On a worldwide level, looking at the coronavirus as a global issue it is interesting to see the degree to which it is able to affect issues on a degree of detail we perhaps never even thought about. There’s the obvious examples of course, us not being able to go to service at Apex Harmony Lodge due to the virus for example but even more so, although we weren’t able to go there for project week, it was quite surprising to hear how Blue Dragon did have to suspend many of their rescue operations until after the virus due to tighter border controls and it being harder to bring over people from China. The interesting consideration here though is what might happen if we AREN’T a rare generation. If there’s a virus outbreak every year like this will the world resume doing what the world does at some point? On one hand of course, we would start having to normalise eventually under such a scenario. But at the same time, if the virus is bad enough to close down schools and so on now, it would still be bad enough to close down schools even if there were 10 more such outbreaks in the next 10 years. Ethically speaking that’s quite interesting because if that were to happen, the fatality rate might stay the same but people’s perceptions might change. There are plenty of conditions after all (natural aging for starters) that most of society has come to accept after all due to how prevalent it is. It isn’t quite considered a global emergency that the biggest killer of humans is natural aging because there’s so much of it and if the outbreaks don’t end and we have corona 2, then corona 3, on to corona x… we will likely see a situation in which even though the facts of the situation might remain roughly similar, the response to it could drastically shift. I doubt that society as a whole is ready to adjust their schedule to such a degree that we would have permanent social distancing and online school. At the same time however, in some higher risk cases: elderly homes for instance, we might see drastic changes. Under such a scenario where there’s always a virus it may very well be that some of our service with the elderly may have to permanently end as we would likely be doing more harm than good. In the more generic sense though, it’s interesting to think that the virus isn’t actually so bad that if the situation were to continue indefinitely we would fundamentally change our way of life. Though that being said, the situation we are in with mandated social distancing and all has given free reign to governments around the world to exercise a degree of power that they might not have been able to get away with otherwise… if the virus doesn’t end, it would be too easy to perpetually excuse an expansion of executive power even in so called western democracies and we would likely all be worse off for it.
