Positives, Negatives, and Imagining a Better Post-Pandemic World
By Emma Frances Bloomfield
The pandemic has changed many things about our friends, family, relationships, and everyday lives. As we struggle with the changes and the many negatives, I cannot help but think there have been great positives as well over this past year and a half. With full acknowledgement that the positives come from my own privilege, I hope that such reflections can prompt consideration of what we want a “post-COVID-19” society to look like and question the “normal” ways society has been operating. Many of the positives that have come from COVID-19 for me have been, ironically, in my relationships. Even as we socially distance and put space between those otherwise closest to us, I have found renewed physical and virtual closeness with my friends and family. My husband, Paul, and I are in a long-distance relationship. Since we started dating, we have lived in different states through high school, college, graduate school, our first jobs, and currently. While we were some of the shortest distance away in pre-pandemic 2020 (Las Vegas, Nevada to Berkeley, California), it is incredibly difficult to have a sense of home, place, and family without your spouse physically with you.
One of the benefits of the pandemic has been having Paul with me every day due to the flexibility of remote work. In our 15-year relationship, this is something I could never count on – being in the same place. It was rare for us to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries on their exact day and even rarer to have extended periods of time together. Additionally, we had to share our time together with driving, flying, and airport living. These are pre-pandemic experiences I am thrilled to have been without for 18 months. While I have now had two pandemic birthdays, I can also say that I have celebrated both of them (on their actual day!) with my husband by my side.
In addition to my husband, I have felt closer to my immediate family, who are in Philadelphia, Austin, and Phoenix. Instead of trips where we all meet a few times a year for holidays, we have now regularly met on Zoom every Thursday for an entire year. That is over 50 conversations with my entire family that would have otherwise not happened or would have been condensed into individual phone calls or weekend trips. The need for regular check-ins about physical health and mental well-being at the beginning of the pandemic have now evolved into a family ritual that I think will continue even after we can travel safely again. The pandemic forced us to realize that we were not communicating as much as we wanted to or as much as we should because we took for granted that the communication was possible. With our relationships more precarious and our lives much more uncertain, the weekly Zoom calls served to tether us and reassure us that we would all be reunited eventually.
In these tumultuous times, of course things are not all positive, especially when it comes to family and our communities. We have lost so many people – 600,000 lives in the United States and nearing 4 million globally. Uncertainties at the beginning of the pandemic regarding how it spread and how at risk we all were have created COVID-fatigue and skepticism of certain authorities. The polarization of the virus as a measure of political loyalty has also led to strain on our sense of community and with our family relationships. COVID-19 is a communicable disease, which means that it spreads and transfers to others. Strangers and even friends and family members become potential vectors for disease spread, heightening our worries and anxieties about getting sick ourselves or imperiling those we care about with our presence.
Differing opinions on appropriate protocols and the severity of COVID-19 has led to family and community strife. In my own family, certain members are unwilling to get the vaccine, are highly skeptical of it, and have variably adopted mask-wearing. I research divisive, controversial topics and how to have productive conversations about them – and sometimes I struggle to get through to family members and friends about the importance of vaccination and mask-wearing.
Based on my research and the research of others, one factor that is incredibly influential in the success of these conversations is being open to listening to one another and finding common ground. Unfortunately, COVID-19 became extremely polarized and linked to one’s personal identity, which makes starting conversations and keeping them going immensely challenging. There is additional pressure and risk in talking to family and friends about these topics because the conversations put the relationship at risk—relationships we don’t want to lose. The irony is, of course, that a failure to convince our loved ones of the importance of social distancing, masking, and getting vaccinated means that we may lose them more permanently than just through weakened relationships.
When and how to broach these topics can be anxiety-producing, and I don’t want to undersell how difficult they are. But, as a communication scholar, I do want to encourage people to engage in dialogue with others about our health and well-being, personally and societally, so we can see each other again and revisit the things we love about being together. Emphasizing those shared values and experiences, talking about why you personally made the health decisions that you did, and showing genuine care for your family members can help.
It is my hope that we can keep some of the positives from COVID-19 in terms of increased communication, attention to accessibility and flexibility in remote work, and a community-first mindset, while also imagining what things from pre-pandemic life we want to leave behind. The pandemic and vaccination rollouts highlight how marginalized communities have been the most impacted in terms of health outcomes but have not received proportionate access to vaccination and health care. Especially in tying health care to employment, the pandemic should have us all questioning how the structures we have in place reproduce hierarchies and privilege instead of creating communal solutions and universal benefits.
As herd immunity comes within reach, it may be tempting to let our guard down, give in to COVID-19 fatigue, and abandon our sense of collective responsibility. But, we are very much still in the COVID-19 pandemic, to say nothing of the other pandemics of climate change, racism, and economic inequality that still plague us. Thus, we must remain vigilant, never complacent, and use this time as valuable insight into what works, what doesn’t, what community really means, and what community we want to build together.
Photo/University of Nevada, Las Vegas, faculty headshot courtesy of Emma Bloomfield.
Emma Frances Bloomfield (Ph.D., University of Southern California) researches the rhetoric of science and environmental communication, particularly in regards to climate change, human origins, religion, and the body. Her book, Communication Strategies for Engaging Climate Skeptics: Religion and the Environment (Routledge, 2019), explores productive strategies for engaging people in climate change conversations.
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