As we wrap up the hell year that 2020 has been, I can’t help but wonder what the aftereffects of pandemic pandemonium might be. Psychologists and therapists warn that children, though generally more resilient than we expect, will probably grow into adulthood with a few phobias or syndromes. Personally, I have been most disappointed about the reversal of bad habits that we had all just started to curb.
- The use of plastic has ticked upward—to-go meal paraphernalia, fear of infected reusable shopping bags, etc.
- Multiple unnecessary vehicle trips—attributable to newly acquired habits of ordering groceries and meal delivery (I’ve observed multiple single-delivery vehicles pull up to my neighbors’ homes on a regular basis)
- The re-emergence of anti-bacterials and sanitizers—which destroy beneficial microbes as well as dastardly virus particles and find their way into sewer systems and then into larger bodies of water where they damage native plants and creatures.
- Wasted water—a result of lengthy and repetitive hand-washing
In a recent interview a child psychologist predicted that as pandemic kids grow up, they will likely carry many of these habits forward. That comment sparked an epiphany about my grandmother. Besides her fiery red hair, my defining memory of Grandmother Noni was that she was a germaphobe—a compulsive cleaner. Now I realize that when the Spanish Flu of 1918 swept the globe, Noni was a young mother who had just lived through WWI. She had a five-year-old child, my mother, to look after at a time when plumbing and waste-water treatment were not particularly trustworthy. Perhaps her cleaning phobia was a result of the 1918 Pandemic rather than—as I had assumed—a symptom of a highly unstable emotional state.
Of course an obsession with cleanliness is but a small price to pay for the year that was. Considering the children who have lost aunts, uncles, grandparents, or even parents to COVID-19 (or pandemic-related suicide), a cleaning obsession is nothing. And of course, there are the millions of children for whom cleanliness became impossible the day they found themselves living in cars and shelters after unemployed parents were evicted.
The times are strange and frightening. Lets look out for each other, set aside our differences, and try to repair the damage that has ripped about our families and our souls. Bring it on 2021.
Well, Linda, it makes somehow sense, to think that pandemics can lead to cleaning phobias. The following is what I looked at tonight:
“Die beliebtesten Sketche der Deutschen!”
Also in AIM Network:
Same Procedure as Every Year: The Story of ‘Dinner for One’
December 31, 2020Written by: Dr Binoy Kampmark
And here a more or less humorous look at 2020:
The Yearly With Charlie Pickering 2020
https://iview.abc.net.au/video/LE2005V001S00
“Charlie and the Weekly team emerge from their plague bunker to wrap 2020. Was it the worst year ever? Have you washed your hands? Can we remember what happened? All will be revealed, from a safe distance.”
Have a HAPPY NEW YEAR, dear Linda. 🙂
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Ah, auntyuta! That Dinner for One video…I’ve seen it, or a version of it before! It’s worth a second view. It must be quite an iconic piece in certain circles.
I hope you’re dealing with dinner for one with the humor it entails. Big virtual, thereby safe, hugs to you, my friend across the globe.
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Safe HUGS to you too, dear Linda. Love, Uta 🙂
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Linda, well said. I think you hit home a concern about plastic use that I had not thought about. That worsens our exposure. As for the pandemic, it will be with us for most of 2021, I believe and we will likely stop short at a new normal – fewer handshakes, hugs, air travel, dining in restaurants along with more mask, distancing, work from home. We need to do our best to reach out to folks in some fashion. Keith
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Yes Keith, I’m not really planning on travel or gatherings till mid to late summer. By then I may have lost my few social skills. It is an interesting time to live through, I must say.
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As per Linda-usual, an insightful piece.
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You made some good points here. We were just about ready to outlaw plastic before Covid-19 arrived. I find myself wondering where all that PPE goes and am thinking into incinerators.
I do hope we work together to find solutions to the waste, the poverty and bad habits. But on a positive note, maybe gardening will take off as or food prices soar.
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Oh I love your positive spin, Jane. I know gardening has really taken off in my region. Hopefully, that will continue as people discover the rewards of growing edibles rather than just pretty flowers!
