Anytime you go through a difficult part of your life, you need to take inventory and see how the circumstances improved your life.Focusing on the negative (especially with Covid) is a natural response, but we might miss the good things that come of it. Life’s disruptions force changes, and some of these changes are overdue and needed.
Here are my observations of specific items that I believe were improved because of the disruption of Covid in the US:
Parents were attuned to what and how teachers were teaching. This is an unintended consequence of teachers refusing to go back to the classrooms while private/charter schools showed great success. Students’ computer speakers and monitors located in parents’ kitchens brought teaching methods/content/time spent learning face to face with many parents. Before Covid, these same parents only saw the homework assignments. The recent battles with school boards can be linked to informed parents who believe education is the key to success in life for their children.
In addition, the closure of public schools forced many parents to enroll kids in charter/private schools that were open. Public schools will suffer a permanent student count decline (and revenue drop) due to this - many of these will never return. K-12 public school enrollment dropped by approx. 3 percent in 2020-21 compared with the previous school year.
Home delivery of Alcohol…you may disagree with this, but why were drugs permitted to be shipped to your home but not alcohol? This has created a unique business for companies specializing in high-end Whiskeys/Wines, etc., that are more difficult to get locally.
Restaurant delivery and pickup options/process improved dramatically. In addition, numerous new Patio areas were opened that provide fresh, quiet eating space.
Telehealth (Zoom call with your Doctor) finally saw regulations overturned to allow it. We have since discovered that many visits with the Doctor can easily be done remotely - less driving/waiting. Previously, regulations prevented Doctors from being paid for telehealth calls.
Removal of government regulations. Didn’t you find it interesting to view all the success the US had in battling Covid because the federal and state/local governments were willing to overturn well-meaning regulations to fight the virus? Primarily, the vaccine would never have been developed in the compressed timeline without the relief from regulation. Can you think of a regulation that was added that helped fight Covid? Mask or vaccine mandates, lockdowns…?
HVAC Systems (heating/Air Conditioning Systems). A new understanding of ‘negative air pressure’ for hospitals and continuous air movement (Houses, Schools, Industry) with special filtration (HEPA) came out of the fight over Covid. Schools were learning that opening the windows was a good thing!
Many companies learned that remote work could be done very well by a large subset of the workforce (~50%?).
With this shift, employees could finally leave large urban centers to live in smaller towns with a much better lifestyle and lower cost of living.
There is a clear public understanding of the inadequate state of Broadband Internet coverage in the US, primarily in rural areas. Poorer urban areas have it, but families can not afford it. This has affected shifts at both work at home and remote schooling.
Vaccine Readiness for future viruses The development around mRNA technology will pay off in customizing vaccines to address future viruses as they come. Also, the US was ignoring the US stockpile of pandemic materials (PPE, Ventilators) and letting them expire/rot in storage without replenishing. Hopefully, we have learned a lesson here (news on this has been sparse)? An adjunct to this, many of these critical PPE’s were single-sourced from specific countries (China, for one). A better understanding of the global supply chain of critical pandemic supplies might result in more products being sourced in the US but not holding my breath on this one - we will forget shortly.
A reduction of Flu deaths to almost zero - this is certainly not understood yet. Is it the cleanliness/masks or? I contend that they never measured it well before Covid and had no idea of its prevalence.
Touchless Controls - automatic doors, faucets, and hand dryers.
A much cleaner public environment - remember subway riders commenting that they had never seen the cars that clean ever before.
Public acceptance of hand sanitizer - was relegated to germaphobes before.
A re-examination of risky virus/gain of function research by supporting countries around the world.
A better understanding of how multinational organizations were unprepared for the virus and too politically linked to fixing it (NIH, CDC, WHO). The WHO political connection to China was especially damaging.
An understanding of executive powers in emergencies that the federal, state, and local governments tapped to provide needed or unnecessary Covid support. We could argue about the effect of the resulting actions, but the powers were certainly used unlike ever before.
Decentralized Healthcare vulnerabilities exposed. Shared data are missing on overall beds available, equipment (ventilators), etc.… Remember President Trump telling the governor of NY (Cuomo) that he had ventilators in his state that were not being used - at the same time, Cuomo was asking the federal government to solve HIS problem?
Vulnerabilities of limited ICU beds - for-profit hospitals with huge capital costs of ICU rooms were running them at about 70-90% capacity - works great until a pandemic. Many hospitals were able to solve this very fast by repurposing other facilities in the same hospital.
Vulnerabilities of nursing homes exposed. Decades of subpar reimbursement rates by the federal government have resulted in nursing homes that are poorly run with the least expensive staffing they can find. The pandemic exposed the increased health risk our older citizens face and the poor care many of them receive. The data was ignored that pointed to nursing home deaths as the largest population of early vaccine deaths - why?
The outsized importance many people apply to our leaders may have been reduced. Many states/countries were bragging about how their leadership (the ‘right’ political party) was making the correct Covid executive decisions as evidenced by the lower Covid death, hospital beds occupied, cases, etc. A month later, the numbers reversed and showed worse numbers with the same supposed expert leader. A poor understanding of the complexity of a pandemic across many different cultural, health, age, location, access to vaccines, etc., etc. eventually proved many of us fools. Florida and NY cannot be compared - period.
Digital Learning puts the University systems at risk…or a positive phrase; changed. Two of my three grandchildren in college have or are trying to change expenses and locations of the university experience. I believe this to be partially due to the loss of the college experience while tuition rates remained the same. Students will start trying to recreate the college degree online to be more economical and more focused on courses that will teach needed skills. Read the previous comments about local public K-12 schools - the same issue here.
Send me a message outlining areas I have missed, and I will edit my list… if I agree. Tell me where some of these are wrong too….
Stay positive, a great way to look at the difficulties in your life.
Our countries ability to make everything a political issue has to be one of the documented learnings of the pandemic. It caused so many problems, bad decisions, leadership issues and confusion.
Has to be corrected, changed for the future issues we will face. Pandemic and others.
All excellent points, Lee! They all should receive continued scrutiny, action plans should be developed & implemented with included monitoring processes & follow up. Thanks!
Our countries ability to make everything a political issue has to be one of the documented learnings of the pandemic. It caused so many problems, bad decisions, leadership issues and confusion.
Has to be corrected, changed for the future issues we will face. Pandemic and others.
All excellent points, Lee! They all should receive continued scrutiny, action plans should be developed & implemented with included monitoring processes & follow up. Thanks!
We should always look something positive in our trials.
Great article. So many things I never considered as positives.