Yesterday, the first day of the easing of Singapore's eight-week Circuit Breaker (CB or lockdown as it is referred to in some countries), was an in-camp day for my son. So, I rose with the farmers, showered, made him breakfast to eat in the car, and took a shopping list with me for an early morning supermarket trip, just in case.
What struck me immediately at 6am was the ambient human noise that had been lacking for the past two months. Drowning out the sounds of the early morning fauna rise, were the shouts of the father next door, no doubt aimed at his children, the clatter of pots and dishes and the grumble of car engines as a convoy left our estate to accompany the first wave of children on their return to school. Albeit, a staggered year and morning start time. Suddenly, there were cars on the road, tail lights that had been absent reclaimed their right to twinkle in the half light. I even began to feel sorry for the stray MAMILS trying to enjoy their now habitual early morning pedal. Queues sat like some motionless python that had just eaten, waiting their turn to drive into the school drop-off zones.
Yes, it seemed like morning traffic was making its re-entry with a vengeance. I sighed, and drove past the supermarket, deciding that I would exercise instead. A far healthier option than polluting the neighbourhood while I waited to circumnavigate the school queue. But, that was not better. The road outside our estate was scattered with school buses on either side of the road, which made driving rather like a game. Parents adjusted their kids' masks as each one was lined up, registered and then allowed on the school bus. The entrance thronged with a fruit salad of residential races, each one with their own interpretation of mask-wearing. Hardly fitting role models for their children, and most probably oblivious to the indefinite mandatory wearing of masks outside that came into force on the evening of 1st June. Similarly to the UK, countries in Europe, the US and Australia, the easing of the lockdown was interpreted as an easing of restrictions and a return to individual freedoms.
Discarded masks litter the grass and flowerbeds I pass on my morning walk & run. Is this a symbol that people are now adopting to reject the oppression of two months of restrictions? Or, is it an innate issue with humans, that whenever they can, and in particular when they go to the beach in Dorset, UK, they suffer from amnesia respect?
At this point, I could launch myself into a tireless tirade about why we need to wear masks, how to wear a mask properly - which includes pulling it over your nose and using the metal strip in the disposable version to semi fix it in to place. It protects other people from you! Why you? because the nature of the virus is such that you don't know that you have it until you have infected a few people over the two days prior to the onset of symptoms. I could rattle on about why we should wash our hands every two hours, or at least keep a bottle of hand sanitiser handy (what a terrible pun), the rationale behind the need keep a safe distance, to not go out if we are sick, and by that show a little more respect for our fellow citizens/neighbours. Why after eight long weeks of practise (which some still failed to master), have so many forgotten what they learnt? ignore what is mandated? and believe that life goes back to normal?
Life will never be the normal that we were so comfortable allowing to drive us, rather than us driving the normal. There are articles about the "new normal", which seems an oxymoron to me, about the return to normal, the need to avoid returning to the old normal, and how life will change - as if it hasn't already, how jobs will no longer be tied to where you live. Everyone has an opinion. An opinion and a view of what life will be like. These are the new-post-COVID-19-lockdown futurists. I wonder who, out of all those crystal ball readers will provide the reality?
The schools are gradually reestablishing a routine for students, primary and secondary, many of whom had adapted phenomenally well to home-based learning, but so many who have struggled, feeling directionless and unsupported, as I have written about before.