Lessons
Eileen Manion
La Lecon,the sculpture opposite McGill University’s Roddick Gates, takes on new meaning during the pandemic.
Placed at the corner of Sherbrooke St. and McGill College in 2012, it suggests a frantic student, hunched over his laptop, so preoccupied that he hasn’t bothered to remove his backpack. Nor does he notice that a squirrel is stealing his lunch! This icon of university student anxiety is one of the most photographed statues in the city.
The sculptor, Cedric Loth who started his career as a cartoonist for Le Devoir and Le Soleil, seemed to be making a satirical comment on the way students, entering the virtual world, shut themselves away from what is going on around them.
In 2014, the Montreal street artist Sautu added a faux warning to the computer screen: “Too Much Time Wasted on Social Media” along with a fake button: “Do Something Else.”
But now college and university students have little choice but to hover over their laptops since almost all their classes this fall are online.
Enthusiasts greet this extension of online education with glee — seeing in it new opportunities for technology. But most teachers I’ve talked to report increased workload, diminished joy, and a new disease taking over: “Zoom fatigue.”
The very idea of online teaching filled me with such horror that I decided in the spring to retire from my career as a C.E.G.E.P. teacher. Confronting a class of forty students whom I’d never met in those little Zoom boxes, or interacting with them as if I were doing customer service chat? No.
Nonetheless, with the pandemic, I, along with many friends, find myself spending much more time on the internet, doing online everyday tasks that I used to do in person: ordering groceries, filling prescriptions, buying clothes.
On the rare occasions I’ve gone into a store, I feel as if I might as well be interacting with a robot. How can you tell if someone is smiling or scowling at you when they’re wearing a mask? Any casual chatting is also discouraged when it’s difficult to understand what the other person is saying to you.
I can’t help wondering how this pandemic social withdrawal, already lasting at least half a year, will affect us psychologically in the long term.
And how will spending so much time in the virtual world shape our perceptions of what’s real?
Already we’re dealing with an “infodemic” of circulating conspiracy theories: Bill Gates is responsible for the virus; it was made in China as a bioweapon; masks won’t keep you safe but mandating them is a form of socialistic denial of personal liberty.
Every day we read of supposed treatments — taking hydrochloroquine, ingesting bleach, garlic, hot peppers, alcohol — that turn out to be bogus, ineffective, or deadly.
In the debates over reopening elementary and high schools, we heard first that children are unlikely to get sick, and then that they rarely spread the disease. Did anyone repeating such nonsense ever take care of a child?
During the 1918 pandemic, governments still at war censored reports of flu deaths since they believed public panic would undermine the war effort. The suppression of information led to rampant spread of infection among unwarned soldiers and civilians, as well as increased skepticism about government policy.
We seem to have the opposite problem. We’re overwhelmed with data, speculation, theories, opinions.
Does so much information also lead to mistrust?
In the U.S., many believe that reports of infections and deaths are exaggerated, that the virus is really no worse than any other flu and is being used to undermine Trump’s reelection in November. So why not go to that party, attend that wedding, travel to the beach?
Others are convinced that the data are being manipulated to minimize the severity of the disease. More deaths than reported are caused by the pandemic, if not directly by the virus, then indirectly when people are too afraid of infection to seek treatment for other conditions.
Navigating a safe path through a shifting Covid-19 landscape is making us all as anxious as Loth’s student appears with his hair standing on end and his eyes glued to the screen in surprise or fear.
For several generations, the severity of the 1918 flu seemed to have been forgotten. In discussions of World War I, it was rarely mentioned although it caused more deaths than the fighting. Since Spain was neutral, the press there first reported on the disease, leading to its being misnomered the “Spanish flu.”
Given the barrage of commentary we see on our screens every day, it doesn’t look like this pandemic can be forgotten so quickly.
What lessons can we take from the crisis we are living through?
That misinformation can be as dangerous as censorship? Several have already died from drinking bleach and hand sanitizer.
That fear and anxiety lead to bad decisions? Reopening bars has led to clusters of infections.
That constant skepticism can be paralyzing?
Conflict over interpretations of data is inevitable since our world is rife with competing interests. It’s just as easy now as in 1918 to outsource blame. Think of those who insist on calling Covid-19 the China flu.
As many have pointed out, this coronavirus is “novel”; scientists and epidemiologists are still trying to understand its source, spread, effects.
I’m as fascinated by news about the virus. as anyone else, eagerly read the reports every day, but sometimes I just want to turn off my computer, go for a walk, looking for another aspect of the “real world” on which to meditate.
