SA Weekend: Life in a time of corona — how staying apart could bring us closer together after the pandemic
It’s the greatest crisis of our time, but how can we cope and what kind of world will be left after COVID-19 passes.
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It’s one step at a time. Don’t look at the bigger picture, don’t drown yourself in every breaking bit of news. Manage all this chaos generated by this overwhelming coronavirus epidemic in bite-sized chunks if you can.
That’s the advice from Joep van Agteren, who is the research lead at the wellbeing and resilience arm of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.
“Don’t think about six months, think about how to plan the next week for the best,’’ he says. He says think of it like running a marathon. You don’t cover the entire distance on the first day of training.
“We don’t really know when this is going to end so for us to try to anchor ourselves into (thinking it will end in) six months, or 10 months, it’s just going to be misleading.
“I think it’s better for us to go ‘ok, what can we do on a week-to-week basis, so we can actually reduce the demand on the health care sector while remaining sane.’’
And to focus on the things we can control.
“We don’t have bombs flying around, it’s relatively stable. The only thing we need to take care of is the whole social distancing,’’ he says.
There is something of a caveat though on van Agteren’s advice. Or, to be fair to him, any advice you are going to hear at the moment.
“I also have never had to deal with anything like this and I don’t think the large majority of psychologists and mental health professionals would have had to deal with this.’’
Yes, folks, we are in uncharted waters here. Society as we know it, if not quite crumbling around our ears, is certainly feeling the strain. It’s the fear of the unknown. We don’t know how long COVID-19 will be with us.
Don’t know when normal life will resume, when bars and cafes and restaurants will re-open. How many tens of thousands of Australians will be thrown out of work. Don’t know when we will be allowed to go back to church or wait in line for an overpriced beer at the footy, take an international flight or travel interstate for a holiday. Or even go for a walk in the park with more than two people for company. Offices in the city have emptied as workers set up station in studies or dining room tables or kitchen benches. The limitations of the nation’s broadband are becoming apparent. The limitations of some of our national leadership even more so.
Then there is another fear. What’s going to be left when all this is over? Will there ever be such a thing as normal again?
Hugh Mackay has been writing and talking about changes in Australia’s society for six decades. He has been concerned in recent times about the descent into personal entitlement at the expense of civic responsibility. That, as a nation, we had become increasingly fragmented.
“And of course the IT revolution, which has made us more connected and lonelier than ever because it has made it so easy for us to stay apart,’’ he says.
The result has been increases in anxiety and depression, obesity and loneliness.
Some of this, he says, explains some of the selfish behaviour we saw in the early days of the pandemic. The fighting in supermarket aisles over toilet paper, the hoarding.
Yet, despite all that he is optimistic the present pandemic gives us the chance to reclaim something good in our nation.
“We are going to realise more vividly, more than we have previously realised just how important our social connections are to us and the fact that we are herd animals and that when we are cut off from the herd we don’t feel good,’’ he says.
He compares it to the sense of togetherness older people say they experienced during war time.
“They all say these times of extreme hardship and social dislocation really brought us together and sharpened our values, made us more conscious of our civic responsibilities and I think the pandemic is already having that same effect.’’
There are already plenty of stories of people are looking out more for their neighbours, of undertaking small acts of kindness such as offering to help with shopping or dropping around food and reaching out to those that are alone. The community singing in Italy, the national round of applause for health workers in Britain, stories of drive-by birthday parties, all indicate that humanity is capable of rising to this challenge.
You sense some of that on the street as well. On the streets near my house, always a friendly enough area, more people are waving hello or giving a nod of encouragement as we pass (at a safe distance) each other. There is a definite ‘we’re all in this together’ vibe.
But these are still the early days. It’s difficult to be precise about where it all goes from here or how we will all be feeling about this in a month or two or six or longer.
There are limited lessons to be learned from the past about how society and the economy recovered from such catastrophic events.
