The "silver lining" of the Covid-19 pandemic

[sukumvit boy]

Lets talk about some of the good things that have come out of the pandemic.
For example a lot of companies have discovered that their employees can work from home saving lots of money for both the employee and the company in transportation and office space rent and significantly reducing their carbon footprint. Although this will pose some new challenges for building owners.
In the science community attendance for meetings and conferences reached an all time high in 2020 ,via teleconferences and Zoom .
The Astronomy community has adopted sweeping changes in light of the inordinately large carbon footprints arising out of air and ground travel to and from telescopes and conferences . Interesting article here:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/we-re-part-problem-astronomers-confront-their-role-and-vulnerability-climate-change

[Stavros]

I agree with you with regard to the main thrust of your post, and will offer a sceptical note in one respect.

1) I think the most important long-term legacy of Covid-19 is to restore the faith in Science that might have been damaged by people in power who should know better, though I doubt people living in ignorance will change. The late Roy Porter's splendid book has a title that encapsuates where we are now: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997). Yes, we should be vigilant because terrible things can happen when 'science goes wrong', and a lot of Science is, in practical terms, experimental. Indeed, the vaccines emerging at the moment are all experimental as we cannot yet know if Covid-19 is a here-today, gone-tomorrow virus, or one that will insert itself into human society and, though reduced in its impact, will continune to pose a threat to life, as influenza still does. But science is literally knowledge, and the vaccine development that has taken place so rapidly, compared to its developments in the past, has been able to build on that past, notably with regard to the understanding of genetics in viruses, and it is thus on a firm foundation of pre-existing knowledge that the present has been able to succeed, thus far, and this is knowledge that is not going to disappear, but become the basis on which the next viral infection will be tackled.

2) Because of its means of transmission, we are being forced to re-evaluate the congregation of human beings where this takes place on a regular basis, in work, hospitality, sport and transport. That said, it has been common for a long time for people in countries like Japan and South Korea to wear masks in public, and I wonder how many people now, in retrospect, wish they had been wearing a mask on the subways or in the buses at the peak of the rush hour, when being crushed into a pack of smelly people. The last time I flew across the Atlantic, I fell ill with a cold 24 hours later -was I infected on the plane? Someone told me the circulation of the air in a cabin makes it more, someone thinks because of filters, less likely, but I was in the capsule for seven hours and it remains the most likely source of infection.

This has severe implications for transport, notably long haul flights and cruise ships -but I suspect people will not be deterred from using them again at volume once we are over the worst of this -after all, we were told air travel would change profoundly because of 9/11, but it didn't, and we can still use transport if now we can take precautions -but we must take precautions and not bleat on about individual liberty as if it only applied to the indivdual.

3) My sceptical note is to wonder if the dangerous effect of Covid-19 is to remove people from the office block to home, which might make sense economically for the firm, but could mean people might be part of a company yet feel more and more isolated from their colleagues? Moreover, I have seen scare stories about companies providing their employees with computing that contains surveillance technology so that the boss knows where you are, and that you are at home and working, and not in your pyjamas!

Will all those city office blocks be transformed into homes; will cities decline as thiving zones where people live and work, and small towns become the places that cities used to be?

At the same time this is a good moment to 're-think' what towns and cities are and how they function, and with changes taking place to motor transport and the demands being made for real action to combat climate change, maybe now is the time to think of urban areas as 'safe spaces' and 'clean spaces' and integrate thinking around work and leisure to make sure we don't find ourselves abandoning central London or Manhattan out of fear. We can adapt to the needs of public health if, as I think it possible because of human development and insertion in wilderness areas, human society becomes more vulnerable to viral infections. We can learn from this pandemic how to adapt but it must mean, I think, becoming more conscious of how the person interacts in public with others. Right now, it is simply madness for people to attend events without masks, or not put in place barrier methods in buildings, be it a supermarket or the White House. The evidence of transmission is stark, so the challenge is to re-arrange the way we congregate so that we can still go to a coffee shop or restaurant, the cinema and the opera, or a big sports stadium without endangering anyone's health -after al, cities in the past were disease pools before public health reform made them safer -now we need a new phase of public health development, and we have the knowledge to base it on -but need political leadership to persuade people change can be positive for an individual as well as wider society.

