Good News about the Corona Virus

People don't understand the virus causing Covid-19.

I'm one of those people. I don't have any specialized degrees or experience fighting a pandemic. I do know a few things about people and their motivations. I hope what I say adds value.

Reasonable to have a positive outlook

People are dying from a disease we have not cured. Scary stuff.

Made scarier by others who speak out through social media and quite a few experts who forget to couch what they say with disclaimers...they know that they don't really know much about how the pandemic will end.

And then there are our worries about family, friends, jobs and an economy that seems to be at a standstill.

We really don't know...so why not look at the very possible positive outcomes?

Granted, a positive frame of reference won't fix anything. Except you! Worry and fear won't change anything either. I chose to look for progress and learn what might improve life after the virus is gone. There is a chance that I'll be alive so I want to focus on that. :)

We will recover

I've been watching the University of Virginia COVID-19 Surveillance Dashboard. I'm looking for the peak of new cases that will have to come. We are not there yet.

I noticed a big jump in yesterday's recovered numbers and assuming that you won't see this in the doom and gloom reports, and so I thought I'd make a graphic

The trick about cumulative numbers

It's hard to see the 12,844 recoveries from Sunday. That's because this is a cumulative bar chart. Daily would look more like this:

We all learned in school about these things and think we know, but if my 100's of Twitter conversations on the topic are any indication, we don't think about it unless we read past the headlines.

Think about it. Every day there are more cases. Every day! The cumulative number must go up every day...even when we get to 1 case reported globally, it will still create a larger cumulative number.

Not just the charts

Noticing negative is part of how we are wired. Few people wake up in the morning excited that the sun is shining or there is air to breathe. but if either were gone, it would be big news.

Take some sensible boring actions

You know what to do. Wash your hands, stay at home, practice good health habits, and be grateful you and your family are alive and together. The vast majority of us will get through this.

It's going to be an enormous hit on our economy. The price tag is bad enough, but the harder part is the horrendous change of plans we need to accept and respond to. I'm sure no one is thinking that their 2nd Quater numbers are going to happen as planned.

When I get worried about it, I quickly remind myself that all the factories, supply chains, consumer behavior, and marketing fundamentals are the same. New tech is going to keep growing, life will get better. It's going to be an exciting time to be alive.

I'm using this positive mindset to think about the future. What will the markets be like? What will people want? Will it be a disaster or an opportunity? It's up to us.