We may sel­dom step out­side the box of our re­al­i­ty to no­tice, but over the past three decades, there have been ma­jor fo­cus­ing events that have changed the way we live our lives. From 9/11 to Covid-19, we can no longer say such events we have on­ly read about in our his­to­ry books. We’ve ac­tu­al­ly lived through these events that have changed our lives and for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to come. For the past five months dur­ing this Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, Pub­lic Health mea­sures to pre­vent in­fec­tion spread, that have ex­ist­ed with the pub­lic be­ing un­aware of them, now form the ba­sis on which we live our lives. It is in­deed an un­com­fort­able po­si­tion to ex­ist in, but if we do not learn from this ex­pe­ri­ence, mankind’s fu­ture looks quite bleak.

Cur­rent­ly, the non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mea­sure of so­cial/phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing dic­tates the way we con­duct our day to day busi­ness. They were im­ple­ment­ed be­fore the clo­sure of non-es­sen­tial busi­ness and con­tin­ued in­to lock­down. Re­cent­ly, they have be­gun to be roll­backed back. Keep­ing our fin­gers crossed, for the sake of con­tin­ued open­ing up the econ­o­my, there have been no new cas­es of Covid-19 and deaths have re­mained at eight, over the past month. How­ev­er, au­thor­i­ties warn that it would be some time be­fore things re­turn to nor­mal if they ever do, and at best, a “new nor­mal” will have to be ad­just­ed to, based on so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures.

So­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures may seem a bit ex­treme now. But, in fact, some sem­blance of these should ex­ist dur­ing flu sea­son as guid­ed by pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion from pub­lic health of­fi­cials and the Min­istry of Health (MOH). Wash­ing hands reg­u­lar­ly, clean­ing and dis­in­fect­ing fre­quent­ly touched ar­eas and keep­ing away from sick in­di­vid­u­als, are not new mea­sures, and are es­tab­lished mea­sures that are ef­fec­tive to pre­vent con­tract­ing the com­mon cold dur­ing flu sea­son. We must re­mem­ber the vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als high­light­ed dur­ing this Covid-19 pan­dem­ic are al­so vul­ner­a­ble to com­pli­ca­tions and death if they al­so con­tract the flu. With the ex­pe­ri­ence of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, those of us in health­care hope that a be­hav­iour change would be achieved for the bet­ter. Bet­ter hy­giene prac­tices would mean re­duced mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty from the flu and less cost to the state in the long run.

The fact is that Covid-19 will not dis­ap­pear. Un­til we get a vac­cine, it is here to stay at some lev­el of in­ci­dence and preva­lence in the in­ter­na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. We know its mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty rate, which is more than the flu, can cost us re­sources and lives if it is al­lowed to get out of con­trol. So, the aim of flat­ten­ing the curve still re­mains our best de­fence. Even though in T&T there seems to be no in­crease in preva­lence and a cur­rent ap­prox­i­mate in­ci­dence rate of ze­ro, health­care au­thor­i­ties are be­ing very cau­tious not to tip the scales. Covid-19 is high­ly con­ta­gious. All it takes is one cough or sneeze by an in­fect­ed per­son to be­gin an ex­po­nen­tial spread with­in a con­text ab­sent of so­cial dis­tanc­ing. Tip­ping the scales means ex­po­nen­tial spread that puts our health­care ca­pac­i­ty at risk of be­ing over­whelmed.

Thus, so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­mains the or­der of the day:

Avoid ven­tur­ing out if pos­si­ble

Wear a face mask when you are in the pub­lic

Keep six feet away from oth­ers in pub­lic

Don’t gath­er or con­gre­gate

This dic­tates our ac­tions if we have to be at work, dur­ing shop­ping or con­duct­ing any busi­ness that re­quires us to leave home. Long lines of peo­ple with in­di­vid­u­als wear­ing face masks and be­ing six feet apart have be­come the norm at gro­ceries, restau­rants, banks, pub­lic util­i­ty of­fices and oth­er places of busi­ness. It is dif­fi­cult to tell how far in the fu­ture this will last. But it re­mains a “new nor­mal” nonethe­less that re­duces the like­li­hood of spread.

One in­dus­try se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed is trav­el. Even though in T&T the sit­u­a­tion seems to be look­ing pos­i­tive re­gard­ing spread, we must re­mem­ber that we ex­ist in a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty where the ex­pe­ri­ence may not be the same. Open­ing up our bor­ders re­mains one of the last so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures to be lift­ed de­pend­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion with re­gard to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. T&T is a so­ci­ety where the work­ing class has be­come ac­cus­tomed to af­ford­able hol­i­day deals that are part of our cul­ture. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, with the cur­rent pan­dem­ic and no sight of its end, stay­ca­tions may be the “new norm”. Even these in them­selves have been re­de­fined. Part of a trop­i­cal lifestyle, es­pe­cial­ly around this time of year is go­ing out to beach­es, hikes, walks, vis­it­ing our sis­ter isle, go­ing out for a meal etc. With the im­ple­men­ta­tion of so­cial dis­tanc­ing, we see our world get­ting small­er and small­er due to our lim­it­ed ac­cess. How­ev­er, we have found our­selves at home with more time to spend with fam­i­ly and more time to bond. So­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures have forced us to be with each oth­er and cen­tre our lives around this due to ne­ces­si­ty. How­ev­er, it de­pends on our liv­ing sit­u­a­tion, our ex­ist­ing fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships and in­di­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties whether these con­di­tions may be ther­a­peu­tic or detri­men­tal to our well-be­ing.

It is said that there is a sil­ver lin­ing in every cloud and ne­ces­si­ty is the moth­er of in­ven­tion. Dur­ing this pan­dem­ic cloud, we have been forced, out of ne­ces­si­ty, to work from home, con­duct meet­ings us­ing on­line plat­forms and com­mu­ni­cate with dis­tant loved ones via so­cial me­dia and con­fer­ence calls. This has led to peo­ple be­ing more pro­duc­tive, re­con­nect­ing with fam­i­ly abroad, re­duced traf­fic on the roads, re­duced pol­lu­tion, de­cen­tral­iza­tion, re­duc­tion in stress (a ma­jor so­cial de­ter­mi­nant of health) and mind­ful­ness in the sit­u­a­tion of gloom. These have formed ma­jor com­po­nents of our “new nor­mal” and if any­thing, are more healthy be­hav­iour changes com­pared to what we have prac­tised pre­vi­ous­ly. The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic may not be the best sit­u­a­tion for hu­man­i­ty, but maybe it is the awak­en­ing we need­ed to step out of the box and re­al­ly look at the di­rec­tion in which our lives are head­ed.

Dr Visham Bhimull

Pri­ma­ry Care Physi­cian

MBBS (UWI)

Diplo­ma in Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine (UWI)