Social perspective of a pandemic situation
Social perspective of a pandemic situation
This week we finally got our jab and it was a freeing feeling mixed with the hint of privilege, to be able to get exactly that precious one vaccine, which we waited for from the beginning. Being a Molecular biologist in my life brought many disadvantages, one of them is knowing about the vaccine content in detail, approving the majority bit picking only suitable for environmentalists. And now, it is finally here, we got our fist jab.
First, there was a pain in the arm muscle, then some kind of loss of focus during that first day and calming feeling, maybe because the waiting for the vaccine came to its end. Later in the evening, I felt confusion was stronger and couldn’t fall asleep until very late.
The next day my head was burning but no signs of temperature when measured, my skin was sensitive to touch, exactly like it is when we get chills. Some headache, on the top of my head, stopped me from making a ponytail or a bun of my hair, which I often do while in the house.
That same day my 3y old daughter, who was not vaccinated but also had a covid infection 5 months ago, the same time when I and her father had, felt very irritated, nervous, and had one sensitive eye. We concluded that her stage is from being a lot around the kids these days since she was celebrating her birthday.
The poor child was socially strained little after her first birthday, for that was the time when pandemics began. It made me think about how social perspective affected all of us, including the youngest. I always first think about my mother who is a senior living alone in one part of the city, being alone for weeks now, without human touch. Maybe being mature is helping people to understand this situation better than those little children, who haven’t seen any other kids for months. Growing fast in such conditions will affect their social life.
Last week one of the greatest scientific magazines-Nature, announced an interesting article about fruit flies. There was written that fruit flies are social beings and when feeling lonely, they overeat and then lose sleep. It seems like we have something in common.. these days the majority will find pleasure in eating and just a few of them
involve indoor activities in their routine. We passed that point, my small family seems to went through all these specific points of a pandemic: being socially strained, very careful about not getting infected, that getting a virus and for me going through conscience questioning, fear for my loved ones, that overcoming the infection without major losses (that we know about), feeling freedom and finally getting a jab 5 months later.
Are we safe now? Can we go back to “normal” social life, can our daughter now be normally sick sometimes because she got it in a play with other kids. Can we stop finding simple pleasures in food and stop overeating, losing sleep etc? Are we not humans again now after a long time being like Drosophila melanogaster, a fruit fly?:)
