What after 6 months or 5 years from now? Will this pandemic ever rule the world? Or will it change it for the better?

"This storm will pass too. But the choices we make now could change our lives for years to come"

Where we will be in 6 months, a year, 5 years from now?...

I have been wondering and I guess many of you must have too that how's the world gonna be after this pandemic? What are the changes that are gonna prevail and transform the world for good? 

Well before we discuss this, let's have a look at what positive changes that this lockdown had on the environment and how the planet is healing:

  Let's start from where it all started, Wuhan.

Wuhan, China

Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak is also a major industrial hub. When things were normal, Wuhan had a hazardous air-pollution level, which has now surprisingly come down by 21.5 per cent according to data revealed by China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

  Venice has clear canals

 Venice: A general view of The Grand canal shows clearer water as a result of the stoppage of motorboat traffic.

Reduced tourism in Venice has allowed nature to take control and water in canals have self-cleansed to reveal floating fishes inside, who are otherwise not visible and wildlife too returned to this now tourist-free city.

          Delhi's air quality improves drastically amidst lockdown

This combination of November 1, 2019(top) and April 20, 2020(bottom) photos show New Delhi's skyline

As you can clearly see the difference between the 2 pictures, pollution in Delhi has decreased remarkably mainly due to almost negligible vehicles on road and halt in industrial production.

    

After dolphins, pink flamingos return to Mumbai in huge numbers

Amidst lockdown, flamingos returned to Mumbai in greater numbers than ever before to turn the lockdown blues into pink.

Apart from this many other regions are also observing significant environmental benefits as a consequence of lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. For instance, researchers in New York registered a 50 per cent decline in carbon monoxide levels, which is caused due to car emissions. The researchers at Columbia University also established that the traffic levels in the city have come down by around 35 per cent as compared to the data a year ago.

Now let's come back to our initial question. Humankind is facing one of the greatest pandemic of this generation and across the globe, the coronavirus outbreak has caused suffering to not only humans but economies as well. At the time of writing, there are 3,489,053 confirmed cases of COVID-19 including 241,559 deaths according to data on WHO website. The decisions that the government and people take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will not only shape our healthcare systems but also the political, economical and socio-cultural aspects of the world. So let's discuss each one of them further.

Healthcare

It is during such great pandemics that the accessibility, quality and vulnerabilities of healthcare systems of nations are exposed. In many well-developed countries like USA, Italy the unaffordability of even basic healthcare systems has become evident. According to this article studies by Healthcare.com nearly half of the insured Americans are not confident that they can afford COVID-19 treatment. In developing nations like India, the testing capacities have been capped and even though the prices are relatively low majority of the population mostly from rural areas have no access to testing and treatment facilities. According to The Lancet, a medical journal India ranks 145th among 195 countries in terms of quality and accessibility of healthcare systems. You can find out more details in this article. It won't be wrong to say that we might see public demand across the world to make healthcare more affordable and accessible after this pandemic.

Political

In previous comparable virus outbreaks like SARS and MERS in the recent past, it was noticed that countries that were most affected by the crisis, there was a political willingness for change, their leaders drew learning from their experience and improved their healthcare infrastructure to better tackle future epidemics. One of the major reasons why Taiwan and Singapore have contained the impact and South Korea and Japan have been able to flatten the curve is due to their learning from managing the SARS. Similar outcomes can be expected in several countries around the world once the current outbreak subsides. The voters will have a substantial role to play on this front to push for change.

Economical

Lockdown has been putting great pressure on the economies across the globe. We face a serious danger of recession in the next few months or weeks or maybe a few days. This pressure has led some world leaders of countriles like USA, Brazil, Dubai, etc to lift the lockdown and give a saving hand to their drowning economy. 

In a normal crisis, the prescription for solving this is simple. The government spends, and it spends until people start consuming and working again. (This prescription is what the economist John Maynard Keynes is famous for).

But normal interventions won’t work here because we don’t want the economy to recover (at least, not immediately). The whole point of the lockdown is to stop people going to work, where they spread the disease.

Here's an interesting take on economy I recently stumbled upon.

What is the economy for?

The key to understanding responses to COVID-19 is the question of what the economy is for. Currently, the primary aim of the global economy is to facilitate exchanges of money. This is what economists call “exchange value”. The dominant idea of the current system we live in is that exchange value is the same thing as use-value. Basically, people will spend money on the things that they want or need, and this act of spending money tells us something about how much they value its “use”. This is why markets are seen as the best way to run society. They allow you to adapt, and are flexible enough to match up production capacity with use-value.