4) My last point following from the previous paragraph, is that Covid-19 poses a truly momentous challenge to public health. The NHS in the UK is a comprehensive service funded by a special tax that provides health care free of charge at the time of need, but we have been taken to the limits by the scale of this viral pandemic and its impact on health care provision across the board -but, and I think this is the key, the service is still there, and we can learn how to adapt to ensurer Covid-19 outbreaks in the future do not limit the other medical attention people need.

But where there is no NHS, is this not the time to create one, or something that offers what we do in the UK, or is found in Canada, or in Sweden, Germany, France and the Netherlands, to take just a few European examples? I am thinking of the US, where it seems to me this must be the moment for root and branch reform to make the transition from a commercial health industry to a public service, which can be done without losing the expertise that exists, and which would over time reduce the unit cost of health care. I don't see how the US can continue to ignore the social and financial damage illness can do to a family, and I wonder if as a result of Covid-19, Americans now see how different things can be, and find the will, and the Government to change it?

So yes, there is a lot to be positive about, but also some major challenges ahead. At least the most ignorant administration in US history is now in the departure lounge, but there are plenty others in this world who need to re-focus on the needs of their people rather than the desires of their elites.

[blackchubby38]

For every employee that works at home, that is one less person who goes out to lunch at a restaurant, diner, deli, food cart, etc. that is located around an office building or any other place of employment. So that effects the service industry.

For every employee that works at home, that is one less person riding public transportation. Therefore effecting the revenue that agency generates. See what's happening here in NYC with the MTA.

For every person and business that leaves a major metropolitan city, that means less revenue to help pay for the city's essential services, which leads to budget cuts. Those cuts can have a significant impact on a city's ability to maintain quality of life for its citizens.


The accomplishment of developing a vaccine so quickly is something that should be celebrated. There are lessons to be learned from Covid-19 and human beings eventually adapt to the new situations that they're confronted with.

Having said that, there are going to be long term ramifications of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns that may take years to process. Both on the macro and micro levels. Many of them will not be positive.

In other words, there is no "silver lining" of the pandemic. Unless you count Trump being voted out of office as one of them.

[tslvr]

I don't see any silver linings, humans do not do well in isolation. The mental health issues, drug abuse, alcoholism and just plain laziness will have long lasting effects. Don't get me wrong, I believe the disease is horrible but the cure has become worse than the disease.

[broncofan]

Having said that, there are going to be long term ramifications of Covid-19

Yeah, especially the more than 250,000 people who are dead and the millions with long-term health complications when we knew that the first trials of every imaginable vaccine technology were going to finish by the end of the year. If we were worrying about end game it might have made sense to do it after the first trials covid proved very difficult to inoculate people against.

The economic problems you worry about were less severe in countries that actually did a good job of suppressing the virus. One thing this pandemic showed is how toxic misinformation is, how rare it is for people to be informed about disease, and how deadly it can be to have people in power who don't care at all about the value of human life and aren't able to formulate a serious strategy to combat health problems based on the advice of health care experts.

[broncofan]

I don't see any silver linings, humans do not do well in isolation. The mental health issues, drug abuse, alcoholism and just plain laziness will have long lasting effects. Don't get me wrong, I believe the disease is horrible but the cure has become worse than the disease.
There is room for all sorts of balancing of values and different opinions but by January 300,000 Americans will have died from this disease. There haven't been restrictions where I've lived for 6 months and although many problems are more difficult to deal with in isolation people with depression and alcoholism also have an interest in being able to breathe and not having permanent heart problems or post-viral syndrome. The issues you mention take a serious toll on those afflicted in every year but I haven't seen evidence that the increase from public health measures has been anywhere close to the hundreds of thousands dead and the millions with complications that we've seen from Covid.

Societies such as Germany, Australia, Taiwan etc. were able to suppress the virus for longer periods of time and were at least as open as our society because they took healthcare measures seriously. The laziness we saw was in the form of people congregating in large crowds without masks when a little caution was all that was called for to save tens of thousands of lives.

I agree that there is a silver lining in that we can do many things efficiently from distance and even difficult health problems can be managed with some thoughtfulness and cooperation. What I've seen as an American is that if your life depends on your neighbor being even slightly considerate or your leaders being honest and intelligent, you're cooked.

[blackchubby38]

Yeah, especially the more than 250,000 people who are dead and the millions with long-term health complications when we knew that the first trials of every imaginable vaccine technology were going to finish by the end of the year. If we were worrying about end game it might have made sense to do it after the first trials covid proved very difficult to inoculate people against.

