Random dystopian fantasizing on the post-vaccine world
Like many in the lockdown-sceptic community, I sometimes fall prey to reverse doomerism (less often, I must say, since I started a course of antidepressants. Yes, lockdowns did this to me. No, it is not the case that “we don’t know” whether it would have happened in the absence of lockdowns: it wouldn’t). In the lucid moments, I have enough self-awareness to recognize that my fears that we’ll stay in some form of lockdown forever (i.e. for our lifetimes, for those of us who are middle-aged) are probably unfounded. In the last few days, though, I have been imagining a semi-plausible, semi-dystopian, post-vaccinefuture where Covid containment measures are for the most part voluntary but end up divided along the class axis. Covid containment stops being law and becomes habitus, good manners, etiquette. So you won’t get a fine, even less so go to jail, for not following Covid containment rules. But not following them might damage your status in the eyes of your peers, it might make you an undesirable, it might even make you lose things like career opportunities or — in the absolutely most extreme cases — your job.
Let’s start with the extremes first. The really rich will probably not give a damn. Those with a public presence will pay lip service to containment on their social media — if containment is something their target audience sees as desirable; might not be in all cases — , but then they’ll keep flying in their private jets, having private parties, etc. The working classes won’t care a great deal either. They’ll flock back to the high street, to the pubs, to the shopping centres, to the football stadiums. It has been my experience throughout this whole malarkey that the more working class a person is — by virtue of their job, or of having a working class origin, broadly understood — , the less doubt he or she has harboured that normal should and will return.
The middle class, of course, is the one that will turn Covid containment into one more of its defining traints. It will, of course, not be completely uniform. I anticipate that, in the UK, the right-wing middle-class will be less keen on this particular brand of performativity than the left-wing one. It might also vary by profession. I am not sure, for example, whether I can imagine lawyers buying into the whole containment thing (but then, I don’t know much about lawyers). Still, I think we can safely say what one of the most zealous professions will be. You guessed right: academia.
Let’s try to imagine how it would all pan out. First of all, I don’t think teaching would go completely online. University leaders are always keen to virtue-signal, but they are also not stupid and they know that a significant percentage of their students would simply skip university if it was all online — not to mention that they would lose income from university accommodation and other stuff. Teaching staff — particularly the younger ones, the ones who have bought more keenly into containment, even though they are the less at-risk — will put up a fight. “I don’t want to die!”, “It’s not SAFE!”. Etc., etc. There might even be strikes. Eventually, some kind of hybrid model will be worked out that pleases more or less everyone. This might be helped by the fact that some nutters like me will be desperate to get back to normal and so we will agree to do all of our teaching face-to-face, meaning that others can do all or most of theirs online (I would certainly agree to do so, on condition that the pro-containment camp never mention their safety fantasies in my presence and leave me alone). Of course, there will be theatre like: regular testing for everyone on campus, masks, social distancing, etc. But what we can most look forward to is all the performativity the pro-containment camp will engage with whenever they have to set foot on campus. Photos on social media in full protective gear, pithy posts about how “I have survived another semester (literally)”, etc.
Universities might also function as places where students get indoctrinated into the containment ideology and urged to abandon their working class ways, although I anticipate that this will be limited (in the same way as the supposed “woke” indoctrination that goes on is actually quite limited): for the most part, they perform if they need to, but only a small minority (10%-15% I’d say) are true believers. In other words: most students will still be out partying in crowded spaces — as they should be.
Restaurants and cafés around campus that have so far thrived on regular visits from academics and administrators might struggle. Firstly, because fewer people on campus; secondly, because going to a restaurant or a café will be seen as a risky activity. While I don’t think most middle-class people will entirely stop going to such places, they will either demand enhanced safety measures or they will only treat themselves to this very occasionally — and they will be carefully to point out that they are not only limiting their eating-out to four times a year for themselves, but especially for others. Of course, both possibilities might get conflated into each other eventually: enhanced measures means higher costs for the restaurant, which means they’ll have to raise their prices, which means eating out regularly will be less affordable and visits will become more spaced out.
For threatres, concerts and stuff like that I am hopping that there will be a decent number of elderly patrons who will have remained relatively impervious to the hysteria (again, like working class people, older people seem to have been more balanced throughout all of this) who can keep things going. Otherwise, same as restaurants: demand for stupid safety measures, fewer bums on seats, higher prices. Some places might have to close their doors, others will try their luck with “online performances” and the like. Thousands of articles, academic and otherwise, will be written about how such online performances open up new expressive possibilities, are more inclusive, are just better than getting out of your house and passing on your germs to someone else. Lots of people in the middle classes and specially academic will actually believe it.
The interesting thing will be to see what people like myself (who have eminently middle-class tastes and habits, but refuse to buy into the containment-mania) will do. Some might acclimatize to the new Zeitgeist. But I would like to think that most of us will start shopping in the high street, patronizing unsavoury pubs, going on holidays to Benidorm, just to enjoy our normality and our humanity. As a side effect, this might also give us some much-needed insight on how actual working class people live.
