How the lockdown has made a difference …
By Lara Breithaupt
In my opinion, making a difference means causing a change in an extreme way. It can entail to change matters, to make things easier, for example with a new object or to change something in our life, by changing, our point of view or in other words, by convincing somebody of a different opinion.
A very topical issue that comes to my mind in this regard is the coronavirus. It is making a difference, at the moment and not only by changing everyone´s life, by not going outside, but also by fundamentally changing our opinions on several topics.
Take for example family time: most of us spend so little time with their family, because they don’t have time to play a board game with them, or just hang out with them. But now that we are not allowed to leave our own flat, most of us spend much longer periods of time with our family and I think that´s one of several, also positive effects this virus has had on us.
Furthermore, there are also a lot of positive outcomes for the environment, due to the reduction of tourism. You don´t know which ones? I will name you some, the air gets less polluted than in “normal times”, because airplanes and ships are mostly not allowed to leave the country. Additionally, caused by the reduction of tourism in villages, in Venice for example, it´s the first time in a lot of years that it´s possible to see the ground of the sewers??? and dolphins have been seen there again. So ironically, with the help of this virus, the world has the chance to breathe once again and that´s very important, for all of us!
However, I know, and I don’t want to deny that this virus is very bad and has horrible effects, particularly on the elder. So many humans have died and also a lot of us will die in the future, too, because of the coronavirus. Non-the-less this makes a change too, a lot of people, also younger ones, help each other, especially older people. Younger ones for example go to buy food for elderly people to protect them, like my friends and I do. This is a new way of connecting and I think this is a point, with which we can see the difference to life as it used to be really well.
In case of this virus, we have to deal with new situations, but also well-known problems are now bigger than before. To give an example the shortage of nurses that we have known about for years, but politicians have done nothing about and now this is dangerous for all of us.
Another important aspect that comes to my mind is the difference between some Asian countries and Germany. Taiwan for example is directly next to China and there are less infected people that in Germany, because they closed the borders very early. This is when one realizes the know-how they have, because over the last years, they have had a lot of pandemics like this one now and they know how to deal with situations like this. For our future, we can and we have to learn something from these countries, because if we act like them in the future, we can save a lot of lives.
To sum up, we can say that on the one hand the coronavirus is dangerous and frightening, but on the other hand this virus is changing everybody´s life for the better, too. There are also some positive effects we couldn’t have imagined before and now they emerge as advantage for the environment and for us socially.
Anyways, we can say that the coronavirus is really making a difference for everyone of us at the moment.
