ACTIVTRADES WEEKLY

By Ricardo Evangelista

www.activtrades.bs

IN 2016, the Spanish diver Aleix Segura Vendrell became the world record holder for breath-holding free diving, managing to hold his breath for an incredible 24 minutes and three seconds.

Before diving the athlete filled his lungs with pure oxygen and after emerging the first thing he did was breathing-in, instead of exhaling. This happened because during the dive the oxygen was slowly absorbed and released into the blood stream leaving the empty lungs on the verge of collapsing, with the diver desperately, and understandably, gasping for air as soon as he surfaced.

Few things, if any, are as important to living creatures as breathing. Without oxygen life simply isn’t possible, our bodies have several inbuilt mechanisms that insure the continuation of the process, even in a state of unconsciousness. Try holding your breath for longer than feels comfortable and breathing will suddenly feel desperately essential.

The coronavirus forced many of us to stop breathing. Unfortunately, and tragically, to some this happened literally, as the virus damaged the lungs ability to absorb oxygen. But for most, the process was more metaphorical. The lockdowns put in place to stop the dissemination of the virus stopped us from working and socialising. The economic costs are enormous; unemployment hit record highs, reaching almost 60 percent during the harsher phase of The Bahamas lockdown.

The local economy, so dependent on the tourists who stopped coming, has been brutalised and the government was forced to borrow at very high interest rates in order to compensate for the lost income and to cover the expansion of welfare payments. If the economic impact of the virus, as horrendous as it has been, is easy to measure, the psychological scars left by the isolation and sudden poverty are harder to account for, becoming perhaps the hidden pandemic of 2020.

Thankfully, science came to the rescue and last week the UK became the first country to start inoculating its citizens with the new COVID vaccine, with many other countries expected to soon follow suit. There is now a light at the end of the tunnel and the general expectation is that in 2021 there will be a big rebound in economic activity, with massive vaccination programmes bringing the virus under control and ending the lockdowns.

Economic activity is more than a mere means-to-an-end. The many thousands who lost their jobs miss more than just the income provided by their work. They are also missing the sense of purpose, the casual chats with colleagues and customers and the way the commute to and from work helps to frame the day.

COVID brought the economy to an almost complete standstill and left many of us desperate for a return to the routine of the pre-pandemic days.

Thanks to the vaccine we can now expect a return to normality in 2021. As the lungs of the diver, gasping for air at the moment of emerging, we will enjoy the return of the normality we desperately need.