obvert
Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011 From: PDX (and now) London, UK Status: offline
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With this pandemic still rising in some parts of the world, and with many countries now considering how to reopen, a new article from the Guardian espouses a healthy pessimism may help us prepare. I feel so much better now. Well, I don't really. The idea of so much suffering everywhere is not pleasant, and if this is going to keep us from normality for a long time, it's going to be hard on everyone. We do have to come to terms with acceptance though, that this has changed our world irrevocably. It will get better, but in fits and starts. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/05/coronavirus-uncertainty-how-to-prepare Last week, Chris Whitty, the UK chief medical adviser, said that social distancing would have to continue at least all year, while Canadians have been told to expect limits on travel and gatherings for likely around a year and a half. Donald Trump recently admitted that America’s pandemic guidelines – which he initially claimed would be null by Easter – would likely remain into summer and, enigmatically, “beyond that”. Some regions are considering how to gradually reopen their economies, yet the experiences of Asian countries where infections surged as restrictions eased serve as cautionary tales. Dozens of experts have attested there will be no quick return to our previous lives. Now that we are no longer at the beginning of this pandemic but in the seemingly interminable middle, the more relevant question to ask is not “when will this end?” but “how can we cope with this dragging on?” One healthy thing you can do is to pre-emptively curb disappointment by readjusting your horizons, says Dr Amelia Aldao, a psychologist specializing in anxiety. Some of us may still have our hopes fixed to an event in the future – a July wedding we half-expect to attend, or a September getaway we think might just work out - and that can be problematic, says Aldao. “The way things are shaping up, there’s a lot of uncertainty – what’s going to be open? Is there going to be a second wave [of outbreaks]?” We just don’t know.
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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
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