There have been a three pandemics in the last 100 years. The Hong Kong flu of 1968, the Asian flu of 1957 and the Spanish flu in 1918-19. The Spanish flu was the most deadly with around 500 million around the world infected, with deaths estimated between 30 million and 50 million people. It’s the one most often cited as being similar to this COVID-19 crisis.
But the Spanish flu struck on the back of the devastation of World War I, so any parallels must be treated with caution.
Director of Flinders University’s Australian Industrial Transformation Institute Professor John Spoehr, says there are also important differences between then and now.
“Our starting point is much better than at that time of history,’’ he says.
“We have a universal health system, income support system, modern sanitation and water utilities and of course sophisticated computer and communication systems that enable many of us to work from home very productively and maintain social connections.”
After the worst of the Spanish flu had passed, the economy and the stockmarket did rebound quite quickly. The grim horrors of a decade of war then flu passed into what became known as the “roaring ‘20s.’’ It was not until almost 10 years later that global economies came crashing down in the Great Depression.
“Like the Great Depression that followed ten years after the Spanish flu we are about to witness horrendously high rates of unemployment, rising to 10 per cent and well beyond depending on how this crisis unfolds,’’ he says. “We will need both a monumental crisis response and a recovery program to tackle Covid19.’’
Spoehe believes the unemployment rate could even top 15 per cent nationally, around three times the current number.
The large queues out Centrelink office last week are an immediate sign of the depth of the problem. Some of Australia’s biggest companies have sacked or stood down large parts of its workforce. Qantas and Jetstar stood down 20,000 employees, two third of their workforce.
“The efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus have led to a huge drop in travel demand, the likes of which we have never seen before,” Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said, announcing the cuts.
Department store chain Myer has closed for a month, sending 10,000 staff home, fellow retailer Kathmandu stood 2000 down.
Premier Investments, which owns Just Jeans among other chains, shut stores and stood down 9000 people.
At Flight Centre it was 6000. And then there is the job losses in the tourism and hospitality industries as the nation’s pubs, clubs and restaurants close. And it’s likely to become much worse before it improves.
In the United States, which has more known coronavirus cases than any other country, first-time application for unemployment benefits in March rose from a historic low of 200,000 three weeks ago to more than 3 million. According to The New York Times, in the 50 years the US Department of Labor has tracked that statistic, the previous worst was 695,000 in 1982.
It is the fear of Australia seeing these kind of numbers, and the economic devastation that would follow, that prompted the federal government this week to outlay an unprecedented $130 billion to help keep workers in their jobs.
Global share markets have been swinging wildly.
Massive falls have been followed by swift rises, but the overall trend has been sharply lower. Many are pinning their hopes on what economists called a ‘V-shaped’ recovery. That the recovery will be as steep as the descent.
Bryan Taylor, chief economist for Global Financial Data, says there may be some clue from the Spanish flu that a quick bounce is possible.
“When the final wave of the Spanish flu subsided in February 1919, the market began an increase of 50 per cent which lasted until November of 1919,” he wrote on his website. “Whether this increase occurred because of the end of World War I or the end of the flu or both is impossible to say, but it does provide encouragement that once the coronavirus begins to subside, the market will bounce back once again.’’
But that is far from clear.
Writing in the Harvard Business Review last week, Boston Consulting Group chief economist Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak said there were still many unknowns including, that the virus is still not properly understood, true rates of infection and immunity are ambiguous, policy responses will be uneven across the globe and the reactions of firms and households are uncertain.
There is also the possibility of more waves of the virus.
“Notoriously unreliable at the best of times, forecasts look especially dubious now as there are simply too many unknowable aspects,’’ Carlsson-Szlezak says. He says a V-shaped recovery is possible, but then again so is a U-shaped recovery, where the economy takes a lot longer to recover.
Either way, there are serious concerns the recession or depression that will follow the virus will further entrench the gap between rich and poor in Australia.
