Our reaction to COVID-19 hasn’t been the greatest. What can we do now?

11 min readMar 27, 2020

Unless you live under a rock, chances are you’ve heard about the COVID-19 outbreak.

At first, it seemed like a small little issue. Then, Wuhan, China underwent lockdown. Instead of analyzing the problem and looking at the solutions we should undertake, we decided to storm our Costco’s looking for toilet paper and handsanitizer, all while continuing to hangout with all our friends and family.

The amount of people suffering from COVID-19 has grown exponentially (worldwide stats)

Maybe not the smartest decision… That’s not something that we can change now. The only thing we can do is adapt for the situation we’re in now.

Before we get into what we should be doing and why, it’s important to look at what’s currently happening.

So… How exactly have we handled the situation?

For this section, I’ll be sticking to how Canada’s reacted. Of course, other countries have responded in drastically different ways. More on that here 😉

Government

As of March 25th, 2020, Canada’s government has allocated approx. $1.101 billion in funding for COVID-19. However, their response can be divided into three main categories; Economic security, public health, and international aid.

Public Health

Canada’s government has taken a variety of measures to ensure that it’s residents are in a position to be preventing the virus.

Closing borders

As of March 18th, 2020, Canada’s borders are restricted for ‘all foreign nationals coming from any country other than the United States’. These restrictions will last until June 30th, 2020 and refer to non-essential travel. (Essential would be for transportation of goods and for those that require crossing the border to work).

Any international flights that are essential have now shifted to four major airports:

Calgary International Airport
Vancouver International Airport
Toronto Pearson Airport
Pierre-Elliot Trudeau International airport

After travel, travellers are asked to self-isolate for 14 days in the case that they have come into contact with COVID-19.

Issuing Public Guidance

The Government of Canada is working closely with provincial governments to provide advice for how to react to the pandemic. As of right now:

All public schools across the country have been closed. Certain provinces have chosen to close indefinitely until September, whereas others like Ontario, have yet to come to a conclusion on how long their closures are expected to last.
All governments remain open.
In most provinces, bars, casinos, and other similar activities have closed. In Manitoba, Yukon, and Saskatchewan these remain open but have restrictions applied to them.
All prisons are closed except for those in Manitoba. Prison visit rules here have also not changed.
Other than in New Brunswick, all daycare facilities are closed (enforced by government)

For the full list of closures click here.

Research Investment

As of March 13th, $27 million was invested into research of the novel coronavirus, which will be allocated to 47 research teams across Canada. The government of Canada plans on investing a further $275 million in funding for vaccine and antiviral development + their clinical trials.

Economic Security

The Government of Canada is currently introducing changes to the ‘Work-Sharing’ Program in order to help employers who are losing business as a result of the virus. This estimated to cost around $12 million.
The one-week waiting period for individuals who are in quarantine waiting to claim Employment Insurance sickness benefits will be waived. This is estimated to cost around $5 million
If credit conditions are tightened, the government will increase investment in federal lending agencies such as the Business Development Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada. This money is available as a result of the 2008–2009 financial crisis, where a partnership with the crown and private sector financial institutions provided $11 billion of additional credit support to 10 000 firms.

Note: These measures are as of March 25th, 2020. At the time of reading, the government may have invoked more iniatives.

International Aid + Collaboration

The Government of Canada has contributed $2 million to the World Health Organization (WHO) with the intention of aiding vulnerable countries. An additional $50 million dollars is planned on being contributed
16 tonnes of personal protective equipment to have been contribued to China
The government of Canada is working alongside the European Medicines Agency and the United States Food and Drug Administration to coordinate rapid regulatory responses for vaccines and other medical countermeasures.

Businesses

Restaurants have either closed down or now become “take-out” restaurants. Access to their food is either through drive through or delivery.
Airline companies have suspended most routes and are facing large reductions of staff. Examples of this can be seen with Emirates, which has reduced its destinations from 145 to 13 countries, and with Air Canada, who has laid off almost 5000 attendants as a result of COVID-19.
Grocery stores are suffering from excess panic buying. Yes, this includes toilet paper and hand sanitizer 🤦‍♀️. Producers are now under immense pressure to fulfill consumer demand.
Businesses that are marked as ‘non-essential’ are closed in certain districts.
There is a high influx of people working from home.

For more on the impact on businesses, click here.

Hospitals

Hospitals are working around the clock dealing with COVID-19 cases. Medical professionals, and those working in the hospital (i.e. janitors, technicians) are risking their lives every day in order to ensure that individuals are recovering.

However, as the cases increase, hospitals are shifting their focus to curing individuals that have the virus over those who are facing other medical problems.

Certain hospitals are also at risk of running out of supplies. In New York, hospitals are “just 9 days away from running out of basic supplies to treat patients with the virus.” (March 25th, 2020). This is not as big of problem yet in less impacted areas but has the potential to severely impact most healthcare facilities.

Hospital workers have been working around the clock to help us stay safe 💖

Individuals

Unfortunately, our response to the novel coronavirus as a collective whole hasn’t been the greatest. We’ve seen two big trends come out of this:

Panic Buying

It’s a scary time, and as sort of a coping mechanism, individuals are panic buying supplies they think they will need. The common ones we see people stocking up on are toilet paper, masks, and hand sanitizer.

Lot’s of memes have come out of these actions lol

This overconsumption of resources is leading to at risk groups not being to obtain basic supplies for themselves. The elderly in particular are being severely impacted by this.