The economic problems you worry about were less severe in countries that actually did a good job of suppressing the virus. One thing this pandemic showed is how toxic misinformation is, how rare it is for people to be informed about disease, and how deadly it can be to have people in power who don't care at all about the value of human life and aren't able to formulate a serious strategy to combat health problems based on the advice of health care experts.

I know about the long-term health ramifications of the Covid 19. Has I said before, I work in the healthcare industry and I have read charts of people who have both died from Covid 19 and who have survived from it as well. I have the upmost sympathy for those who have lost loved ones from it.

But I also have empathy for people who have faced economic problems that came from the lockdown. When I talk about long term ramifications, I'm also referring the impact that it has had on people's mental and physical health. As well has the impact it has on children when it comes to their education and their social development.

Just because a person address the other issues that have come from the pandemic doesn't mean they're forgetting the dead or not taking the virus seriously. You can do both things.

[broncofan]

Just because a person address the other issues that have come from the pandemic doesn't mean they're forgetting the dead or not taking the virus seriously. You can do both things.
Definitely but we live in a country that has erred on the side of letting people die needlessly and being cavalier about the virus. The harm to certain businesses was unavoidable except through subsidies and government assistance and had as much to do with the intrinsic risk of getting sick as what our government did.

Certain business activities are riskier in one environment than others. I find people's responses to be akin to finding out that asbestos causes cancer, which some manufacturers of it didn't know, and then lamenting the fact that manufacturers with no notice of its carcinogenicity can't produce it. It sucks but if being at a bar is going to cause tons of sickness and death, you try to regulate your way around it and provide assistance where necessary.

I talked to someone in the Trump administration early in the course of the pandemic. Their go to move when a person points out that there is no trade-off between sensible public health strategies and the economy is to pretend that their desire to keep everything open no matter what was based on their empathy for the working man. Yet certain businesses could have gotten stipends on more emergency funds to limp on by. The working man that they claim to champion has been disproportionately impacted by the virus and the lack of assistance they provided.

And yes more isolation is difficult for people with mental health problems. I have depression and OCD and have been on every antidepressant and class of psychotropic over the last fifteen years that you can imagine. That's not to say nobody's depression could be worse but on a scale to 10 it's been pretty high up there. There are ways to provide social services for people and some limited contact that is sensible. There can be limited lockdowns but exceptions can be made for going to group therapy. All sorts of accommodations can be made but it seems again like a false choice between physical and mental health.

By the time this is over we will look back and have more dead per capita than most countries and our results on every other quality of life metric (economy, mental health, etc) will not be better. And it was the attempt to pit public health against quality of life metrics that was used as an excuse to mislead people and be totally irresponsible.

[Stavros]

I undestand the anxiety about the way the local economy works in a city, but I do think that even before Covid-19 there has been evidence of people choosing to leave the city. The most obvious trigger has been the increase in the price of property for sale and rent, and this is not new, but has shown no signs of abating, even after 2008, although I read that in London rents are falling, though I suspect this is temporary, and students in University halls have not seen their rents fall.

San Francisco in the US has become notorious for losing a lot of local character because the locals that made it either died or moved away, or have been priced out by those willing to pay more. I am not sure about Manhattan but I believe similar changes have been taking place there- am I right in thinking Harlem is not as Black as it used to be?- Brixton in South London is definitely not as Black today as it was in the 1980s, because it is a perfect location for workers in the City and they have priced out previous residnts, and n general, London and Paris have become notorious as transforming districts with character into sterile apartment blocks where many of the residents are not resident at all. A year or so ago over 100,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel-Aviv owing to the shortage of affordable housing, the point being that property has become a financial component of the global economy benefiting investors rather than residents.

On the one hand this may mean the relatively cheap local cafe/diner becoming a 'wine bar' so to some extent the local economy survives, but as a long term trend it does beg the question about the function of the modern city. Where I do think there is likely to be if not a crisis, a challenge, is in the entertainment sector, because a lot of peope go into town to see a show, have a nice meal, maybe see a movie on the big screen -a lot of this can be re-located to the suburbs, esp cinemas, but over the next 10 years will cinemas survive if they can only attract paying customers with movies best seen on the 'big screen'?

I think these trends were in place before Covid-19, which has forced us to re-think space and how we use it.

The negative comments I have read here seem to me to pre-date Covid-19. What disappoints me, so far, is that neither Blackchubby nor Broncofan have addressed this most urgent of questions -how is health care in your country going to change, if it does, to respond to the challenges Covid-19 has presented you with? Can you carry on with what you have, some form of Affordable Care? Or will it just be four more years of fiddling about with an imperfect system no root and branch reform?

