Suzanne Harrington: By 2024, we will all be post-viral flappers, doing the 21st century of the Charleston
Yay! Three more days and 2020 will formally be history. Goodbye then to a year the world got punched in the throat by a particle one 10,000th of a millimetre in diameter, a particle that showed our inability to do exponential growth maths — how one tiny thing can double and double and double — and how the utter incompetence of so many so-called leaders led to so many things being so much worse than was necessary.
Not Ireland. Ireland went ninja on the particle so that while relatively few people died compared with those countries led by donkeys, many cracked up from the prevention processes. Mental health suffered to safeguard physical health.
But hang on to your hand sanitiser while standing over there by an open window — there is good news. There is always good news. This is the first plague in history that has been genome sequenced in real-time, that has had a vaccine developed at warp speed, and that will not be left to just die out naturally, as have all other past plagues, which wipe humans out before eventually fading away of their own accord. Otherwise, we’d still be bubonic. There is an end in sight, expediated by science.
Make way, then, for another Roaring Twenties. According to Yale social epidemiologist Nicholas Christakis, during pandemics, we become more God-bothery, more risk-averse, more abstemious, less spendy. Although we didn’t really need a Yale social epidemiologist to tell us that because we have been living it all year; it won’t be long before random words like banana bread, cocooning, and 5km trigger flashbacks and PTSD. 2020 has been the year of conspiracy theorists, anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers. Those who think Bill Gates wants to microchip us, with the help of Chinese 5G bats.
It has been a year — before you ever look at its batshit politics, with a mad orange loser refusing to leave office in the US as his mad lawyer literally melts on live television — of widespread insanity. Of people screaming at each other on social media, of unsubstantiated madness being touted as reasonable fact. Of Brexit being shown to be the insane nonsense it is, as a slew of EU countries take control of their borders overnight via press releases. Turns out we are not as rational as we’d like to believe. That we are all a 5km radius from being mad as a box of frogs.
We are, however, considerably more resilient than previously realised. By 2024, we will all be post-viral flappers doing the 21st century of the Charleston. “People will relentlessly seek out social interactions,” says Nicholas Christakis. There will be “sexual licentiousness” and a “reverse of religiosity”, as we party and spend money like coked-up rodents at Disneyland. I must say I am hugely looking forward to this. It sounds splendid. Meanwhile, hang onto your mask and your marbles, and happy 2021.
