EDITORIAL

Jobs never coming back?

In normal years, when we take our two-week vacations ... are our jobs “gone”?  When our employer shuts down for re-tooling or renovations, or to accommodate everyone’s vacation wishes at once, the companies, our employers, are they “lost”?  

So, with this lockdown, why think we’ve lost our jobs and lost our industries and all our businesses?  Yet this is what our wonderfully professional media keeps telling us, starting from Day One of the shut-down.  Why?  Why are we getting ourselves into such tizzies about ruined lives, lost careers, emptied investments, and so on?  The media is motivated by click-bait headlines – today’s journalism – but do we have to buy into this fear-mongering, this near-hysterical reporting?   

Instead, write them letters-to-the-editor suggesting they grow up!  The worst is repeating the media’s exaggerations, hyperbole, and constant repetition of selected doom-and-gloom statistics. We could search out alternative media, leave CBC News to their breathless reporting of “even more layoffs!”, “more infections today!” Listen critically, folks – but remember that alternative news also has its swampy side with even more extreme speculation.

Best might be to cultivate a calmness, apply critical thinking, and use your skills to research the facts behind these claims and prognostications. That’s long-term, but worth it, and in the meantime, keep in mind that everyone will still be around (pretty well) when the pandemic meets its vaccine. Everyone will still need to eat, wear clothes, have their cars repaired, see movies, purchase hardware. The pandemic will certainly bring changes, but not so radical that we will all be living in caves and cultivating our own food. Whatever the pandemic will bring, it will not be the post-apocalyptic world of the sci-fi movies. More hyperbole!

Our jobs will still need to be done. Our employers will be back, eager to get the economy chugging – they will have orders to fill, routes to cover, products to create and distribute.  We can’t ignore the seriousness of this virus nor ignore the damage it has done, nor pretend that our economy and our culture will not suffer (or profit by) any changes coming. The pandemic is no two-week vacation, but it is not the end of the world. Businesses and entrepreneurs will struggle to stay alive, given their recurring costs, whether open or closed. But the media’s anticipation of The Apocalypse is clearly a distortion, magnifying the worst, generalizing individuals’ problems, all in a small-minded exploitation of our too-human fear of what’s unknown.

We can rise above all this. We can see further than a couple of months. We can recall going on a holiday, sometimes with absolutely no income! Let’s not trivialize the situation, nor minimize the absolute need for more care around others and with keeping our distance. Let’s keep keeping distance, but try turning off the news for a few days. What a breath of fresh air!