Fang Gao, VHC Visiting Scholar

 

 It has been almost four months since we were quarantined at home at the end of March, and we're in a state we never thought we'd be in before. "At first, no one cared about the disaster. It's a fire, it's a drought, it's the extinction of a species, it's the destruction of a city until it affects everyone." This is a line from a movie that I never thought would come true in 2020. Coronavirus fatalities are mounting. Slowly enveloped in fear, humanity in the face of nature is fragile, vulnerable.

 At such a unique time, I had many unique experiences in foreign countries that I had never had in my life. Disasters have opened our eyes to vulnerability. We live within fragile materiality that renders us constantly susceptible to change, both positive and negative, in our bodily and our social circumstances. Coronavirus leads to negative change. As the epidemic becomes more and more severe, we begin to feel stressed and anxious, and many feel powerless in the face of one fresh death after another. The epidemic has had an unexpected impact on all of us, leaving our culture and politics vulnerable and powerless in the face of life and death.

 I have seen the ugly side of human nature: the allegation of the “Chinese virus” causes frequent incidents of attacking and insulting Asians. The news about “Chinese student attacked for wearing a face mask” is frequently reported. The death of Floyd brought me face to face with the racial conflicts in American society. It all made me feel terrible. I also saw the good side of human nature, especially the hard-working medical staff. Nurses crying in New York hospitals, experts trying to spread the word about proper prevention... We want to say: Thank you. I live in a community where life is still peaceful and people are nice and friendly. But in supermarkets, restaurants, parks, everyone silently put on masks. It amazes me how quickly people in places with anti-masked laws compromise their convention.

 The epidemic has made me pay more attention to the warmth of my family. Staying in a foreign country, due to a large number of cancellations of flights and local quarantine of the epidemic, I feel more and more that family is the warmest harbor, is the habitat of the soul. Maybe formal discussion always says that family brings us a lot of economic and resource support. In the present process, what I appreciate and cherish more is the spiritual support of my family. It is precisely because the family acts as a bond that society is able to maintain a stable state.

 The outbreak of COVID-19 has shaken the global finance, economy, employment, and global supply chain. The global stock market crash appeared to have been caused by the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic to Europe and the US, but the false boom in the stock market exposed its vulnerability to the epidemic.

 The virus will not go away by itself just as national rejuvenation will not happen by itself. It must be done by real efforts. It is of no benefit to the government to deal with the epidemic from a political and re-election perspective. What people need are practical resources: medical care and medical facilities, such as clinics, hospitals, laboratories, ambulances, testing facilities, and large quantities of food and daily necessities. Resources are limited and the coordinated allocation of government is important. For each of us, life is so precious that we have to be responsible for ourselves as well as those around us. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.