Attitudes in 2020 have changed, going from ‘Oh, are poor people dying on the other side of the world – what a yawn’ to ‘Did someone sneeze in India?!? Quick, children, to the Anderson Shelter!’. News that 227 people have been hospitalized in Andhara Pradesh has been greeted by everyone in Europe stockpiling loo paper and trying to remember the last time they had a curry.
A post-Covid world does things differently – incompetently, but differently. Now we wash our hands after going to the toilet; which begs the question, why were we not washing our hands before?
Not so much sympathy as naked self-interest, has caused us to become alert to the merest hint of a viral outbreak, even if it is just a kitten meme. Paranoia that the world is out to get you, feels substantially less paranoid, now that we know the world is out to get us. One Indian remarked: ‘The rest of the world sent us a Get Well Soon message on the back of a restraining order.’
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