It starts now

IMAGINE going to a fete and no longer finding a crowd. Instead, everyone stands two metres apart, gyrating not on a heavy bumper but the air.

Imagine going to vote and the first thing asked of you is not your identification or polling card but rather for a genetic sample: you are screened for coronavirus even before you come close to the polling booth.

Imagine entering church and finding pews that have been completely rearranged: each refitted for individual worship and far apart, and the priest tells you there will be no sharing of bread and only a certain number will be let in. Something similar happens at cinemas, auditoriums, stadiums – the ones that have been reopened.

Imagine doing groceries by choosing items online and having them delivered to your door. If you do go to the market, there are no cashiers, no lines. Everything is now electronic, even the system for selling produce. You are charged as soon as you pick up something from the shelf. Scanners detect weight, look for bar codes.

Imagine no more.

The question of when to lift the covid19 lockdown is as much about containment as it is about prevention. The balance of the scales now leans on the side of the latter. But the degree of discipline required is no less.

When we talk of “the new normal,” what exactly do we mean? We need to start coming to grips with the fact that life will, must, be profoundly different.

Citizens should use the remaining time at home to prepare, mentally, for a changed world. It’s not just a matter of no longer being able to shake someone’s hand. What will be required is a profound change in mindset and social habits. Virtual tech is now the way of the world.

It cannot be business as usual.

This country’s favourable position in a recent ranking of nations ready to relax measures should not encourage complacency. The tabulation suggests we are doing well, but it must be remembered the situation is tenuous. Things could change at any moment depending on a range of factors.

Going forward, it’s not just the specific threat of covid19 that has to be dealt with. What this pandemic – its tragic death toll, its exorbitant damage to the economy, its disruption – teaches us is the need to be prepared for similar threats from now on. We must mitigate risks in relation to a second wave while also keeping an eye on the future. Covid19 is just one coronavirus.

When the time comes for a relaxation of measures, the scenes from abroad of hundreds of beachgoers crowding the shoreline cannot be replicated here. Nor can we return to our old habits of liming, en masse, at bars and pubs. And we need to discuss how Carnival, too, will forever be changed.

It starts now.