Lessons that We All Should Have Learned from the Current Pandemic

Learning from Covid-19

Nine months in the Pandemic of the Future

Right now, in the United States and across the world, we have dealt with Covid-19 for almost nine months. It is has been the single worst phenomena that I have know that I have ever seen, and I know millions of people can agree.

What is worse is that right now we are still affected by it and our lives at any moment can be shut down by it. I remember one of the first thoughts that I had when I found out that I tested positive for Covid-19 “why didn’t I deal with this eight months ago?” Why am I just now being shut down, when my world I have known about this for almost a year?”

You may be asking about all proposed solutions. Perhaps we should have learned and prepared for a one-year long pandemic the first weeks that it was discussed to close our borders. The hardest part about the pandemic is not much different than the hardest part about life: when the bottom may have some great ideas or some seriously viable solutions, what will it take for these ideas to be recognized and implemented?

We can hear on the news about the governor of New York Andrew Cuomo’s new book about the Covid-19 response, and how some political critics call this inappropriate, as from some views New York’s response was not very good, naming that as of today over 36,000 deaths occurred in New York because of the virus.

I would not stand for any one person or official to blame, but perhaps if everyone that has had a hand in the Covid-19 pandemic response approached the problem as they were getting together to write a book, and as leaders that we depend on, perhaps we would have some highly effective and futuristic solutions.

Perhaps working with all people that would have had a hand in the pandemic prior to a year passing, we would have changed our world, changed our outlook, and changed our acceptance of what man and technology can do for us and the future.

Solutions are and have been the answer, and after getting an isolation letter almost eight months after the entire world was shutting down, this ossified in me that solutions are the only answer that we should have had. At times, during this pandemic it seems that some of us have nearly given up applying answers and have turned to “waiting it out.” We have stuck to social distancing, masks, and new approaches to medical care, but new technologies, and new applications granted to us from the government have not reached their full potential. The potential we are taking about is something that we should identify, because as time goes on, we can learn how to best approach these global problems that we may see in the future.

Changes That We Have seen

What has changed? Our psychology, our living habits, the way we live, drug and alcohol problems, the things we look forward to, our dreams, our goals, our social lives, our hospitals, our jobs, our circumstances, our finances, our economies, our expectations, and our futures.

We have seen medical licenses be granted to be portable among state lines, we have seen telehealth platforms be accepted as HIPPA compliant when they were not prior to Covid-19, and we have seen remote patient monitoring (RPM) and some technologies be depended on, for treatments, patients, and providers to meet without being within the realm of person-to-person contact. We have seen tests develop overnight, vaccines be released before one year has gone around, and we have woke up to a world that we accept going outside involves PPE. With all of this we have seen exceptions to normal life prevail.

We have seen our laws change, our leaders get sick, we have seen our family be affected, we may have seen people close to us get hurt. We have seen our society change and we have seen people slip from the sturdy economic foundations that they had reached.

We have seen death tolls and hospital visits skyrocket; we have seen legal orders to shelter in place and we have felt the pressure to stay isolated from the society in which we dream of. In the past year, we have seen shelves go empty, toilet paper become a delicacy, and most likely we have latently feared the worst, while coming face to face with it (the worst).

We have adopted masks as a daily norm and a new fashion statement, we have seen our counselors become people we rely on more than ever, and we have seen our schools shut down and rely on eBooks, chromebooks and at-distance technologies. We have seen delivery services become our new best friend, and we have quickly gotten over the $10 charge for same-day grocery delivery.

Changes That We Have Not Seen

With all of this, in America, we have not seen drones and robotics police our neighborhoods as in many other countries. We have not seen the implementation of sanitation technologies spray us with sanitizer when entering the doors of a hospital or establishments. We have not been invited to get the virus and be coached through it systematically.

It seems that we have not seen our leaders take the chances that would have changed our world permanently; often we have seen our leaders fight and quarrel instead of using the age old term that “two-brains are better than one.” We have not allowed the potential of technologies to take place that would have forever changed our world. We are still relying on the people somewhat, to get themselves out of this pandemic.