[broncofan]

What disappoints me, so far, is that neither Blackchubby nor Broncofan have addressed this most urgent of questions -how is health care in your country going to change, if it does, to respond to the challenges Covid-19 has presented you with? Can you carry on with what you have, some form of Affordable Care? Or will it just be four more years of fiddling about with an imperfect system no root and branch reform?
The silver lining for Covid is that we saw what can happen if the citizens of countries feel some sense of obligation to one another and healthier people make sacrifices for those who are less healthy. That this resulted in major reductions in mortality in countries like Australia, Germany, South Korea, and New Zealand can be gleaned from their mortality rates.

The United States had no major disadvantage in terms of climate, demographics, population density, nor financial resources when dealing with the virus. But we have a major cultural problem that begins with people pretending that any sacrifice they're asked to make presents an existential threat to their freedom or will hamper their lifestyle more than being on a ventilator or having major cardiac damage for the rest of their lives.

The problem with developing a system of affordable care is that it depends on the same values that dealing effectively with a pandemic does. You have to see someone with cancer and think "that person is very unfortunate, it could happen to anyone and they should be taken care of" and not "that person is not me; Why am I being asked to help someone else when I'm fine".

The silver lining from the pandemic is that if people cooperate and are informed everyone's quality of life can be improved. We saw real time evidence of that. The sad reality for us Americans is that there is too much resentment out there and I don't see a system of affordable care in our near future. I was pleased by the efforts of both private and public institutions to develop vaccines and it is useful that new technologies have been proven to yield an effective vaccine in humans.

[sukumvit boy]

Just listened to todays interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci. US vaccines will begin distribution by mid December. It's a primary shot followed by a boost in 4-6 weeks,up to 95% effective , safe,no significant side effects found.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?478369-3/washington-journal-dr-anthony-fauci-discusses-covid-19-pandemic-response

[Stavros]

The silver lining for Covid is that we saw what can happen if the citizens of countries feel some sense of obligation to one another and healthier people make sacrifices for those who are less healthy. That this resulted in major reductions in mortality in countries like Australia, Germany, South Korea, and New Zealand can be gleaned from their mortality rates.
The United States had no major disadvantage in terms of climate, demographics, population density, nor financial resources when dealing with the virus. But we have a major cultural problem that begins with people pretending that any sacrifice they're asked to make presents an existential threat to their freedom or will hamper their lifestyle more than being on a ventilator or having major cardiac damage for the rest of their lives.
The problem with developing a system of affordable care is that it depends on the same values that dealing effectively with a pandemic does. You have to see someone with cancer and think "that person is very unfortunate, it could happen to anyone and they should be taken care of" and not "that person is not me; Why am I being asked to help someone else when I'm fine".
The silver lining from the pandemic is that if people cooperate and are informed everyone's quality of life can be improved. We saw real time evidence of that. The sad reality for us Americans is that there is too much resentment out there and I don't see a system of affordable care in our near future. I was pleased by the efforts of both private and public institutions to develop vaccines and it is useful that new technologies have been proven to yield an effective vaccine in humans.

While I appreciate your eloquent explanation, it begs the queston -if Americans felt a tremendous sense of solidarity in December 1941, and in the days after 9/11 when some decided to change jobs and careers are apply to work in the military or the intelligence services, why is there no public campaign to discuss the social benefits, ndeed, requirements, of medicine and personal protection when so much illness is provoked by social interactions?

Moreover, a comprehensive health service is more than just a doctor, nurse or dentist treating a medical problem, it is in effect a permanent university of teaching and research but, most of all, expresses solidarity among people by virtue of being a recognisable benefit that does not, or ought not to discriminate against anyone on any basis. It is a form of medical democracy -'of society, by society, for society'.

The idea that there is no such thing as society, which Margaret Thatcher once said, is not so much an expression of indiviidual liberty as a form of solipsism. If a person goes to a pop concert, is it not the thrill of the music and the congregation of an enthusiastic audience the social element that they may lack if they live alone, or is a social event under any circumstance?

If it were not for people working together for a common purpose, there would be no vaccine against any disease, and if every American said 'I won't fight in Vietnam' who knows how history would have evolved since 1960? Surely one of the primary values of a Liberal Democracy is that it both binds an individual to the State, while the State gives that individual the space and freedom in which to be themselves -as long as they do not cause harm to others. It may seek a perfect balance which in reality is hard to achieve all the time, but it also requires the State to meet is obligations to the citizen, and for the citizen to respect the laws of the State which, ultimately, are (or ought to be) the citizen's laws.

