Malta is unlikely to wake up one day virus-free, or return to a historical ‘normal’. Eventually a vaccine may be found, but even that may not provide a magic bullet. Like measles or chicken pox, COVID-19 is likely to circulate in Malta for decades. The virus will grow milder as immunity spreads. But it is unlikely ever to be ‘cured’ so that we can go back to our previous lives.
Malta will inhabit a different world. What will that be like?
If the first phase of the coronavirus, just completed, was about containment, the second – which we are just entering – will be about adjustment and learning to live with it, medically and economically, socially, culturally and psychologically. We may be subjected to second or successive waves of the virus in our anxiety to get the economy moving unless strict social distancing and other preventative measures are maintained.
As the pandemic wanes, we should be able to enjoy social proximity again. But it is unlikely we will do so for a long time because the habits of anxiety have become ingrained in us all. The young will overcome fear first, of course. The old, perhaps never.
The disease will continue to affect, sometimes radically and sometimes almost imperceptibly, every aspect of our Maltese existence: the way we work, study, shop, travel, play sport, our social interactions and family relations. Many of these changes will be jarring and alien, but some may bring unanticipated blessings.
The economy will contract. It may take perhaps two years to recover. Some businesses are likely to fail. Unemployment will rise before falling back slowly. The tourism and hospitality sectors, which are so crucial to the Maltese economy, will have to adapt or die.
The opportunity should be taken to upgrade the tourism product. A ‘future tourism carrying capacity study’ should try to achieve a better balance between three competing interests: the most cost-effective annual number of visitors, the desirable hotel capacity to accommodate them, and tourism’s impact on Maltese residents’ quality of life.
The world of work will never be the same, with remote offices, home-working and socially-distanced decision-making. Digital platforms have demonstrated the efficiency of online meetings.
Preserving personal space will become second nature. Already people move off pavements when anyone approaches, and feel a flash of irritation when someone stands too close in a queue. These are new instincts, perhaps permanent.
The impact will be felt in schools and the university long after we have come to accept that the virus is here to stay. By the time state schools return in late September, a whole generation of Maltese students will have lost almost six months of their education with unknowable consequences for their life chances.
The University of Malta will expand its remote lecture facilities with restricted interactions between students – a blow to a good university education – and fewer foreign students whose income is so important to it.
Socially, the future may be one without handshakes, where a visit to grandparents is routinely preceded by a subconscious health check on the visitor. Our expressions will be hidden behind the face mask with fewer public smiles.
The whole process of air travel will be revolutionised. Health checks and quarantine and social distancing at airports will prevail. The middle seat in an aircraft may be a thing of the past.
Shopping will return but it will be different. In a world where we must line up, wait, forbidden from trying clothes on or touching the wares, and bounce away from other shoppers as if repelled by magnets on opposite poles, many may come to prefer to shop online from home and acquire less.
Since the crisis erupted, we have become more technology-dependent. The gap between those who can master and afford the technology, and those who cannot, has grown. Fortunately, the Maltese attachment to the cell phone has made us mostly ‘early adaptors’ to new technology.
What will love and the quest for it be like? Dating will be increasingly online. The finding, meeting, courting, daring and deciding will be entirely virtual for many. Initial physical contact may be more burdened with meaning than anything in the history of sex.
The disease will continue to affect every aspect of our Maltese existence- Martin Scicluna
The trauma, anxiety and stress has already been reflected in an increase in domestic violence and partners deciding their relationship has broken down. It will also be measured for years in a wave of depression and other mental health problems.
In a very short space of time, we have learnt to entertain ourselves at home, watching television, reading, even talking remotely with fellow inmates in our separate lockdowns. Those habits will endure, at least for a while. Sadly, we will not rush back into theatres and concerts or cinemas (except in the open air). And when we do, enjoyment will carry an uncomfortable sense of trepidation.
Sport will restart remotely, in stadiums devoid of spectators. Viewers are already getting used to live sport in silent stadiums. Some sports, like golf or tennis, have social distancing built into the game. But who will be able to watch rugby without wondering what germs are being exchanged in the scrum?
Some good may come of it all. The move by a majority of local councils to have ‘car-free’ zones in town and village centres will mark a tiny step forward in the battle to reduce toxic air pollution. The post-COVID preparation for climate change will start. There will be a greater determination to control the construction industry, but it will be a test of the government’s will to see how far it dare go to bring this leviathan to heel.
Malta may never be the same again. As a nation, we will never behave, or think, as we once did. But the Maltese are astonishingly adaptable and robustly forgetful (except about local politics). Quite soon, we will forget what Maltese society was like before COVID-19, and we may face this different Malta and its changed inhabitants with renewed courage and appreciation.
Coronavirus arrived as a threat but will remain as part of the fabric of life of these islands – one more great turn in the wheel of human experience, a new chapter in our evolution.