Some learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic
First things first, the COVID-19 outbreak was and is still one of the worst humanitarian developments in recent history. By January 2021, over one hundred million people have been infected and over two million people have lost their lives.[1] These numbers are still increasing, and it is unclear how much longer this will be the case. This is tragic and resulted in an unbearable amount of pain and grief around the world. Nonetheless, the sheer endless marathon of national lockdowns, closed borders and social distancing is slowly ending. In the US and the European Union, the vaccines of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have been approved by the responsible agencies and vaccination efforts have already started.[2] Similar developments can be observed in countries all around the world. This is portrayed by an unmatched number of vaccination campaigns on all the different continents to stop the spread of the virus as well as to enable a slow return to normality.
Yet it is unclear how this post-COVID-19 normality will look like, but there are certainly several learnings humanity can take from the developments of the past twelve months.
To begin with, the record-breaking speed of the development of a reliable vaccination was just possible through global efforts and cooperation. While there have been hiccups between countries when it comes to politics and diplomacy, the scientific community came together to find a solution for the imminent threat. Knowledge was shared and cooperations have been formed. The latest example of this is the support of the Pharmaceutical company Novartis that cooperates with its competitors to support production efforts.[3] Without a doubt, financial aspects cannot be neglected in that particular case. Nonetheless, these types of cooperations have been rare in the pharmaceutical industry in the past and might pave the way to tackle challenges in the form of diseases in the future.
In general, for most of us, the return to normal life cannot come fast enough. As humans, we are social creatures that want to spend time together with our families, go to a football or concert game with our friends or spend a romantic evening with our better half in our favorite Italian restaurant. All of that has been taken for granted for as long as I can think. In that context, a quote of R. T. Bennett comes to mind:
“We don’t truly appreciate what we have until it’s gone.”
In the Western world, we are used to growing up and living life in an open society with hardly any boundaries when it comes to our personal freedom. Being forced to stay at home and reduce our social contacts is truly an unpleasant experience. At the same time, we have been confronted with the (potential) death of loved ones and oneself and the transience of life due to the many uncertainties regarding the virus. Mainstream media published the numbers of new infections and death rates daily which reinforced these feelings. Although these numbers were not always a factual representation of the actual situation because of the variance in the incubation period of the virus, potential courses without symptoms and differences in the national calculation methodologies, the aura they created paired with severe restrictions has always been real. While it seemed brutal at the moment, it also offers a historical chance - the chance to appreciate everything that has been taken for granted for so long. As the suffering has been going on for almost a year now, chances are good that most humans will remember this experience for the rest of their lives, engraving the awareness for the feelings the virus has given us in our mental hard drives. This traumatic experience can help us appreciate life much more than we have done in the past and provides a rare opportunity to build the awareness that we should make the best of the time that we have left.
Another important learning is that humans around the world are similar in many ways. The pandemic has taught us that people of all ethnicities have similar wants and needs, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money they have. Sharing the same endless struggles with other individuals around the world against a common invisible enemy is a rare event. With appropriate communication, it can offer a scarce chance for humanity to focus on the similarities each of us shares with over seven billion people. This common understanding can help to reduce racism and xenophobia in a world that is currently drifting apart. Knowing that people in all the different countries share similar desires, wishes, hopes and dreams can be a unifying message.
While some Asian countries including Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea managed the outbreak and contain it in a relatively short time, Western democracies were struggling to control it and find a proper approach that finds support across society.[4] This inability to react to an immediate threat in a proper and meaningful way revealed some issues of Western democracies when being confronted with a sudden threat. In a globalized and interconnected world, these challenges to the status quo can arise in countless ways and require an appropriate response. In Europe, for example, this inability has already been showcased in the years 2015 and 2016 when European governments could not deal with a mounting stream of refugees that had to flee from Northern Africa.[5] Back then, the countries of the EU were unable to find a common approach to deal with the situation. Similar problems occurred during the COVID-19 outbreak. These Black Swan events can provide historical opportunities to discuss the set-up of our democratic system and adapt to the ever-increasing pace of environmental changes.
“The only constant in life is change”
has been true about 500 BC as much as it is now. Nowadays, the only difference is that changes can take place in weeks, as their speed is fueled by globalization and the interconnectedness of the world economies and societies. Several hundred years ago, it took the Black Death (or Pestilence) several years to conquer the European continent.[6]
While the COVID-19 outbreak was sped up by this global interconnectedness, it also was a significant factor to promote digitalization across all industries.[7] At the same time, it revolutionized the way we work by forcing a transfer to extensive work-from-home solutions. This transition might be considered one of the biggest labor experiments in recent times.[8] While it was easier for companies in some countries to make the relevant changes because of the different levels of available infrastructure, it is without a question that work-from-home offerings have come to stay.[9] It will be crucial for employers to provide employees with a great balance between office work and work-from-home to promote employee satisfaction, safe long-term costs and co-create the workplace of the future. If it wasn’t for the Coronavirus, these changes would have taken several years or decades.
Ultimately, it is important to keep in mind that the pandemic will come to an end and we will be able to return to doing the things we enjoy most in life. So far, it is unclear how much longer we have to wait, but without a doubt, there will be a post-COVID-19 era. While many routines will go back to pre-pandemic times, others will change for the better. What will change and how the society of the future will look still needs to be discovered, and for a good part it lies in our hands.
January 30, 2021
Sources:
[1] Johns Hopkins University (January 30, 2021) COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
[2] U.S. Food & Drug Administration (January 29, 2021) COVID-19 Vaccines Authorized for Emergency Use
European Commission (January 08, 2021) Questions and Answers: COVID-19 vaccination in the EU
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_20_2467
[3] Novartis (January 29, 2021) Novartis signs initial agreement to provide manufacturing capacity for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
[4] Ian Bremmer (June 12, 2020) The Best Global Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic
https://time.com/5851633/best-global-responses-covid-19/
[5] William Spindler (December 08, 2015) 2015: The year of Europe’s refugee crisis
https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2015/12/56ec1ebde/2015-year-europes-refugee-crisis.html
[6] John Frith (January 30, 2021) The History of Plague — Part 1. The Three Great Pandemics
[7] McKinsey & Company (October 05, 2020) How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point — and transformed business forever
[8] PWC (January 12, 2021) It’s time to reimagine where and how work will get done
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/us-remote-work-survey.html
[9] Sarah H. Bana, Seth G. Benzell, and Rodrigo Razo Solares (June 18, 202) Ranking How National Economies Adapt to Remote Work
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/ranking-how-national-economies-adapt-to-remote-work/