What COVID-19 is throwing into sharp relief is just how false our beliefs about markets are. Around the world, governments fear that critical systems will be disrupted or overloaded: supply chains, social care, but principally healthcare.

There are lots of contributing factors to this. But let’s take two.

First, it is quite hard to make money from many of the most essential societal services. This is in part because a major driver of profits is labour productivity growth: doing more with fewer people. People are a big cost factor in many businesses, especially those that rely on personal interactions, like healthcare.

Second, jobs in many critical services aren’t those that tend to be highest valued in society. Many of the best paid jobs only exist to facilitate exchanges; to make money. They serve no wider purpose to society: they are what the anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”.

The fact that so many people work pointless jobs is partly why we are so ill-prepared to respond to COVID-19. The pandemic is highlighting that many jobs are not essential, yet we lack sufficient key workers to respond when things go bad.

So in the foreseeable future, there are 4 possibilities:

1) State capitalism: centralized response, prioritizing exchange value
2) Barbarism: decentralized response prioritizing exchange value
3) State socialism: centralized response, prioritizing the protection of life
4) Mutual aid: decentralized response prioritizing the protection of life.

Let me not dig deeper into this and bore you with boring concepts.

Okay so now coming to one of the most important aspects, mainly this are the changes we will be most affected by. 

Socio-cultural

The changes in progress are somewhat predictable, others still hard to fathom but they started brewing as soon as case counts began to escalate. Among top findings, 85 percent of people reported washing their hands or using sanitizer more often than before, and 61 percent reported following social distancing guidelines. Behavioural changes like these are mostly fear drive, but that doesn't mean that they will disappear in the near future. 

The 1918 Influenza pandemic, which killed about 675000 people in the US bent the arc of hygiene habits in lasting ways. Similarly in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, certain habits we've adapted will likely stick around as well. Our new ways of interacting with each other which is “live long and prosper” salutes instead of handshakes, video chats instead of conference-room huddles are also likely to stick to some degree. 

Recently TCS(Tata Consultancy Services) took work from home constraint to a whole new level. Post these gloomy days 75% of 4.5 lakhs TCS employees are going to work from home by 2025. Read about this more here.

The old social norm is, “When you meet someone, you automatically shake hands. Those social exchanges are going to evolve.”It's also possible that when you’re having meetings for work, people are going to start asking, ‘Do we have to meet in person?’ which is not something we would say before.

This pandemic will affect restaurants and culture of eating out and also the delivery at doorstep culture which has been steadily evolving in the fast few years. Apps like Zomato, Swiggy and other delivery apps and other food services will be worst affected as people will be more concerned about hygiene now. The food industry is estimated at Rs 4,23,865 crore in India and employing more than 700,000 people according to National restaurant association of India, not including the employment generated by food delivery apps. 

Another notable concern is under the skin surveillance. In their battle against the coronavirus epidemic, several governments have already deployed the new surveillance tools. The most notable case is China. By closely monitoring people’s smartphones, making use of hundreds of millions of face-recognizing cameras, and obliging people to check and report their body temperature and medical condition, the Chinese authorities can not only quickly identify suspected coronavirus carriers, but also track their movements and identify anyone they came into contact with. Beware, this kind of technology is not limited to only East-Asia.

The focus on social distancing has brought digital technology to fore-front in every aspect of our life, right from e-commerce to healthcare to education. It might also be the time when all the stakeholders within the healthcare industry from the demand as well as the supply side would be more open to digital adoption. For instance, the NHS in England has shifted to telephonic consultations for all patients, excluding blood tests. Now, this is not a usual policy move but given the circumstances, it was adopted by the authorities as well as by the public. Hence the online healthcare industry is expected to boom in the upcoming future.

A similar digital transformation is seen on the educational front. Many universities and colleges have resorted to online video-conferencing apps to complete the remaining syllabus and conduct examinations. Recently, IIM-Ahmedabad launched ePGP program 2020-22, a hybrid program with online lessons attended through study centres, classroom teaching and project work. This is a huge step towards digital transformation and many other institutions may follow the same. Read about the program more here.

Well, there are many other concerns like elections, electronic voting, a boon to virtual reality, restraints on mass consumption, increased international cooperation and etc etc, but let's end it here for today.

Humanity needs to make a choice. Will we travel down the route of disunity, or will we adopt the path of global solidarity? If we choose disunity, this will not only prolong the crisis but will probably result in even worse catastrophes in the future. If we choose global solidarity, it will be a victory not only against the coronavirus, but against all future epidemics and crises that might assail humankind in the 21st century(Satyug :p)

Remember, this storm shall pass too. But the choices we make now will change our lives for years to come.