I also thought this morning as I drove to the ski area alone, that an uptick in gas/emissions is also a consequence of the difficulties involved in public transit and carpooling. 😦
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Walking softly and feeling my way into the New Year…
My grandmothers were both obsessed with cleanliness and having basic staples in the house. I still have the residues of WW1, the pandemic, and then WW2…
What will we keep?
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Good question. I have to have staples, that’s for sure. For a single person, I’m sure my pantry and freezer would shock some people.
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Yes, not long ago it was thought that our obsession with cleaning made us more susceptible to diseases. We were supposed to build immunity by allowing our bodies to fight off infections the natural way. Pine-O-Clean had a lot to answer for.
Now we are back to obsessive scrubbing and sanitizing.
I am a happy man with foregoing daily showers and let my natural perfume attract love.
Well, it worked brilliantly!
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whoohoo, Gerard…Do you have some new year’s news to share with us? Perhaps I need to bop over to your site to find up what amorous adventures you’ve been up to lately! 😉
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You are free to have a look but I’ll let you know. At the moment we are in separate lockdowns, with texting and phoning our only way of cohabiting. We have met in the physical once for a few hours and it was heaven.
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Well, there’s a lot to be said for getting to know someone slowly.
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I vacillate between thinking that this experience will change us forever and impact public policy for the better, and thinking that, soon after enough are vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, we’ll all go back to whatever it was that we were doing before. We’ll see… Happy New Year, Linda!
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I tend to think that we will return to life pretty much as it was before, with a few exceptions: like infernal cleanliness obsessions that rely too heavily on bleach and anti-bacterials, and that it will take too long to regain the small strides we’d made in finding alternatives to plastics and to carpooling and public transit.
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Good points Linda! It is certainly uncertain times to say the least. All we know is that we must be patient. Only time will tell regarding after effects. Children are resilient. In my county kids have been going to school and aside from an early summer break last year, have gone uninterrupted.
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Yup. Patience is hard for everyone, but even harder for some. And yes, kids are resilient. But habits can form pretty young too.
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I have been lamenting the increased waste of styrofoam and plastics and millions of masks and I have visions of all this stuff going into landfills. When I see little kids with masks on it makes me sad. My sister who has her doctorate in nursing and teaches masters students at UNMC says that kids need to be exposed to germs – that makes them stronger. And I think of my fun childhood – not being so afraid of others – having fun and playing with other kids. But I asked a schoolteacher and she said kids are resilient. I see us getting weaker, not stronger. I think that I have strong immunity system because of the thousands of bodies I have touched in 35 years of physical therapy!
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Yeah, the waste is horrible. I know sometimes a paper mask may get away from someone by mistake, like an errant candy wrapper that falls out of the pocket or blows out of the car when 2 people open the car doors during a wind storm. But not enough of the ones I’m seeing are mistakes. I think most of them are just plain laziness.
I’m probably the least “clean” person in America. I’ve never been a germaphobe and my kitchen habits are deplorable. I also attribute my rarely ill status to a pretty vigorous immune system. That is why I find it particularly incumbent upon me to mask up around others and try to remember to use hand sanitizer when I walk into public spaces. But it’s hard. I frankly don’t much care if I get COVID. I’m of an age that the grim reaper will be coming sooner rather than later. But I would be devastated to learn that I inadvertently infected someone else.
There is much to learn about this new virus. I suspect that some long term affects will show up long after we’ve put all this behind us. I also suspect that it won’t be long before another deadly pandemic sweeps the world. The hard hearted among us could say this is just a way of weeding out the weak from a species that has no natural predators and has thus overpopulated it’s environment. I’m not sure I’m quite that clear-eyed yet.
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Glad you brought up the subject – I hope we can have fair and unbiased research on issues from this pandemic for future reference.
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To click trough your blog was amazing. 🙂 I am a student from Austria and the task to create my own blog with wordpress was given to me. To get a good mark at university it’s neccesary to have a lot of visits and follower. I need klicks every day until 25th of January. My blog is about my wonderful homeland Carinthia. In fact, it’s really hard to get visits, likes and follower. It would be a pleasure, if you would follow me:
martinamikula.wordpress.com
Thanks 🙂
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You’ve made a really nice start with your blog, Martina. As an experienced blogger, may I suggest that to increase your readership and interaction, it would be helpful if you respond to those who take the time to comment on your posts. Good luck with your project.
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