It simply makes no sense for one person to refuse to wear a mask because another person's health is not his or her responsibility, when a virus is airborne, and we are in that air, be in in a confined space, or passing someone in the street, responsible behaviour of all kinds applies -'I'm walking here!' is no excuse for one person shoving another aside on the pavement.

As for the compelling evidence of the simple fact that we are social creatures who require socially-constructed remedies for illness, I offer another superb piece of research by Andrew Cliff and Peter Haggett who have done so much over the last 30 odd years to explore the interactive relationship between 'time, travel and disease'-

"The collapse of geographical space over the last 200 years has had profound effects on the circulation of human populations and on the transfer of infectious diseases. Three examples are used to illustrate the process: (a) the impact of the switch from sail to steamships in importing measles into Fiji over a 40-year period; (b) changes in measles epidemic behaviour in Iceland over a 150-year period; and (c) changes in the spread of cholera within the United States over a 35-year period. In each case, the link between time, travel and disease has been an intimate one."
https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/69/1/87/2747681

[sukumvit boy]

Biden has hinted that he wants to find a place for Bernie Saunders in his Cabinet and Bernie has said that he would accept if given a portfolio that "could make a difference". Hopefully that would be in the healthcare plan sector or perhaps Saunders "socialist" ideas may still seem too radical.

[sukumvit boy]

Sorry I meant Bernie Sanders ,of course, too many Thanksgiving rum eggnogs !

[broncofan]

While I appreciate your eloquent explanation, it begs the queston -if Americans felt a tremendous sense of solidarity in December 1941, and in the days after 9/11 when some decided to change jobs and careers are apply to work in the military or the intelligence services, why is there no public campaign to discuss the social benefits, ndeed, requirements, of medicine and personal protection when so much illness is provoked by social interactions?

I agree with most of your post (especially your description of what society is and its benefits) and appreciate the challenge to some of my pessimism in this paragraph. We've been able to convince the public that they should come together for common cause when they have a visual that stokes their patriotism, but even in the case of 9/11 how clear was the public about what they were fighting against? Many enlisted to fight Al Qaeda and others were later convinced that toppling Saddam Hussein and trying to calm waves of sectarian violence were all part of the same never-ending battle.

There was a hope early on that Trump might be able to marshal the resources of the U.S. government to build supplies and encourage public compliance by analogizing the virus to a physical enemy and the battle against it to war on the battlefield. But the virus doesn't kill people in loud explosions or leave images as memorable as buildings crashing down. The virus is not as easy to demonize as other human beings though Trump tried to appeal to xenophobia by calling it the Chinese Virus, it was only as an act of surrender to shift blame.

The cause of bringing Americans together to fight a pandemic is one that could not rely on dramatic images of crashing buildings, or xenophobia, or false premises. The heroism of a healthcare worker and of staff at a senior care facility is a quiet heroism and their sacrifice noble but there were no explosions, just individual traumas involving blood clots and quickened respiration and ventilation of our most vulnerable population. Their deaths were atrociously inhumane and many of those who survived will have long-term problems, but they were largely ignored, as were the lessons they had to teach.

Could it have been different? Yes. And while Trump is definitely a big part of the problem, his appeal can no longer be written off as aberrant. To the extent there's a collective we here, he and his supporters are part of it. Can you really build a society around the kind of disrespect for the truth that he and Giuliani and his cabal have shown this last year? It's poison and it's in our system.

[Stavros]

So you are still a pessimist on this, Broncofan!

Yes, the imagery of 9/11 was real and potent enough, but when I think of this staggering figure, 13 million Americans infected, deaths creeping toward 300,000, I wonder if enough Americans have been affected directy to ask the right questions. What I find borderline insane, or potentially an accessory to murder, is the view of the Governor of Florida that local officials cannot mandate the wearing of masks, or limit physical and social distancing. It is as if in answer to the question about what the cause is of 13 million infections his response might be, 'I don't know', only we are all nearly a year into this crisis, and given the evidence of the success that has been available from Taiwan, South Korea and New Zealand to name but three, you have to wonder what Mr DeSantis uses for brains.

If these people were threatened with legal action, if there is a law that covers it, I would say throw the book at them, including the President. I mean to say, 13 million...