollers. The wedding will be at a camp ground and outdoors so I am moderately nervous about the mask thing because USNY tends to be Trump Land so vaccinations are likely hit-and-miss.
One thing that was lost, or covered up by, was simple social politeness, greetings as we pass each other walking down the sidewalk. I have always greeted strangers, or people I encountered daily, on the sidewalk with a smile and a “Good morning,” or whatever time of the day it was. You cannot see that in a mask. People stopped trusting one another and the sidewalks became danger zones where you shuffled past oncoming pedestrians as quickly as possible. This last week as I traversed the sidewalks with no mask, I went back to my normal smile and greet, and I noticed two things that that pre-covid rarely happened: almost everyone I greeted refused to make eye contact and none of them returned to greeting. People appear to not want to invest themselves in basic humanity anymore.
There is also a crowd shift, a Great Migration, taking place. Shops and restaurants in metropolitan New York have closed due to covid. Available amenities have downsized, moved, or closed for reasons ranging from difficulty finding employees to supply chain issues to difficulty maintaining enough of a retail client base to stay open. One serious trend we are seeing are the large number of families who are tired of Covid measures in congested areas like ours who are fleeing enmasse to larger houses and spaces, large yards for play further apart from the neighbors, and down payments that match trying to keep kids in private schools near New Your City and pay exorbitant rent or mortgages. Zoom and telecommuting have made such moves easier on parents who no longer need to share the breakfast table with their children as a work space.
My personal travel is hopefully going to improve this year since it has been two years since I last visited my normal haunts. I am looking at my beloved Spain, Ireland, and Switzerland. It will rest largely on quarantining laws crossing borders. All I want is to lay under a straw umbrella with my toes in the sand at Puerta Banus Marbella and order my pilpil from the nearby chirangita. Ah, one can hope. For those of you who do not want the hassles of crossing the US border, keep in mind that Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are US territories so you can come and go freely. And there is a Ritz-Carleton on St. Thomas so that you don’t have to feel like you are roughing it.
The supply chain has been severely disrupted, and although it has affected everything from clothes to cars, I am talking specifically food and groceries. I could not get my base-supply of Pellegrino for over a month. We ended up buying a Soda Stream, which is not as convenient as opening a Pellegrino, but it serves its purpose. Markets are out of lots of things. My favorite health cereal has been MIA for over a month. My flavored Pellegrino is represented by only one 8-pack each … once I buy them, the shelves are empty. Even things I would never buy amaze me. Products are lined up at the edge of the shelf, one unit deep and ten wide in order to give the appearance there is more there than there actually is. Because of this, Amazon has become my go-to. Not that I want to give this power to Bezos, but desperate times call for things that actually work.
Think of what has been important you that has been affected by covid. Have you been able to work around these issues, or have you put them out of sight/out of mind for now.
And do not forget to smile at a stranger. It might be the only one they get that day.
Blessings,
Baer
