How Covid-19 will change our future for better

There is no doubt that world today is dealing with grave crises of “CoVID-19” spread and its devastating impact on human life, liberty and economy in general. Today, I will like to think beyond this crisis and reflect on some of the positive impacts it can have on human civilizations in general.

            We remain creatures of habit and don’t like to leave our comfort zone and this COVID-19 crisis is forcing us to adapt some changes in our life thinking it as a need of the hour and temporary in nature. However, my hope remains that some of it will last long after the crisis is over and, in some cases, we will discover more efficient ways of doing things, ironing out kinks and make it new normal.

            Let’s focus on the top four changes advocated, promoted & adopted by most countries, businesses and populations in the world. And how these changes can help in furthering the progress of human civilization

1.     Improved personal hygiene, home & workplace sanitization

2.     Increased remote collaborations, meetings and training and classes

3.     Significant decrease in travel

4.     Research on viral infection treatment & control

1.     Improved personal hygiene: Human civilization have been improving hygiene since time immemorial as we kept fighting virus and bacterial infections and its resulting devastating effects. It’s ironic that adoption of “Agriculture & Animal Husbandry” resulted in massive increase in virus and bacterial infection among human population about 6000-8000 BCE.

However, some basics like “Proper & frequent hand wash”, proper sneezing, home quarantine of infected person, regular sanitization of home & workspace, proper disposal of waste etc. still leaves lot to be desired and became a focus only in Asia but also in developed western world to combat spread of COVID-19.

The focus of basic hygiene will reduce the incidents of other viral and bacterial diseases multifold saving thousands of lives, billions of dollars in healthcare saving cost and add millions of productive hours to economic activity. Take a case of simple influenzas which has about a billion cases in a year and results in 290,000 to 650,000 deaths in a year. 

The increased hygiene habits developed during COVID-19 crisis will help us reduce other viral & bacterial deceases including influenza and bring positive impact on the society in general. Apart from new habits and processes some new innovations & products in personal hygiene product may also amplify the overall positive impact on the society.

Impact of Influenza

2.     Increased remote collaborations: The tools for remote collaborations have skyrocketed in the past 10 years and with the increasing data bandwidth, near universal coverage of 3G & 4G networks, having a video conference has become convenient, hassle free and inexpensive. The tools have evolved and in some cases provide more flexibility and features than face to face meeting, interested readers may want to look at Gartner report on tools for remote collaboration as starting point and distilled list. The list & type of collaboration tools remains rather very long Wikipedia list of remote collaboration software . 

However, the evolution of human remains a social and our natural preference remains to have face to face meetings and collaborations. Although we have adapted virtual meeting solutions as necessity but instinct preferred in person communication and proved to be a hindrance to wholesale adoption of these tools. Many of us regularly commute more than 2 hours every single day, just to reach our place of work and reduction of the same will increase our personal time significantly apart from increasing efficiency.

During the present crisis of COVID-19, we were forced to adopt virtual collaborations, work from home, virtual conferences, virtual classes for children, virtual interviews etc. and many more learnt how to communicate and collaborate remotely. Many of us discovered the virtues of remote collaboration and many more learnt the how to collaborate virtually. 

My hope remains that even after the crisis is over the willingness & acceptance for virtual collaboration and meetings will remain higher than earlier and this will increase efficiency and productivity of society at large. This phenomenon already exist and #DigitalNomads have been advocating the same for some time now. We Work Remotely

The future of remote collaborations is expected to get a new boost with Virtual & Augmented Reality based solutions, early versions of the same are available today New frontier of VR meetings and more users and demand will propel the innovation engine further to give even better solutions.

3.     Significant decrease in Travel: We all have been forced to reduce our travel and learn to complete the business virtually in recent times. This has been particularly bad for the travel industry, airlines and hotels economically and many of them may be forced to close business which is painful.

However, we can’t deny the fact the availability of inexpensive flights and reduction in travel time has made it so convenient to travel that we don’t even think of other options. There are times when we find it convenient to call everyone from across the globe to discuss matters which can easily be discussed in virtual meetings, at other times our clients and customer insist for it and then there are those sales professionals who find it more convenient to meet perspective customers and discuss business rather than preparing painstaking proposal and sending it electronically. 

These avoidable travels not only have economic cost but also environmental cost and increase carbon footprints significantly. The global warming is real and every effort to reduce the same will help our future generations. My hope remains that some of the lessons learnt during this crisis will reduce travel in general and help us in reducing global warming. 

Impact of aviation & Global Warming

Some might argue that this will be catastrophic for travel industry in general and airlines in particular and I don’t disagree with the same. But creative destruction remains the only way of progress of human civilization. As we are panicking and reducing travel, mother earth is healing.

4.     Research on viral infection treatment & control: The treatment of viral diseases has in general eluded modern medical science and most of the time the treatments are symptomatic and palliative till virus completes its cycle. The present crisis has brought the focus on the same and it seems more than Billion US$ have been committed to the cause, the major funds remains WHO WHO Fund, Gates foundation Gates Foundation , and many countries are putting unprecedented efforts towards this cause.

My hope remains that focus on viral infection will not be lost this time as COVID-19 has become a global pandemic. Efforts were made by the futurists & humanitarians like Bill Gates and others after the spread of “Ebola Virus” to sensitize the world about it. However, the call on “The next outbreak we are not ready” were largely ignored as Ebola remained an African problem not the western world. Bill Gates Ted Talk 2015

            Apart from these major impacts we will also see some major restructuring in global supply chains with decreasing the reliance on one source & geography. This change will have far reaching impacts as new locations not as competitive in near term will adopt new innovations to become competitive. As work spreads in geography so is employment and wealth. 

            The origin of COVID-19 will certainly reduce demand & trade of exotic & wild animal meat and some of the wet markets will become relic of the past. In some extreme cases people are leaning towards vegan food and shunning animal products completely.

Concluding remarks: Occurrence of virus and bacterial outbreak and resulting casualty in human civilization remains a regular phenomenon since time immemorial and at times it caused huge damages, but we survived and thrived after the same. The COVID-19 is considered once in a century pandemic and is testing our resilience once again. 

The optimist in me remains confident that as a whole this pandemic will result in better world for our future generations.