New Normal for Businesses in era of COVID-19

War Games vs Germs Games

Let's review the historical pandemics in our recent times. Beginning of 20th century, we have seen four diseases that has spread at a scale which has grasp our attention. With this in mind our focus should be on facts vs how businesses function vs accessibility to the information.

• The 1918 flu, which was known as the Spanish flu, didn’t actually originate in Spain. It had a mortality rate of 2.5% and killed more people - 30 million to 50 million — than the 20M who died in World War I. If the 4.5% mortality rate of COVID-19 drops, it won’t be as bad as the 1918 flu. If it continues on its current trajectory, it will be almost twice as deadly. Since 1918 when there was one flu which killed more than 1918 flu pandemic. At that time World population stands at 1.8 billion (est.).
• The SARS, mortality rate was 10% whereas World population stood at 6.38 billion (est.). Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, is a coronavirus that emerged in the Guangdong province of southern China in November 2002 but didn’t spread wide enough to become a pandemic. Unlike COVID-19, SARS was generally transmitted only after people started showing symptoms, which helped contain the outbreak. SARS, which infected 8,098 people worldwide by July 2003, is believed to have an R naught of 2 to 5. The mortality rate for SARS, which killed nearly 800 people, is estimated at 10%, according to the CDC.
• The Ebola, The Ebola virus disease, formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, was identified in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo near the Ebola River. It doesn’t come back every year, but it has periodically recurred over the last 44 years. Like the current coronavirus. But Ebola is far deadlier, killing more than half the number of people who are infected with mortality rate of 50%. Ebola has spread to more than 31,000 people — mostly in Africa, not including the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to WHO data. It has killed more than 12,900 people, also excluding the current outbreak.
• The H1N1 swine flu, it emerged in Mexico in April 2009, infecting 60.8 million people in the United States alone and at least 700 million worldwide. An estimated 151,700 to 575,400 people died from the virus across the globe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Epidemiologists estimate it had an R naught of 1.5, making it less infectious than COVID-19. The mortality rate is estimated at around 0.02% and ”[H1N1] ended up being a lot milder overall than we once feared, but it hit certain subgroups pretty hard,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said.

The businesses will continue to function and companies will survive during any disease spread or pandemic, just it requires extra ordinary precautionary measures of health & safety of the employees and their well being. Businesses has to adjust with that external environment and continue to prosper and find solutions to cater the needs of the consumers. World must realize that Research & Development in Science & Technology has been most critical, how can Medical Science miss this completely that this COVID-19 is coming. If we are not prepared then we press button, in all previous disease spread social media doesn’t exist, henceforth we had minimal information. At present social media has educated every single person on the planet how to handle COVID-19. In my personal view we should NOT panic and every single person should focus on making their immune system stronger and remain calm with all precautionary measures advertised on every media outlet.

War Games vs Germs Games : All countries do war games and they make simulations on war strategies but did we do germs games....the answer is no! whereas it has been warned by many foundations that this pandemic is on it way and more to come in the future.

World has to live with new normal with new precautionary measures, COVID-19 new reality and how we lived after 9/11 !

1.   Travel - Test of COVID-19 is conducted before on-boarding aircraft

2.   Self-Test kit of COVID -19 just like BP machine, Diabetes Test kit

3.   Digital Meetings - new way of having meetings & Face to Face meetings cannot stop.

Conclusion: This pandemic has taught us on how to maintain our personal hygiene and not to spread it can be controlled with shut-down cities only in the way as how China did so that it stop spreading to one person to others. More pandemics will come in the future and world must invest in R&D to have vaccine ready within 2-3 months. Lessons must be learned and applied not like this one which is like smack on the face on Medical Science because we were never ready. Right now we are changing our behavior and this must be our new normal to do business.