Thanks to the Flu

The current flu pandemic has many positive aspects about it and might leave our world a better place. Of course, it has its tragic side. We should remember those who died before their time because of it.

But there are ways in which the flu might inject new life into our lives. Some commentators have mentioned how this period of self-isolation might bring families closer together. Instead of scattering in all directions each day, with children going to different schools, then off to different soccer fields and socials, and the adults rushing off to separate high-rise jobs as admen, madmen – families are forced to gather close together around that old metaphoric home-fire. It’s possible that each family member will retreat to his or her own room to tweet and watch separate TV shows. But it’s also possible that this enforced togetherness might spark a few conversations between family members. Children and adults might get to know each other a little better, and for the first time find out, for better or worse, who is really aboard those other ships that previously just passed in the night.

Some people might get cabin fever with this enforced isolation. But that was never my problem. I always found the times I had to stay quietly at home to be delicious reprieves from social obligation. When the Great Snowstorm of 1967 hit Chicago, I was a teenager and the surrounding piles of snow cast me as Queen of my own Ice Castle. I iglooed in place; I cocooned in the wonderland of my thoughts. I could quietly metamorphize into my own fated maturity.

Not that I wasn’t generally able to be more unto myself than most people my age. I was largely homeschooled, (or more accurately, I was a learner-at-home) in a time before there was a word or a movement for that practice. Almost invariably, when people who are imbued with the necessity of going to school hear about that philosophy, they ask, “But what about socialization? Don’t you miss out on learning how to interact with other people?”

Well, one could observe how most teens interact, and see that their social skills haven’t really improved as they’ve advanced from first grade through high school. In reality, it seems as if, during that time, many of them have only honed their techniques of cruelty to others – and to themselves. If anything, I would argue that the world is suffering from too much socialization. What people need, especially young people, is more time away from social pressures, more time to be themselves, or rather, to become their best selves. They need time away from bullying, peer pressure, and pressure to conform.

To interject a somewhat sadder, more world-weary note of wisdom into these considerations, I think of what a handyman once surprisingly said to me – or rather, to my dog. After my father died, my mother and I went through a difficult series of handymen enlisted to do odd jobs around the house. Most of these catch-as-catch-can itinerants proved to be rather incompetent or unreliable. Some proved to have positively sinister ulterior motives for coming into our house, motives other than repairing the leaking faucet. However, for a while, there was one capable stalwart of a fellow we could count on. He had the weathered, raw look of a ship’s figurehead. He generally concentrated on his work, not seeking to engage in any small talk.

I’d just acquired a new puppy then, a little mutt who was proving to be an incessant yapper, a little bundle of uncontrollable energy who wanted to dart into any household activity she saw going. Our handyman was remarkably tolerant of this noisy interference most of the time. But one day, he paused to address this fur-ball cavorting around him. “You have to go off by yourself and be quiet now, little one,” he said. “That’s what growing up is. It’s learning how to be alone.”

And so this period of sequestration that the flu is bringing upon us might be an opportunity to practice that larger lesson. Maybe we can all grow up a little.

But simply considering the cozier, more down-to-earth aspect of this enforced enclosure - English writer J. B. Priestley expressed it well in his essay “Not Going” in his collection of delights. When he was young, he said it was horrible not to get an invitation – to the party, the dance, the excursion. But as he got older, he realized he wasn’t missing anything by being at home. As he would ensconce himself in his favorite chair, people would ask him, “But don’t you like to enjoy yourself?” To which he’d reply, “On the contrary, by Not Going, that is just what I am trying to do.”

However, there’s another boon this period of stoppage can confer, a boon that I oddly haven’t heard any news commentators remark on so far. This widespread slowdown in industry can give the environment a brief respite, a brief time of healing. I’m surprised that this advantage to the earth’s ecology hasn’t been widely heralded as something positive that can come out of this epidemic.

A couple of decades ago, there was a lot of regret about the loss of our Sundays. Environmentalists noted how Sundays used to be a time of rest, a time when people didn’t go to work. They stayed home and slept late, then read the Sunday newspaper over a second cup of coffee. Scientists noted how CO2 levels in the atmosphere sharply dropped on Sundays. There wasn’t the dredging, the drilling, the extracting, the in-putting. The levels of all kinds of pollutants in the atmosphere declined – on Sundays. Our atmosphere got a breather.

But then Sundays stopped being so sharply marked by cessation. With flex-work schedules and with a more general ambition to get the job done around-the-clock, Sundays weren’t as quiet as they used to be. They stopped being Kris Kristofferson’s “sleeping city sidewalk.” People were almost as much up-and-at-it on Sundays as they were on other days. So the earth hasn’t had quite that same one-day-a-week to recuperate and rejuvenate.

But now with the shutdowns the flu has enforced, the earth might be getting a whole swatch of time to recover, perhaps its first since the industrial revolution really got rolling. Again, when scientists look back at this time, they will probably record a steep down-turn in effluents being dumped into the atmosphere. It probably won’t be enough to allow the glaciers to start to accumulate inches of ice again, and not enough to make our next winter noticeably colder again, like Victorian winters used to be. But it will probably make some difference, however small.

What’s more, mortality rates from a variety of usual causes will be seen to have declined during this period. The police in big cities have already been noting the decline in crime. One report said there were 30% fewer street murders in Chicago this month than there were in the same month last year. Although, some worry that for every street crime prevented by our encouragements against congregating – there might be a domestic crime committed in the created hothouse of indoor togetherness. But so far at least, that kind of offset doesn’t seem to have happened.

Meanwhile, the reduction in sheer levels of activity must surely have a net positive effect in other areas. With sporting events postponed, there will be fewer sports injuries. With fewer people rushing to get to and from their jobs on time, there will be fewer car crashes, fewer highway fatalities.

And then there are the animals. I know I should be more concerned about humans than animals, and yet, the life and death of animals has been made so much a matter of human whim that their injury can be so much more guilt-producing and heart-breaking. I feel somehow complicit in each such death, with my presumption of need to go somewhere or consume something. So when I see a deer hit on the road, left to limp off bleeding and broken to almost certain torturous death, I feel a more piercing sadness than I feel over the death of many humans.

But with the slowdown of the world in the wake of this Covid pandemic, there will be fewer such killings. The world will be less splattered with dogs, cats, raccoons, squirrels… If it’s true that “not a sparrow falls but that our Father sees,” there will be a lot less carnage for Him to see.

When this is over and the scientists go back and calculate the decrease in pollution and bloodshed that marked this period, I wouldn’t be surprised if some leaders don’t consider making a regular event of such cessation. Let one week out of every eight be a “Faux Flu” week – a week in which everyone whose job isn’t absolutely essential for life support stays home. For that week, stop the “getting and spending” and coming and going, and simply abide in quiet appreciation of what we all already have.