Life after COVID-19?
It is truly amazing to see how we have all come together to solve the problems associated with our latest challenge of #COVID19 #pandemic. These are surely trying times for all. No matter where; no matter what we believe in.
By the way, have you asked yourself what will it be like after the “dust settles”? Sure, most of us have.
I, for one, am certain that we will survive as a species. With or without hoarding. But life will never be the same. For many generations to come. As a starter, we are learning a few things along the way. We are connecting in new ways. We are disconnecting from many others. Lessons and bonds, or lack thereof, might stay longer than the virus survives a few dozen generations of COVID-19 R0 at play.
Let’s look at seven things we have learnt since December 2019:
1- We are all connected. What goes around comes around. Karma is real. COVID-19 callously showed us how easily and decidedly the bad (and even more, the good) travels from one human to the next. From Wuhan to New York. From Tehran to Vancouver. From anywhere to anywhere.
2- Universal healthcare is for the good of society as much as it is for the individual. Free testing and care for each person infected with the virus is tantamount to public health. Healthcare is a human right.
3- That meeting, that job, that project, yes, most of those can be done remotely. Despite what your boss claimed. Much of what we do in our daily lives and jobs can work almost equally well virtually. We can strike much better with work-life conflicts and save the planet a bit along the way by reducing our carbon footprint.
4- We have been messing too badly with nature, with animals, with wildlife and here is the “cash” prize. We were paying for these through climatic disasters and global warming but I guess some of us needed to feel the brunt of this storm we have been aggregating for generations. Let’s not mess with bats now that we’re on it!
5- Our healthcare systems are inadequate. We are unable to respond to shocks applied to the system in time. We have competent, hard-working, and selfless healthcare providers who are now putting their own health and lives (as well as their families) on the line to save their patients’. Yet, deeply sadly, we have failed to provide them with safe and scalable working conditions to be able to do what they signed up for. We need better connectivity, reporting, and accountability globally. For one, Wuhan’s little November secret must have been reported to WHO much earlier than December 31st.
6- Leadership matters. There are war-time leaders, there are peace-time leaders, and there are horrible leaders. We know of politicians and decision-makers who clearly have failed us in the 3rd and some in the 2nd category (here is a perfect message from a good one for a change). The price we pay for these including, those of the current US administration, will be hard to estimate. Count on tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in livelihoods.
7- Kindness is universal. We hear stories of support, altruism, and human beauty every day; albeit under piles of sad stories of coronavirus death and destruction.
We are waging a war as much against COVID-19 as against incompetence, heartlessness, and indifference. And for the most part we seem to be winning (my optimism prevails again). Here are a few examples. Countless individuals, teams, and corporations have stopped their own projects and products and are now building or 3D printing #PPE to help with the massive #ppeshortage globally.
I am proud of young sons and daughters who have asked parents for a hospital connection and are now using their “domestic” 3D printers and problem solving and making skills to put together and deliver much needed supplies to their local #health units.
I am proud of the amazing Engineering Society of Queen’s University for donating 500+ N95 masks to frontline #healthcare workers in the Kingston area. This is where Queen’s engineering’s #CuriosityCreates, and keeps giving. And these are stories that are universal from campus to campus, from city to city, from continent to continent.
Ventilator shortage is also being addressed by companies, university design teams, and passionate individuals. We seem to be getting very close to finding creative ways that will reduce the burden. A number of teams have joined forces to use CPAP technology, for example, to fill the large gap.
Startups and technology companies of all sizes have also stepped forward to help. Mesh Scheduling Inc., our Kingston-based software venture, proudly extended and fully subsidized the subscription fees for its #MeshAI4Health platform. Any team in any sector affected by the pandemic can now benefit from the cloud tool for staff scheduling and communications without the financial barriers. Set out with a mission to focus on the health and wellbeing of providers (while most healthcare technology and services have focused on patients and care outcomes), the first Socially Intelligent Staff Scheduling (known as SISS SaaS) cloud platform is now being used to reduce staff stress and burnout as well as control infections.
Very positive news that on the testing front, Abbott Labs has now modified their strep throat tester and launched a 5-minute COVID19 test for use almost anywhere. This is a huge win given the significant delays with testing and reporting with costly outcomes.
The colossal economic impact will probably be one of the biggest challenges ahead. And surely, there will be an equally large social cost we cannot ignore. Decisions we make will have a profound impact on where we land as a society.
Changes in processes and ways of work and life are being planned and implemented in hours or days where normally teams of policy-makers and executives would take months or years to do the same in a pre-COVID-19 era. This is expected when you are in a war. Understandable. But no matter how much optimism is applied here, I am worried for us.
For many this war-time mode of life is new. For me it feels oddly familiar. Sadly. Much of what I see today is reminiscent of my childhood growing up during a brutal war in the Middle East. When rockets and enemy bombers were blending in with the night’s stars, policies and decisions were being put in place in the name of “emergency measures” designed to save lives camouflaging totalitarian means. Many of those to-be-short-lived measures are still in place helping the current autocratic governments do what they wish to their citizens with no regards for their rights.
China has been quite successful in flattening the curve. The government has used geo-location-based mobile apps, data, and algorithms to control the spread of COVID-19. The sort of surveillance and “contact tracing” used should worry anyone interested in personal liberties and privacy. Albeit very effective in an ideal world to do us much good, in the hands of the wrong government, these tools and technologies can put an end to democracy as we know it.
The optimistic in me is fighting hard to stay positive. Will we still trust our authorities post-COVID-19?