Brawls and hoarding. Profiteering, finger pointing and fear. The coronavirus pandemic has brought out the worst in some. But look a little deeper and a far more potent story is unfolding: one of kindness, connection and trust.
Adam Lust couldn’t agree more. He usually spends his Monday through Sunday in a Lexus SUV, ferrying people throughout Melbourne for Nicerride, his premium carriage service. The novel coronavirus has crippled his small business. Lust has barely had a paid job since mid-March. Yet this was the message he sent to his regular clients:
He’s not the only one using a dormant vehicle well. “DJ Nige” usually spins tunes in Deirdre, his green 1970 Volkswagen Kombi, but every booking has vanished, from the Collingwood Football Club season launch to his own daughter’s wedding. So DJ Nige just drives around Gippsland now, stopping in country towns to playand other tunes. His roadshow might take in Moe, Morwell, Maffra, who knows.
“I never thought our society would … do something like this that would hurt our elderly,” he said. “We need to stick together at this time. We all need to help one another through this.” “There’s extensive research into what happens when someone laughs with you, and how that changes your physiology, and how your brain gets a little shot of oxytocin, which makes you feel bonded, and which lowers your cortisol level, which relieves stress, which increases our ability to function well,” Waters says. “Intimacy has this biological effect, allowing the individual, and the group, to soothe itself.
Dr Raj, a few doors down, was desperate for porridge, so she found him some oats. “We’ll have more orders coming in soon; people are getting nervous. We may live to regret it.” Krien laughs, with a hint of fatalism, and we talk about the implicit reward in offering to help someone out. “In a sense there’s a degree of selfishness to it,” she says.
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