This is not a health blog.
This is a technical blog with a science/engineering perspective. So, when I post something about health, infectious diseases, vaccinations etc. I post it from that perspective. I make the assumption that the best scientific information we have available that is accepted by peak bodies is true and correct. To that end I post links to primary and secondary sources. If you want to argue the science, go argue it with the actual professionals. I'm not that arrogant that I think I know better than professionals in their field.
It's also not a political blog. In fact, in the extra categories, you won't see anything on politics. You'll see critical thinking, the scientific method... and possibly a few recipes as well as some creative writing and a few personal observations.
I've also posted elsewhere some snarky things about what this pandemic has taught me: particularly with regard to how much people value the lives of others over money and willingness to forgo some temporary discomfort in order to safeguard other people. It's been sobering to say the least.
There are also some other things that this pandemic has taught me, from a futurist perspective. There are lessons to be learnt. Will we remember them or go back to business as usual?
Many of us are more productive when working from home
I still think offices have a place, but not like they used to. Many employers are champing at the bit to get people 'back to work' when they have been working this entire time, often with much higher productivity. For some reasons, there are inept managers still among us that think that someone working from home is somehow having a holiday. My prediction is that many workplaces will suffer a drop in productivity when workers are forced back into the office.
A long time ago at a previous workplace, I negotiated a 40% work from home. After a trial, it was increased to 60% by my boss because he could see the extra productivity he was getting from me. However, he had problems with his boss. They didn't like it one bit. The reasons they gave were:
- How will you know he's working?
- If others find out, they'll want to do it too.
Hopefully, I won't need to explain why these reasons are so ridiculous.
You don't need to go to meetings
Before the pandemic there were more than a dozen meeting collaboration tools around. Now there's basically two: Zoom and Teams. The latter really only exists because it integrates into the MSOffice suite and it can also be your phone system. I'll throw Teamviewer in as a third, but its primary use is for support - plus it's dear as poison. Zoom comes out on top in my books because it runs on literally anything and all you need is a subscription. Teams is only useful in medium to large organisations.
At the start of the pandemic, there were huge teething problems: microphones not working, cameras either not working or people didn't have them. We didn't know the 'rules' of zoom meetings (muting etc). But we're all past that now. Plus we learnt an important thing: Most of the time, we didn't need to be at that meeting. We could have sent an email. Meetings got shorter. People learnt to be concise. If we weren't really involved, we could mute, turn the camera off, and continue working on whatever we were working on - or just look at facebook.
Nobody wants to go back to face to face meetings. Nobody wants to spend time driving across town, parking, paying tolls, waiting for everyone to be free, struggling to setup your notebook to work with the projector, then using up the obligatory one hour in the board room trying to pad out a meeting.
We can do pretty much everything on zoom. Usually we can do it better.
You can be anywhere in the world
This will probably turn out to be a downside. As employers work out the first two points, they will probably decide that employing someone to do your job in India or The Philippines will save a lot of money. So to you, that may make you think you can live anywhere and still keep your job, the reality is that you may be introduced to new members of your 'team' that are offshore and need to be trained by you in all aspects of your job.
Of course, this is just an extension of globalisation. The pros and cons of which are outside of this discussion. How it affects you is the overarching issue. I've already seen this happening with one large company I know transitioning to IT support being offered by an Indian based company. I worked with my counterpart in the handover. His skillset was roughly equal to mine and we held similar positions. However, because he lives in India, his salary was about half that of mine. By Indian standards, that was great - he was paid very well. The point is that this disparity will continue to drive knowledge based jobs offshore to a much greater extent than it will permit you to move to Tasmania.
The CBD will become the place where people live more so than where they work
Nobody wants commercial real estate in the city anymore. Offices have emptied. Those that are left attract vastly lower rentals than before. For an industry driven by debt, no back will lend at anything near the value of the resource.
