So What Exactly Did We Expect After A Once-in-a-Century Global Pandemic?
“When did egg and cheese on a roll start costing $14?” is a question I ask myself repeatedly these days as I roam our nation’s airports in search of a sufficiently caloric yet reasonably affordable meal. Yes, INFLATION does suck. What flummoxes me more, though, is how people seem so surprised by it or unable to contextualize it. Rather, most everyone appears to have quickly forgotten what we all just went through. There’s this odd sort of denial about the once-in-a-century global pandemic that just rocked our world. Which resulted in a massive shock to the supply chain. A severe labor shortage. Multiple rounds of free money from the government (to hedge against complete economic and societal collapse). A release of pent-up demand. Violent swings in spending habits. And those are just the economic impacts — more than one million of our fellow Americans died. So yeah, it’s going to take a little bit of time for things to get back to normal: we should expect that, make room for it, even look for it in places we didn’t expect. Like the narrative about our cities and Downtowns as urban hellscapes. Not to minimize the challenges that many of them are facing with homelessness, fentanyl and theft, but could it also be that the resonance and persistence of this narrative, sometimes even in contradiction of the realities on the ground, has something to do with the intense sense of vulnerability and dislocation that we all felt during such a scary time, even if subconsciously? That we’ve now been primed to look for danger around every corner after danger so suddenly and unexpectedly found us? That maybe we’re feeling helpless and frustrated about seemingly out-of-control price increases as a displacement of the helplessness and frustration about a virus that marched its way into our lives without asking? I know, I know — some of this veers into the realm of pop psychology. But there can be little doubt that the trauma we’ve all experienced in the last few years is still affecting us in ways we’re not even quite aware of.