The Day the World Stopped

It wasn’t one day in particular, but it felt like the world came to a screeching halt all at once.

We’d been hearing reports from China about the Covid-19 outbreak, but most of us didn’t pay much attention to it. Partly because the present administration didn’t heed the warnings or take it seriously, but that’s a topic for another post.

Gradually, we began to see the cascading effect of countries being infected all over Asia, then Europe, and then it came to us. At first, we didn’t think it would be that bad. After all, our country is the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth and we’ve successfully stopped diseases like Ebola from spreading, so why would this be any different? Because it is. For more reasons than can be explained in one article, the world was unprepared for the rapid spread of this virus. But it did show us how interconnected we are, and how important it is for our country not to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

"Suddenly, the most bustling, busy cities on earth became silent and desolate. The images of empty streets devoid of all humans in Paris, London and New York were eerie."

They reminded me of a TV series I saw on The History Channel titled, “Life After People”. The series asked the question “What would happen if every human on Earth disappeared?” It showed how our buildings and infrastructure would crumble without daily maintenance, but nature would thrive without pollutants being pumped into our environment daily.

We can see signs of this happening already. The Himalayas are visible for the first time in decades in India. Jellyfish are swimming in the clearer waters of the Venice canals. Animals are napping on the empty roads in the game parks of Africa, and Los Angeles is less polluted than it has been in years and is now one of the cleanest major cities in the world.

Will we learn anything from this? I’m not overly optimistic that we will. But my hope is that this pandemic has humbled us and taught us that we are all equal, and that we are all sharing the planet for a short amount of time. Let’s try not to destroy it while we’re here.