Neighbours from the various blocks of flats near me all gathered together in the park yesterday for an hour of lugging buckets of water from a communal tap next to a school and the various young trees that were planted last year and which are now drying up. Was thinking of helping out, but it was a crowd of 30-40 people all standing close and talking while waiting for their turn at the tap, no gloves or masks on anyone, no social distancing at all - I saw how people were acting and just went back inside. And then an hour later a group photo gets posted in the communal park volunteer whatsapp group of everyone smiling in a big group, and there were even two cops who must have showed up, standing right in the middle of the crowd and smiling as well.
I've always understood the quote, attributed to Stalin, that "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" - but watching how many people around me seem to have completely accepted hundreds of people dying a day as worth the risk of, say, watering some trees... I'm only now really getting a gut sense of the meaning. We're still not back below where we were before we went into lockdown, yet the gusto with which so many people are throwing caution to the wind is stunning.
