COVID-19 has restored our faith in humanity in ways that we never imagined

If you had asked me a year ago how a pandemic, forcing most of the world’s population to stay at home for months, would play out, I would have immediately made a comparison to a zombie apocalypse movie. 

All the pieces for a perfect B-movie are there: A mysterious virus pops up in rural China and quickly spreads. News of the virus’ global advance is mere background noise in the United States. Our attention is focused on seemingly more important things. But when the virus takes hold in the United States, our world is changed. The movie would not win any awards, but chances are my friends and I would see it.

According to the tropes that play out in such movies, society quickly crumbles as humanity reverts to its base instincts. Neighbors who one day share a cup of sugar become enemies the next, fighting over scarce resources. Communities adopt the attitude of every man for himself, and those unable or unwilling to adapt become casualties of the chaos.

Then there is the inevitable scene of people fleeing a hoard of zombies. Someone falls, and when a passerby stops to help, the two are overtaken by the zombies. Later on, the protagonist finds a group of people living in a seeming utopia, safe from the chaos and maintaining a functioning society.  That is, until the protagonist discovers that this society is actually authoritarian and violent, surviving through oppression. 

The lesson to be drawn from these movies is that humanity is inherently violent and selfish. A small disruption to our normal lives is all it takes for civilization to crumble.

Fortunately, the above script is not representative of the COVID-19 experience we now encounter. True, we did witness a rush on toilet paper, cleaning supplies and a few food staples, but that was short-lived and widely condemned. Shortages still exist, but that has more to do with stressed supply chains than people raiding delivery trucks. Instead, I’m seeing people being more neighborly, and community bonds growing stronger.

On an evening walk last week with my fiance, it occurred to me that more people were outside than before the pandemic. I do not remember ever seeing so many people walking outside or working on their lawns. Everyone seems friendlier, waving and saying hello while keeping a safe distance. As an introvert, pre-COVID, I would usually wait for others to initiate a social interaction. But now I find I am the first to smile or say hello. I am sure this is due in part to us all being cooped up inside and looking for any excuse to get out of the house, but it is in contrast to the neighbor-against-neighbor narrative in the movies.

During our walks, we have discovered messages written in chalk along our route. The first message we noticed included dance instructions in the form of hopscotch on the sidewalk. After attempting something like the electric slide, I thought someone was possibly filming the dance to make a viral video for social media. After realizing that was an unlikely scenario and that I was having fun, I was left with a big smile on my face. 

Further along our route, we found a joke that makes sense only if you’ve seen the Netflix documentary “Tiger King.” After turning a corner, I noticed a simple “El Paso Strong” chalked on another sidewalk. Yesterday we noticed someone had written a large note on a driveway thanking teachers. Together, these messages made me realize that people are reaching out to one another through the loneliness of quarantine, with words of hope and support. 

While movies have depicted such crisis scenarios as revealing the fragility of society and how humans, beneath the surface, are violent animals, I have instead seen people become more human and social during these hard times. I am hopeful that when this public health crisis passes, we can hold on to this better part of ourselves. We are still waiting to see what the human and economic toll of the crisis will be, but maybe we can attain something positive — a greater sense of community — from this shared suffering.