I came across a statement in some article stating that social isolation is thought to be as deadly as…
smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Of course, this is a dumb analogy to make but it does have some level of truth. The necessary lockdowns have affected people disproportionately in many different ways. For some people it has been a blessing – these are the types whose salary was not affected, they got to sit at home and fluff around acting like they’re doing “hard” work. Some other people were only inconvenienced in a minor way – salary intact and / or provision of “emergency” supplementary funds and fluffing about. However, for non-essential small business owners and people who work for these small businesses it is a different story. Some have been absolutely crushed – devastated. In short, people have been affected in disparate ways.
One group of people I can talk about with some confidence are students – students studying at our tertiary institutions. Apart from a sub-optimal online learning experience, many who live alone in student apartments have lost he social interaction they need by attending campus and after-hours social activities with friends. There is no question that many tertiary students, particularly international students, have suffered during this pandemic. In my >20 years of teaching, I have never encountered so many requests for extensions due to mental health issues; it is a very high proportion and it is evident that these are real issues.
There are University students, second year, that have never attended campus – some will complete their three-year degrees next year without having a proper campus experience. The worst is for students that require extensive practical training – science, medicine and related health fields; there are some skills that are impossible to teach online. The pandemic has done a lot of damage and it will be interesting to see how the “pandemic” kids fair in years to come because, apart from the “practical skills” which are necessary, social interactions, participation in clubs, and other University events are critical for proper development.
Anyway, there is no doubt that COVID-19 and associated lockdowns have cause serious mental health issues. In Melbourne, in a couple of days, we will win – we will be the most “lockdowned” major city in the world! There really wasn’t any other choice, given our ambition for initially COVID-0 and now to try an contain the delta variant. Like other places in the world there is a rush to vaccinate and to mandate vaccination, when the time is right there will be an opening day in the month or so.
So, whether we like it or not, we going to have to live COVID-19; we can safely say that it will become an endemic “cold”. We couldn’t beat the delta 2 variant even with months of the strictest level lockdowns – our seven-day average is well over 1,000 new cases per day. It looks like the new plan is – keep it together for another few weeks, push (force) vaccination to as high a rate as possible, open up, and hope for the best. [Case will probably skyrocket but at last most people will be protected from severe disease].
Let’s see!
Until next time …