The new corona virus: Opportunity in catastrophe

The news are now dominated by the new corona virus pandemic. And for good reason, for the pandemic touches almost every aspect of our lives: our jobs, our social interactions, our schools and even our ability to stay in touch with family. For most professionally active adults in the West, who were born after the last great war and have never lived under armed conflict, what is happening now is the greatest disruption of commercial, social, financial and health care systems they've ever witnessed.

Indeed, our present situation is a very serious one. Should the pandemic be allowed to spread in an uncontrolled fashion, most of the work force could fall ill concurrently, compromising our most essential systems. Who would be there to deliver our food, maintain our basic utilities—water, gas, electricity—in working order, or even take care of us in case we fell ill ourselves? However limited the mortality rate of COVID-19 may be, if the disease makes a large percentage of the population ill at the same time, dramatic social break down could follow.

Yet, despite the seriousness of our situation, there are good reasons to think that not only did we get lucky, but an opportunity has forced itself upon us that may be of enormous value in the future. As Bill Gates and many others had been warning us—see video insert below—a global viral pandemic was an inevitability. Things like this are bound to happen in an interconnected, globalized economy in which people travel around the world regularly for both work and leisure; where basic supply chains span the globe. So the basic question has never been 'if,' but 'how bad' it was going to be.

Indeed, the last major viral pandemic, in 1918, was also propelled by the massive movement of people—armies—around the world for the purpose of waging war. Today, the movement of people and goods is vastly larger and farther-reaching. So only naive wishful thinking and an ostrich attitude—that of burying one's head in the sand to avoid seeing the obvious—prevented us from acknowledging that what is happening now was inevitable.

Given this context, we have been tremendously lucky: the new corona virus has a relatively low mortality rate, compared to the likes of ebola or the 1918 "Spanish flu" virus (which, by the way, didn't come from Spain, but likely from the USA, France or China). Moreover, unlike the "Spanish flu"—which affected young, professionally active adults most severely—the new corona virus affects mostly the elderly, retired part of the population.

I am not saying that the lives of older people are any less valuable than those of younger ones. In fact, a case could be made that, if anything, the reverse statement might hit closer to the mark. However, the social disruption of incapacitating professionally active people—who deliver our food, ensure our utilities keep on working, and take care of us in case we fall ill—is certainly higher than incapacitating retirees. This is merely an objective observation, not a value judgment.

I am also not trying to minimize the drama and loss caused by the new corona virus. For those who perished from it, as well as their families, the current pandemic is as bad as any pandemic could possibly be. For them it is—for very legitimate reasons—offensive to minimize its impact, for they've already lost what was dearest to them.

But it could have been a lot worse. The present pandemic is serious enough to force us to prepare ourselves better for the next, potentially much more destructive one. Yet, it is not a force that can decimate our civilization. As such, it serves as a kind of wake up call, a painful warning that should force us to get our act together. Without it, the next time round our civilization could collapse.

There is another potentially positive side to the drama we are undergoing: the present pandemic offers us an opportunity to revise our unsustainable way of life and experiment with alternatives. In fact, it forces us to try the alternatives, which we would probably have never done otherwise. For instance, we are now forced to dramatically reduce the out-of-control travel binge we have been indulging in for decades. In an era of highly effective and ubiquitous telepresence technology and video conferencing, hundreds of thousands of corporate managers have nonetheless been traveling half way around the globe—multiple times a year—for business meetings. Airplane tickets have become so ridiculously cheap—far cheaper than the actual cost of flying, if we take sustainability and carbon footprint into account—that, every year, multiple and massive human migrations take place: we call them 'holidays.'

Now, the new corona virus is forcing us to think and act more locally; to work more from home as opposed to clogging highways, practically eliminating traffic jams. This sudden change is dramatically reducing pollution and perhaps even forcing us to connect more with our homes, families and immediate environment. It is forcing us to rediscover the richness of what is immediately around us, as opposed to exotic, far distant lands. These aren't bad things. Hopefully, we will have the wisdom to keep some of it after we come out of this painful exercise, as opposed to going back to our crazy old ways. We can turn our present misery into something of tremendous long-term value, on which the sanity and lives of future generations may very well depend.

At an economic level, the devastating effect of the present pandemic is plain to see. Businesses are struggling to keep going. On a more personal note, my pension fund has shrunk to levels comparable to those of several years ago, which certainly isn't fun. However, even here there is an opportunity, if we only pay attention: for decades we have—insanely—linked economic health with growth. The reigning corporate wisdom has been that a business that doesn't grow is a dead business. Yet, our planet isn't growing; it has the same basic resources today that it had millions of years ago. And it also has the same capacity for absorbing pollution without unpleasant consequences. So growth just can't go on forever.

Eventually, we will have to find a way to break our economic dependence on growth. This conclusion is as obvious as it is inescapable. The problem is that we live under a system that stimulates irresponsible pillaging until the eleventh hour: we know we will have to stop doing it at some point but, until then, we will rush even more and try to pillage more than the next guy; just like the race driver who tries to brake at the very last moment before the curve, risking life and limb in the process. This is the reigning psychology of Western capitalism, a psychology of collective suicide. Perhaps the present pandemic will force us to break away from it, to look into the possibility of separating economic health from growth. If it does, then this, too, is a good thing.

For now, our focus must be on surviving the outbreak with the minimum possible level of loss and suffering. But as we do so, it doesn't hurt to pay attention to the changes being forced upon us, and think about whether these changes are worth keeping for the long run, even after the pandemic subsides. For instance, we have the technology to continue to embrace remote work and video conferencing, which we haven't done more broadly thus far merely because of prejudice and force of habit. But now that we are being forced to make this option work, we can learn a thing or two. A lot of good can come out of an otherwise very difficult and painful situation, if only we pay attention.