The Future of Pandemics

Our plans for the future of pandemics should be soaked and constructed with the statistics, information, and technologies that are possible here and now. Leaders should be asking and collecting opinions, evidence, and ideas that would inevitably change our world. Leaders and providers should be working with people, treatment providers and engineers to understand the best approaches that we can take to put an end to the threats on our health and wellbeing, and which approaches can do this most promptly. All people should begin to have an input now, as all people have been affected uniquely.

With everything that we have learned, no matter who we agree with or who or what we disagree with, we should have a very good understanding of what is possible, and what can be done within this pandemic to stop people from being infected. We should be able to organize an extensive approach to this pandemic from what we have learned, and from what the countries and communities around us have done that has worked.

From being on the ground floor as assistant to medical providers during this pandemic I have learned some very important things about our world, and about our response to this pandemic:

- No-touch and other accomodative technologies should be taking over.

- Technologies are available that we are not using.

- Great ideas should be found and funded.

- About 1/3 of the nurses that I have talked with will not voluntarily receive the vaccine, because of their presumptions that not enough research has been done about the side-effects or long-term effects of the vaccine.

- Heard immunity is something that we have historically taken for granted.

-Many approaches may have been overlooked, including allowing people to get the virus and organizing our hospitals to treat these people systematically while coaching them through the virus.

-Complete shutdowns have worked for many countries.

-Robots could and should have helped us much more (if we would have used them).

- We should use every bit of information that we have now to stop this pandemic and future pandemics.

- Early intervention is still possible.

- We should be open to allow our world to be what it can be, even if when we are aware of how much our world will permanently change due from applying new technologies, we should be devoted to our future in this manner.

• We will deal with this virus most likely for the rest of our time on the world, and so will those born after us.
• Technology accounts for what is possible, not just what we apply.

Technology that We Should Have From Now On

Some of the technologies that we may see in the future we could use right now.

It seems that even though in America we love technology and we love evolving, there has been some resistance to allowing technologies to be permanently placed in our society, even if they are introduced to mitigate risks, or prevent harm to our community members.

No touch technologies should be taking over by now. Perhaps in the future we will see shoe cleansers and complete body sprays/sanitizers at the entry to stores and hospitals. We may see robots and drones begin to police our neighborhoods more regularly. We rely more and more on technologies that allow us to use different methods of initiation and selection that are hands free, including delivery to our homes and hospitals by drone technologies.

In the stores we shop we may see more local and in-home 3-D production plants and delivery. We may have more at-distance access to the stores and products we buy. We may go into the grocery store in the near future, and never touch anything but a shopping cart (while it is sanitizied by mechanical system after its adjournment), while paying without touching any machine or keypad.

The pandemic now may lead us to depend on face-identification technologies or even voice recognition technologies more and more. The automobiles that get us to the places we go may begin to include interior/exterior air filtering and protection, and may include technologies that accomodate the passengers through “depressurization“ levels while entering and exiting the vehicle.

We may see more home devices that accommodate for peoples needs to sanitize their shoes, devices, and materials that have gone outside their residence. In the future, and with all of our knowledge about hopes that we have derived during this pandemic, we may hope that systems within agencies, hospitals, administration, and even governments begin to design and provide systems of preparedness for such large unprecedented threats to our health and wellbeing.

In the future we can hope that we can use these higher technologies and higher executive order human processes to work together as administrators of a united country and use history and the statistics and knowledge that we have gained to build more flawless responses and systems. Depending solely on our evolved understanding of pandemics now will prevent pandemics from occurring and prevent such drastic changes to our everyday life in the future.

Conclusions Now

Perhaps all professionals can help us derive the range and differences of lessons that we have learned about our responses and potential approaches to solving a pandemic.

In the future we can hope that the administrators that make the decisions above us all begin to use the bottom to gain a global or united advantage. Perhaps we should be taking account on everything that we have learned right now, to prevent illness, even if new viruses are born, and even if mutant strains compute. It is not our duty to give up to nature, it is our purpose to build a world that is prepared for the future by placing the future here and now.