Residential properties in cities, however, have boomed. Restrictions in travel meant that if you wanted to go to the city, you had to live there. As more people move to the cities to live, prices rise and suddenly commercial developments are now being restructured as residential. In fact, the highest value seem s to be in the commercial/residential mix. Where there is a residential building, with shops and cafes at ground floor, and gyms, day care, professional suites, schools, universities, small offices etc. at the lower levels. Some include green space and play grounds creating a fully self contained living environment free from unnecessary commuting.
In the suburbs, an office is an essential room
Two of the rooms in our house have now been converted to offices. My wife and I worked out we couldn't really share an office with me working full time from home. In house auctions, it has been noticed that homes with a dedicated and separate office command much higher prices than those that don't. Even more so if the office has an external entrance or easy courier access.
I spend way more time in my home office than I do in the loungeroom or bedroom. For me, it has become the most important room in the house.
You don't have to "go" shopping
With home delivery of goods, click and collect, home shopping, that trip to the shopping mall isn't necessary any more. But try and buy local and not from Amazon.
Restaurants and cafes aren't a luxury
Fast Food chains will weather the pandemic. Your local family owned Italian restaurant may not. Many that adapted to the pandemic: with simpler menus, delivery friendly foods, contactless trading etc. seem to have done okay. If you enjoy going to your local restaurant as a treat every couple of months, make sure you patronise them regularly during lockdown. Otherwise, they may not be there afterwards.
Self-care isn't self-indulgent
As a poor uni student, I learnt that if I treated myself to an iced-chocolate once a fortnight, I didn't feel so poor. It was something simple I could look forward two that made me feel just a little bit special.
Pampering is vital to well-being. Activities that once felt indulgent became essential to our health and equilibrium, and that self-care mindset is likely to endure. Whether it is permission to take long bubble baths, tinkering in the shed, planting a tree in the backyard, watching a pay-per-view on netflix, anything that helps you to feel better about yourself will not only help you, it will help those around you.
We don't store enough food and provisions
The big lesson we should have learnt is we must have 1-2 months supply of non-perishable food and provisions: toilet paper, rice, pasta, flour, sugar, long life milk, cleaning products, toiletries, tinned food, water - all of things things can become very scarce in hours if there is panic buying. Perishables don't suffer as much. These things are easy to store, cheap to buy and you suffer if you don't have them. So get them and avoid panic buying.
Some jobs are essential
Every military in the world has reserve forces. The basic idea is to take a young person, train them to be a soldier in peacetime through a very small imposition of their time and give them some money to make a sweet deal. In Australia, the general commitment is one night per week, one weekend a month, two weeks a year. For that, you receive some tax free dollars and training as a soldier. The quid pro quo is that anytime up until twenty years after you leave the reserve you can be activated. This allows the military to keep a small military during peacetime, but rapidly expand it in case of war with already trained soldiers.
We realise the value of this for ware. We should now realise we need this in case of a long term medical emergency such as a pandemic. The recent bushfires show that we need this for other emergency services as well.
So, we should have reserve paramedics, nurses, orderlies etc. People that have a basic level of training in a profession. Enough to assist the permanent staff during a crisis. Consequently, other emergency services such as fire fighters and police deputies should be included as well.
We won't prepared for the next one
This pandemic was and is pretty bad. But it could be a lot worse. Until Delta, the reproductive factor was relatively low (2.4). Delta changed everything, but at least it didn't start out with Delta's reproductive rate (estimated at 9.0).
The mortality rate (at around 2%-3%) whilst bad, was at least within the realms of manageability. If the mortality rate was 10% or higher, we may have well seen major civilisation changes: civil war, anarchy, financial system collapse. The previous two coronavirus outbreaks (SARS and MERS) had mortality rates of 10% and 90% respectively. Fortunately, both had low reproductive rates. The black plague had a mortality rate of around 50%.
Experts universally agree this isn't the last outbreak. There will be more. Statistically, the next one will be much worse. But we aren't prepared for it. We're still struggling to deal with the current one. We've learnt a lot, yes, and we've developed some incredible medical preventions and treatments.But as this pandemic trails off and either disappears or becomes endemic, the money for further research will disappear very quickly.
