"What do they think behind their dirty aprons?" , by Erik Pevernagie, oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm

The global Corona conflict has rammed people into trenches. Invisible, lethal, viral weapons have replaced visible whistling bullets and thunderous bombs. As we don’t know who is calling the shots, it is difficult to tell how we can call a truce with imperceptible enemies.

How will we ever know who is responsible for worldwide calamity? What do all those lab technicians think and feel, behind their dirty aprons? What is in their mind as they are dissecting, or making tests with mice, rats, dogs, bats, or viruses?

We may often wonder what butchers, surgeons, vivi-sectors, or epidemiologists feel when they are at work and if they comprehend the antecedents or the consequences of their acts.

The rapture of an ‘innocent moment’ or an “unsuspected instant” can overwhelm us at any time, throughout our lives, and surprise us with a storm of liberating waves of good vibrations.

Do those people "with their dirty aprons" know the “innocent moments” that give the “sound vibrations?” Will they operate in the same mood after experiencing deadly diseases or disastrous plague?

While people are retracting into their snail shell's security of “stay home, stay safe,” distrust has become the top concern on the list. A climate of suspicion or denunciation is taking hold, gradually destroying the strings of sociability. In the aftermath, every singular person must find out how to reweave the ties of trust and confidence in their community's social tissue.

The frightening assaults of pandemic terror have vastly increased our vulnerability. At the outset, hope and humor were able to alleviate the sabotage of our living together, until bit by bit, the raging roars and the thundering crashes of the death toll called the shots. The ground zero of our mental structure must inevitably make us re-found another thinking pattern.

With the dawning of a new age, after pandemics have done their work, we find ourselves at the watershed of singular considerations about how to handle the changes that revolutionize our lives and trace the silver lining in a new reality.