The pandemic isn’t over yet: we still have so much to unlearn
Yesterday I held my first face-to-face class since the beginning of March. There were a few students in class, but most attended from their homes through Zoom, many tables were marked empty with an X, there were also methacrylate screens along the front row, thermal imaging cameras at the door, hydroalcoholic gel dispensers everywhere, additional cameras and monitors in the classrooms: in other words, nothing remotely like the normality of just a few months ago.
I teach at IE University, an institution that has taken security measures extremely seriously and has the resources to install everything that needs to be installed. I’ve left my house, got in my car, parked a few feet from the door, and given my class. No more problems, no fears or perception of danger. But if I come out of that environment and look around, and what I see does anything but calm me down: people behaving as if “it’s all over”, with their masks half-on, hanging from an ear or wrapped round their arm, going to parties… and infection figures on the rise again.
No, this isn’t over. I don’t want to be a Cassandra, but this pandemic has plenty of life left in it yet. We’re far from ready for a second phase: we’re still deep in the first. The World Health Organization says infections are still going up, especially in some countries. The map above…
