The Bright Side of the Coronavirus Pandemic

The world is going through changes and I think this is going to be a long long time until we find a vaccine to deal with the virus…But I know we are strong and resilient to fight this threat.

I’m a person who always thinks there is always a bright side for everything even in darker times.

Strange enough, this is happening during Lent. A time of solemn observance and preparation for the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter. This is a time for giving something up. We are giving our freedom by staying at home, social isolation from others in our benefit and others and finding new routines. Just as we prepare for events in our personal lives, like a wedding, a birthday, Lent invites us to make our minds and hearts about life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

It seems to be a remarkable concurrence of events.

This is a youtube video to put you in the right mood. 😊

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M

Like a philosopher, I stopped to reflect on the world, nature, and society.

For a long time, we were always confronted with news about how the world was damaged. The good family values seemed to be forgotten; it was a hard fasted paced world that valued narcissism, greedy and capitalism. It was all about fast love, fast work, fast emotions, fast sex, fast everything…and then the running has stopped. The “rat wheel” has stopped.

Our human life as we know it has stopped. Our eyes are now open to see…” Hey, what’s going on?” and when we are asked to stay at home with our families we finally open our eyes and think “what the hell we were thinking and doing all this time”?

In my opinion, mother nature always had a way to deal with things. It seems she had enough and wanted to teach us a lesson to get back on track and make “herself” respected again. “She” is always a step ahead no matter what. This is a butterfly effect which in chaos theory translates to the idea that small causes may have large effects later. Besides the dark side of COVID-19, there have been positive outcomes

and I’m going to talk about them:

Pollution — the environment, as we know, is very contaminated. the introduction of contaminants, as a result of human activities, into the natural environment, causes adverse changes, such as climatic changes with severe implications. Ongoing effects include rising sea levels due to thermal expansion and melting of glaciers, warming of the ocean surface leading to increased temperatures, the decline of the amount of oxygen dissolved in the oceans with adverse consequences to ocean life, etc. But when COVID-19 obliges to quarantine the traffic stops and people reduce waste because they can’t go shopping more than they need to, so they are required to use their resources. The consequence is pollution is reducing and the earth can breathe again. We now have news about dolphins in the Venice canals or wildlife in the city centers in the USA. The European Space Agency and NASA satellites prove it and even Carbon Brief, says that this year is possible to fulfill the Paris Agreement. This means that a long-term temperature goal to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C may be achieved.

Family — now we can stay at home with our family, isn’t that great?. Who didn’t want this to happen? Do you remember when you were tired of long days at work and work 5–6 days a week and wished during those days to be with your family and friends? I honestly wished inside to be able to be with my husband, a long vacation, for time to stop for a bit to put my things in order…well, it did now! I’m at home, doing things that I always left for later, such as organizing my office papers, organizing the storage room, working from home and not losing time in traffic, playing with my dog and cat…oh they are the ones who are liking this situation the most; saying “hello” to friends I haven’t talked with for a long time, catching up what they are doing and caring for them; it is true that not having my mum with me is hard, I must confess. I talk to her every couple of hours just to check on her and if she needs I leave groceries outside the house for her, for example;

Even families with kids can now learn to work from home with them and the companies may also see some advantages with remote work seeing that their employers, after all, can also be productive and increasing their quality of life by not spending time and stressing in commuting. People may now be able to use this time for exercise and the answer “I don’t have time to go to the gym” disappears;

-Animal well being — In my opinion, after seeing the images of the Chinese food markets it opened my eyes and it calls for urgent attention to the sanitary conditions and animal well being. If people want to eat exotic food they should do it concerning hygiene standards. If these didn’t happen we were blind to see the importance of it. The virus has mutated because people eat their food from an unknown origin and this must stop;

-People are more united than ever — A wave of solidarity between people appeared and we are all united against the threat with messages of hope and love and helping each other by, for example, delivering groceries to the elder or people in quarantine, offering our services for free to help others, like pet-sitting animals of hospitalized people or making masks for hospitals;

You are less likely to die during an economic depression — The COVID-19 may lead also to economic stress but according to Nature, during this time you have cleaner air which some studies have linked to reduced cardiovascular and respiratory problems as well as infant mortality, reduced traffic leads to fewer traffic accidents, less money leads to fewer vices like tobacco and alcohol and there are fewer job-related accidents because slower production can allow for more attention to safety.

In conclusion, this allows us to stop and reflect to be able to see what we can do differently and what we were doing wrong.

We hit the bottom but together we can resurrect again as better and more conscious human beings. This is a learning lesson for us all.

“There are certain life lessons that you can only learn in the struggle.”― Idowu Koyenikan