Ross Womersley, chief executive at the South Australian Council of Social Services, says it’s a crisis that will “result in enormous hardship and probably leave people in very vulnerable situations’’.
Womersley says there will also be a lot of newly unemployed people who are dealing with being jobless for the first time.
“For 90 per cent of us, it’s not an experience we often have,’’ he says. “To have so many of us thrust into those circumstances just creates a whole lot of cognitive dissonance and anger and frustration.
“It brings us all back to that point of feeling ashamed as though we were responsible for what is happened, but none of us individually have any responsibility for what has happened.’’
Womersley was also part of a release of a report last week with the Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity at Flinders University that outlined that if you are poor, then your health suffers. That a lack of stable employment and income, poor quality housing all contribute to sickness and early death.
“If you are on a low income you are probably experiencing a lot more stress than people who are not, you are probably in accommodation or living circumstances that leave you a lot more vulnerable than most other people and you are probably not getting access to the same level of health care and assistance that many other people are doing.’’
The impact on people’s mental health is also likely to be severe. The federal government has already announced more funding for mental health and also for domestic violence which could spike upwards as increasing numbers of people are confined to their homes.
Back at SAHMRI, van Agteren says “the mental health fallout from his thing, in my opinion, is going to be massive’’.
He says it’s vital that people stay in contact with one another as much as possible. That’s where social media can come in useful, whether it’s keeping up with older relatives through video chats or virtual drinks with workmates at the end of the week. There is still a need to converse, a need to joke around and relax with friends and family.
“Even if you don’t think you’re that social, even the people that are really introverted they don’t tend to go and live on a mountain by themselves,’’ he says.
By way of advice in coping with this new world order he references an acronym called STREAM, developed by Flinders Uni clinical psychologist Mike Kyrios.
The S is for social networking, use it to stay in touch; T is time out, “If you are cooped up with your loved one or significant other for a very long period of time not all of us will deal with that in the best way possible. Take a time out’’: R is for relaxation: E is for exercise, “it’s one of the miracle drugs for our mental health’’; A is for alternative thinking, “It’s really easy to go into a really negative thought spiral’’, M is for mindfulness, “be present and be mindful of others’’.
SAHMRI is also putting online for free its mental health assessment tool, that van Agteren says will help people assess how they are going and give them tips on how to keep on top of any problems. It usually costs more than $300 but van Agteren says anyone can find it at bewellplan.com.
“It’s geared for people to go in for a quick 10 or 15 minute questionnaire and you get an immediate free online report with some tips to use after,’’ he says. There is also five video sessions that run for 10 hours and the possibility for follow-up facilitated sessions for a small “gold coin donation’’.
This idea of staying in touch with each other is going to be vital. As older people are told to stay at home, with children no longer at school or able to see friends, with so many hubs of our social lives gone and possibly never returning, it’s imperative to keep talking, to keep interacting with each other.
But even if and when a relative normality is regained, it’s likely some things will never go back to how they once were. This story is being written at home; I interviewed van Agteren, Spoehr and Mackay in their homes. Work will never be the same again as employers and employees find the positives in keeping workers out of the office.
“Many employers have been reluctant to back their staff working from home, now they must be open to it,’’ Spoehr says.
Not that it will be possible for everyone. In some preliminary estimates, he says about 2.35 million work from home in Australia, and that could rise to 4 million. But, he says, for many in the highest employing industries – health care, retail and construction – that won’t be an option. And he says as schools close and children need to be looked after, women will bear the caring burden and that “would likely disproportionately impact on women’s ability to work from home’’.
But let’s end on a positive. We need one. Back to Hugh Mackay who has seen everything Australia has to offer for more than 60 years. Mackay is hopeful this crisis reminds everyone that we are more than just an economy, we are a community of people as well.
“I think it will help to swing the pendulum back in the direction of ‘hang on, above all else we are a society, we are a people who need each other, we share a common humanity’. Yes, we are also consumers, and there is an economy, but there is not much point in having a healthy economy for people who are sick’’.