Sylvia's Journal

For those of us who are in place of privilege, at first there was some elation about the new normal: finally, you can bring your dog to work, kids happy to see more of mom, no need to commute, no need to dress up, etc. 

But now, the grimness of what we are in the middle of, is coming into full view, especially with what is happening in Africa and Asia. If the US is predicting about 200,000 more death, that is 198,000 more than we already have, then what about Africa, where the number of infected people is only now becoming visible?

I am coaching someone who lives in an African country that is now in total lockdown. No doubt, more of such drastic measures will be taken across the continent. Public and private transportation has come to a halt. If you are delivering critical services (which my coachee’s project does – serving people with HIV) you need forms that allow you to be on the road. That process may have been fairly easy to implement in France (just download a form, print it and fill it in).

Those who have a computer, a printer and an internet connection at home, may be able to handle this.  As I follow the thread of consequences of the lockdowns in Africa I fear people whose lives depend on consistent delivery of drugs, for whatever condition, will either not be able to come to the place where they get their drugs, or the drugs won’t make it to those places as the entire supply chain is compromised. 

Here in the US we are given numbers and graphs that count only COVID19 deaths, which are still relatively minor compared to other causes of death. I fear that these other causes of death, especially in the underserved countries of the world, will start to rise astronomically as basic services become less and less accessible due to missing drugs, equipment, sick service providers and a lack of transport options.

The coronavirus has changed my perspective on the other scary viruses that have surfaced in recent years, infections that now seem so much easier to prevent: you won’t get infected with HIV if you don’t have unprotected sex; you won’t get Ebola if you don’t touch a sick person’s body fluids. These behavior changes now seems so much easier to manage, even though we didn’t think so at the time.