An old boyfriend of mine got back in touch with me. Hardly an uncommon occurrence. Most everyone I know has either contacted or been contacted by someone from their past, grade-school pals, college roommates, ex-work buddies.
My friend, Nils, lives in Sweden, where the pandemic is being treated very differently. In the eighties, Nils and I lived in a squat in London with folks from nine different countries. Of course, squats themselves exist because of trauma to populations, illness and war; so many dead, properties lie fallow; so many homeless, you take what you find.
Officially, Sweden officials deny herd immunity as a strategy, but they’re keeping their economy open. The young will survive. The old aren’t. They’ve had a devastating amount of deaths among their elderly population. The government admits they’ve failed this population. But the Swedish government also says they’re trusting their people to take responsibility for themselves and to understand their actions are for the greater good.
“Hard to see the incentive for someone like him,” I said to my husband, Paul, yesterday as we were walking home with our dog, Tyke. A bare-breasted, un-face-masked teenager, weaving among the quarantine-sparse traffic on his skateboard had just swished past us. “I mean, if he doesn’t have an old person in his life, what’s in it for him?”
I guess he’d be shot in China, I thought, but had restraint enough not to say.
Only history will tell us what we did right, and what we did wrong.
Who’s right, who’s wrong.
Until history’s windows open, some stories.
–KLB
