COVID-19 is one big lesson in cognitive dissonance…
Or, to put it bluntly, it’s a huge mindscrew.
There’s no other apt way to capture how this virus has messed with my head.
At the height of the lockdown, I was anxious about the simplest necessities. After going to the grocery store, I’d lay in bed at 2 a.m. worrying if I had exposed my children to the virus and if I forgot to Clorox-wipe down that gallon of milk. Add to that the extra stress and annoyance of balancing remote work and online learning… constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop and one of us to get sick.
And on the flipside, I was thoroughly enjoying the extra time with my family… Not having to commute each day gave me a few extra hours of quality time. And I felt relief that we were all so healthy, and blessed that my husband and I both still had jobs.
I’d go through this range of emotions almost daily. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a 1936 essay in Esquire magazine…
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
I have the opposing ideas down pat. The “ability to function” part was more difficult…
And as time went on, I developed a level of skepticism toward anything COVID-related. Is the media hyping it up?
And as time went on, I developed a level of skepticism toward anything COVID-related. Is the media hyping it up?
And the news only intensifies my conflicted feelings toward the coronavirus…
There was the case in Missouri of two COVID-symptomatic hair stylists who worked on clients in a reopened Great Clips and potentially infected 140 people. Yet, weeks later, none of the exposed people had symptoms or tested positive for the virus. Zero.
How is that possible? Are we to assume everyone wore masks and did so correctly for the entire time they were there, and that every single client, who were each in very close proximity to two people sick with COVID-19, washed their hands or used sanitizer… eliminating any possibility they could catch the virus? Call me a skeptic, but my eyebrows are raised over this one.
But then there’s the tragic story of Broadway actor Nick Cordero who, after a terrible 96-day struggle, just died of COVID-19. Nick was an otherwise healthy 41-year-old with no pre-existing conditions who leaves behind a devastated wife and young son.
News articles reported on his recovery and the world rallied behind his journey, even after the virus caused his leg to be amputated and put him on a transplant list for new lungs.
It’s hard to wrap my head around the disparity between this stark reality of the pandemic and online images of Florida spring-breakers, who said “screw you” to COVID-19 and partied en masse… most of them seemingly fine with no consequences.
School districts across the country are in planning mode right now, but it’s very unlikely public schools in this area will resume in the fall anywhere close to the normal we once knew. Following the CDC guidance is next to impossible… Class sizes would need to be cut in half to even attempt the social-distancing and sanitation rules.
And a five-year-old in a face mask for 8 hours? Forget it. I have two boys and every time I’ve visited their elementary school – a veritable petri dish on a good, pre-COVID-19 day – I’d spy several kids with fingers in their noses, thumbs in their mouths, or vice versa.
So that leaves us with kids returning (at best) part-time… And the rest of their education being online learning at home. Which my children just did for four months. Speaking as a full-time working parent married to another full-time working parent… please no. Not again. We barely crossed the finish line to the last day of school on June 19…
A recent New York Times op-ed piece, “In the COVID-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both,” went viral for the truths it speaks to so many parents out there.
Deb Perelman writes:
We are not burned out because life is hard this year. We are burned out because we are being rolled over by the wheels of an economy that has bafflingly declared working parents inessential.
But last week, Rolling Stone pointed out it isn’t really everyone that “can’t have both.” It’s specifically mothers… Its article, “Coronavirus Is Killing the Working Mother,” makes an interesting point:
Although much valuable discussion has been devoted to how COVID-19 has exposed the disparities in class, gender, and income, the parenting issue intersects with all three of those things, yet receives relatively little attention.
Let me also clarify that I’m extremely fortunate that my company is so flexible… I’m lucky I kept my job during the pandemic, and that it’s something I can do from home. But the work still has to get done… And so does school. And life. There’s only 24 hours in a day.
But then I feel guilty desperately wishing my children would return to school. What if they get sick? Really sick? Here comes that cognitive dissonance again…
Generally speaking, evidence so far shows children are far less vulnerable than adults and not seriously affected by COVID-19. And kids being around each other, swapping germs, will only help herd immunity. So why did we close schools to begin with?
School closures in the past may have helped curb the spread of the flu, but COVID is very different from influenza. As reported on the BBC’s website, data from the 2003 SARS outbreak (in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore) suggest that closing schools did not contribute to the control of the epidemic. And recent studies of the current COVID-19 outbreak theorize that school closures would only prevent 2% to 4% of deaths. That’s less than other social-distancing and preventative methods.
The many downsides of shutting down schools nationwide may far outweigh the slim chances it helped slow the spread – issues including homeless youths having nowhere to go, interrupted programs that provide lunches to more than 30 million children and breakfast to 11 million, disrupted education and child development, lack of Internet and online resources for many families, not to mention the additional burden it places on working parents trying to finagle their own new quarantined work situation (or wage-worker/essential parents who had to scramble to find childcare).
And yet, doesn’t even one preventable death of a child make it all worth it? If that child is yours, I’d argue yes…
And yet, doesn’t even one preventable death of a child make it all worth it? If that child is yours, I’d argue yes… I know the rational side would be up in arms at this. But say that intangible COVID-19 young fatality you read about online suddenly hits very close to home… your own son or daughter… The tables have suddenly flipped, and I’d bet closing schools until we have a verified vaccine wouldn’t even seem that extreme.
And where does that leave me? A mother who has followed all the rules… We stayed home, despite my kids’ protests, and missed Easter with cousins and Mother’s Day brunch. We wore the masks. We hyper-cleaned everything each time we came inside. I shoved down my anxiety so we could get through online learning while balancing remote work… And every morning that we all woke up fever-free was a good day.
I don’t know what school will look like in the fall, and I don’t envy the people who need to make those decisions. I want my kids to be safe… I also want them to be taught by teachers and socialize with friends and play sports.
I think I, like so many others, want life to return to the way it was… And I’m not sure it ever will.
