SHARES
“It is sad that COVID-19 costs many lives and disrupts the living of so many. Yet, I am grateful for being able to spend more time with my family.” Julie, 32, mother to 2 children, feels grateful to be able to work from home while taking care of her kids.
Every cloud has silver lining. In every crisis lies opportunity for growth and improvement. They also serve as big wake up calls, urging us to better prepare for even greater calamities in the future. Even though COVID-19 is a global disaster in terms of both human and economic health, there are certain saving graces that we can view in a positive light.
6 Positive Consequences of Covid-19
1. Improvement in the Healthcare System
With the suddenness of COVID-19 outbreak, many countries are forced to address the immediate problem of inadequate healthcare facilities. Matter of fact, as the epidemic emerged in China, new hospitals were built within days to handle the rapid deluge of COVID-19 patients. In like manner, hospital beds and intensive care units were added and they continue to rise in numbers within the healthcare system all over the world. Due to high demand for ventilators, ventilator manufacturing kicked into high gear. The result is, ventilators are manufactured more efficiently and will be at a lower cost in the long run.
On top of that, COVID-19 also improves the outreach of healthcare services. This is only possible with complex integration and communication between different arms of national and civil services such as police, military, traffic police, border securities etc. Hence, through the pandemic, we learn how to improve healthcare service delivery and make operations better. There is no doubt, that it would benefit the community as a whole even after the pandemic is over, for the longer term.
Furthermore, the general public is now more aware of personal hygiene and self care. COVID-19 proves to be a great opportunity to educate and increase health knowledge of civilians. As a whole, people are getting better in keeping themselves healthy. For instance, people who are at risk of severe COVID-19, are more motivated to control their blood pressure and sugar through healthier lifestyle choices and diet. These would decrease healthcare costs in the long run just like how the wise saying goes, “prevention is always better than cure”.
2. Adaptation to ICT Technology
During the pandemic, there is a population wide increase in mastery of Information and Communication Technology, ICT. Better use of ICT would improve how people access knowledge for self improvement. Hence, productivity and efficiency of many workmen and laypersons increase many folds. All these would invariably benefit businesses, industries, trades and countries as a whole.
The working from home phenomenon has spurred corporates and businesses to quickly adapt to collaborative tools for better communication and teamwork between workers. This allows people to work on the same project even without meeting face-to-face. Moreover, subject matter experts from every corner of the world can join the team easily, offering access to a wide range of professional skills almost immediately.
In education, many more online classes were held during school lockdowns. With the use of rich audiovisual and interactive contents, tutors are improving their service delivery to a wider range of audience at greater numbers. Further, these services can scale through further deployment over time. In this regard, the same tutors’ teaching streamed over the internet, to larger groups of students repeatedly would amplify the scale of the reach.
Another benefit is that students do get familiar with information technology at a younger age. Besides, more families are willing to invest in broadband connection, computers, tablets and smartphones for the sake of their children’s education.
3. Better Logistics
Among all form of logistics, humans are probably the hardest to move around. There is a need for comfort, space and time flexibility. On the contrary, a single train can stuff and pack all goods tightly to be transported at any time of the day.
With COVID-19 lockdown and many people work from home, this cuts down costly travel. Not only for work commuting, online meetings can replace or complement physical business meetings too. Also, deskwork can go paperless and gets done at home. With telecommuting, there is less excuse for not being punctual because of heavy traffic. Likewise, we can deliver goods, grocery and food to multiple homes on a single carriage instead of having everyone crowding in malls and restaurants.
4. Redefining Work, Building Trust
As more people work remotely from home, a greater risk exists for productivity and performance. Working from home, workers are no longer working under tight supervision within company space and intranet. Employees may be slack at work, suffer from isolation, breach disciplinary rules and get distracted by an unconducive home environment.
In essence, by giving employee more liberty, we essentially build more trust and empower more talents. However, this is not achievable when employees are negligent of their actions and take no ownership nor responsibility. In other words, there is a need to redefine employees’ role. They need to be business partners who own their work, take pride in the craft and care for the quality in their very own interests.
5. More Environmentally Friendly
With less people and vehicles roaming around on road, there is less harmful air pollutant emission. Also, digitalization reduces the use of paper and stationeries, ultimately conserving more natural resources.
On the other hand, as people dwell indoor more often during the pandemic, nature seems to take its relaxing stretch. Wildlife appears in cities and towns when human activities quieten down. In Japan, sika deers are walking around in metro stations; while a puma takes a stroll in the capital of Santiago. Gangs of wild boars descend the hill and enter the town in Barcelona whereas wild turkeys are strutting on the streets of California. Even birds like pigeons and sparrows are venturing to distant territories.
COVID-19 may be disastrous, but at the same time, it gives everyone including Mother Nature a time to stretch and relax.
Photo by Tom Shockey from Flickr
6. Home Improvement and Better Management
Spaces and Functions At Home
Home should be where we spend most of our time and is a shelter for the family. Many families trade a great amount of their fortune and hard work over the span of decades in exchange for a single house we call home. Yet, this is often where we fall short the greatest, in terms of functionality improvement.
Most home living spaces and their functions are not in an optimal form. Probably a dull and cold office has better space management for productive functions than most homes. For example, no food is allowed at workbenches, and all tools required for work are arranged systematically within an arm’s reach. Pets should not run freely in restaurant kitchens. There should be no corruption at work in favor of a lover or close family members. Kids have their learning and daycare centres.
Family and Home
In fact, with so many people at home with a multitude of personal needs, it can be very challenging to make good use of spaces at home to serve all functions. This is especially true when living spaces are limited. You may want to work but your children are playing around and the television is on max volume in the same space. You may want a romantic time together but all your partner’s conversation is about bills and loans. Hence, with so many compromises and living spaces over packed with contrasting functions, people can easily get into conflicts. We are also seeing a worrying rise in domestic abuse and divorce during the pandemic lockdown.
It is a wake up call for everyone to refocus their attention on what matters the most. Only a stable home is able to produce more than what is necessary to maintain it and eventually benefit the surrounding neighbours, the community it resides in, the country and even to distant communities.
Photo by Neil Gilmour from Flickr
Conclusion
Although COVID-19 is disastrous to many, still there may be good consequences arising from it. Like the wise saying goes, “opportunity lies in the midst of chaos”. It serves as a wake-up call and forcefully breaks any part of the system that is already in great trouble with poor foundation and fundamentals.
References:
1. Cardenas M. Looking at the bright side : 10 positive effects of the pandemic [Internet]. Americas Society/ Council of The Americas. 2020. (Available from: https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/looking-at-the-bright-side-10-positive-effects-of-the-pandemic/; last updated on 2020 Jul 13; last accessed on 2020 Sept 22)
2. Visvanathan T. Glass half full – looking at the bright side of COVID-19 lockdown [Internet]. Infosys Limited. 2019. (Available from: https://www.infosysbpm.com/blogs/corporate/Pages/glass-half-full-looking-at-the-bright-side-of-covid-19-lockdown.aspx; last accessed on 2020 Sept 22)
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by Chang Xian
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