New normals.

As we come into our 7th week of lockdown, for some it has been a bleak time of unprecedented fear and anxiety. For others it has been a time of rejuvenating solace, in finding the simpler joys in life of perfecting your banana bread recipe or taking up a new hobby.

As we adjust and retune to this ‘new normal’, there is a greater sense of coalesce and unity in not having a clue what the f*ck is going on. But as we stand in solidarity, clapping for our key workers and those on the frontline every Thursday, we slowly pull ourselves through what has been described as the biggest crisis since WW2.

Despite everyone having their own hardships of not seeing loved ones, cancelled trips, and restricted routines; it has never been more pertinent to reflect on the power of privilege and vulnerability in this time.

As we post our throwbacks of holiday photos and reminisce the ordinary, but most cherished moments; a pint after work or a Sunday roast at the pub, only then do we realise how much we are guilty of taking for granted.

We struggle with lockdown because we’ve never learnt what it means to be robbed of our freedom. We mourn the loss of holidays as the idea of not leaving the UK for so long is almost unthinkable. It is as though we forget that travelling by plane is a luxury commodity, one that is costing the earth in its growing carbon emissions.

The bleak truth is, we can go vegan, shop second hand and recycle, but our addiction to air travel is the best understood, and most significant element of aviation’s contribution to climate change.

Similarly, with Covid-19, the effects of climate change are unfair. Weapons of Reason magazine’s latest issue ‘The Unfair Share’ outlines how climate change is disproportionately affecting those who are actually doing the least damage.

It reads: “In recent decades, those with the most power and influence to deal with climate change have failed to fully address its many interconnections with inequality.”

Indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change because of their close relationship with the Earth and its natural resources.

Covid-19 has not only stolen the lives of so many but shows the glaring structural and institutional racism within society. Ethnic minorities are at a greater risk as a result of socio-economic disparities in health, housing, education and work. An IFS report shows that British BAME people are more than twice as likely to die of Covid-19 than the white population.

Many environmental experts are claiming Covid-19 as the dress rehearsal for our growing climate emergency, which continues to fester as government officials delinquently ignore the data. How can the world possibly mobilise in time when Trump, controlling one of the most powerful countries outwardly argues it’s a “hoax”.

If you type “The world was underprepared for a pandemic” into Google, you’ll see a whole host of warnings that subsequently, the world and the elected officials failed to take notice of.

We scramble now as a world trying to mobilise with PPE and equipment whilst maintaining intensive care drugs. The World Health Organization has called on industries to increase manufacturing by 40% to reach global demand. The global race for a vaccine augments a sense of national rivalry, as countries allure to the political power of ending the pandemic.

Meanwhile, as our negligence played out in the months leading to the global crisis, our technical sector was growing. Silicon Valley continues to innovate and infiltrate with new technology that cares more for rendering behavioural data than fighting a disease.

It poses a question to us that perhaps if more time was invested in our basic needs, the pandemic wouldn’t have shaken the world with such a violent force. The harsh reality is, we were probably more prepared with nuclear weapons for WW3 than we were for a global pandemic.

Covid-19 is stretching economies, crushing GDP and business bailouts have cost our Tory government more than £100bn. It is clear laissez faire capitalism has been exposed, our neoliberal government has always been able to afford what they’ve forever condemned as ‘impossible’.

Their cold and callous conservative stance has been forced into a mould of socialism; one that Corbyn painted a picture of in the lead up to the December 2019 election, in which he was trounced by Johnson and his “Get Brexit done” approach.

If only “Get Covid-19 done” could be applied to now, but with the UK on track for the highest death rate in the Europe, it appears that leadership is more than instilling an empty hope into the public. Leaders all over have been scrutinised and arguably even the orange president inhabiting the white house makes our prime minister look smart. Perplexed as we all were to hear Trump suggested we vaccinate using the disinfectant we clean our toilets with.

Our new normal has become praising key workers; our hospital staff, shop workers, delivery staff and more. We praise the workers who not so long ago were belittled to ‘unskilled’, yet now the whole world is depending on them.

We seem to forget that when this all ends, our whole world will still depend on them, as it always has. As we are stripped back to the very necessities, we reflect on why we are really here; remembering that without health care we are nothing.

Illustrations by Izzy Cunneen - @izzycunneen_