Racism

Patient Zero of COVID-19 was a Chinese individual, and as a result of this, we’ve seen a spike in racism and xenophobia towards those of Asian descent.

Asian-dominated businesses are being avoided, individuals are being verbally and physically assaulted, and there is a large area of dissonance and division. There is no reason to engage in these behaviours, but, here we are 😕.

Why should we even care about reacting properly?

Reacting properly is the difference between a mass amount of people being infected, and sustainable decreases in growth. Reacting properly ensures we can minimize the amount of people suffering from the virus.

Flattening the Curve

Flattening the curve is a concept in which we are able to change the exponential growth of the virus into flatlined growth.

Flattening the curve requires the implementation of frameworks and initiatives in order to reduce the amount of people being impacted on a daily basis.

This is the most sustainable way to flatline COVID-19 growth.

🤔 So, how should we ACTUALLY be reacting?

Everyone needs to play their part. As a community, we need to be working in order to minimize the spread of this disease, and prevent it as much as possible. So what can we do?

Individually

COVID-19 used to only have one person infected. Now, it’s growing exponentially. This is because even though precautions have been put in place, people are still undergoing non-essential travel, hanging out with friends, and going out in public.

Social distancing is key 🔑. At times like this, it’s important to take a blast from the past and see what other measures were taken on the global scale previously, and analyze which ones can be implemented into our lives.

In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed an estimated 50 — 100 million people. That’s not a small number. During this pandemic, at around September of 1918, US cities were planning parades to promote ‘liberty bonds’, which would help pay for the war effort in Europe.

In Philadelphia, city chiefs decided to go ahead with their parade even though 600 soldiers were already infected. During this time, St. Louis, Missouri, decided to cancel their parades and introduced systems were public gatherings were limited.

Within a month, 10 000 Philadelphians had died from the Spanish flu, while the death toll in St. Louis stayed below 700. Similarly, other cities around the U.S. during this time who implemented some sort of social distancing measures had significantly lower death and infection rates than those who didn’t.

Social distancing works. More social distancing = less cases = this could potentially end earlier 🤯

But what exactly does social distancing entail?

In a nutshell:

Social distancing refers to taking the measures necessary to minimize close contact with others.

This could mean:

Only going out when it is absolutely essential, ex. for food or medication
Staying at least two meters apart from other people
Working from home if possible
If you need to go out, leaving your living space during non-peak hours
Not hosting/attending social gatherings

Now, we’re hardwired to crave human connection. For most of us, social distancing is really hard. But is that one hangout worth getting infected, or becoming a carrier and infecting a high risk group? No.

If you have to go out, greet people like this 😉

Instead of going out with others, here are some alternatives:

Exercise!! Now is a great time to get your summer body 😉. Even better, exercise can help your immunity, something that’s critical in a time like this. There’s no downfall from doing an ab workout or two.
FaceTime/Video chat with your friends. Social distancing is physical, but there’s no reason to stop interacting with other human beings. Isolation can bring you into a darker state, but keeping that sense of having a community around you can help aid with lonliness.
Learn a new skill. You’re spending the majority of your day at home, why not take that physics course you’ve always wanted to take, or try out some new recipes?
Meditate. It’s a super useful tool for clearing your head, easing with stress, and helping with depression. Similarily, you could also take this time to journal and reflect. Use this as an opportunity for growth 📈.

Another really important thing to consider is preventing the virus by staying clean. Disinfecting your devices, sanitizing your surrounding environment, and washing your hands is a must.

And by washing your hands, I don’t mean shoving your fists under a stream of water for five seconds and shaking the water off. Proper hand washing procedure is twenty seconds with soap and water, and then drying them off. To keep track of the time, sing the alphabet song twice (or if you’re feeling frisky, do it backwards 🤯).

Here’s what not to do:

Avoid touching your face. If the virus somehow ends up coming into contact with your hands, touching your eyes, nose, mouth, or ears is providing the virus with a pathway for entering the body.
Do not travel. Right now, the best approach we can take is preventing the virus, and this is done by minimizing spread. If you’re experiencing symptoms of flu or fever, do not leave your living space. If you are fine, avoid all unnecessary travel.
Avoid panic. Buying 50 packs of toilet paper does not equal COVID-19 immunity 🤦‍♀️. Only taking what you need will allow for individuals like the elderly and medical professionals to access resources as well 🔑.

Locally

Now that we’ve established what we can individually do, how should our cities be reacting?

Keeping cities in lockdown is ultimately the best direction to take. Although it sounds scary, this will help minimize the amount of contact of people with each other, and in turn slow down the growth of COVID-19.

If you are sick, know where and when to call in. Inform yourself of what places you should be contacting so that you can avoid going to hospitals. This will help reduce the chances of the virus spreading to other individuals in your city. If you do not have any symptoms, avoid testing so that other people in your locality can access these resources.

Follow the news. Being aware of what is happening around your city and enacting the steps that the municipal, provincial, and federal government recommends will keep you, your family, and your friends safe.

Nationally

Keep the country in lockdown. this will help minimize the contact of people with each other, hence the slower increment rate of the COVID-19.

Speed up the research process in labs. A big thing that happens in labs is that people work very slowly and the problem with that is it takes more time to find a medicine towards a virus. Every day, every second longer it takes to find a cure to the virus, more people get affected from it and can die.

Globally

Okay, big boy time. COVID-19 is a pandemic, and on the global scale, we need to be taking drastic measures in order to prevent it’s spread and prevent this from happening again.

It is absolutely essential that borders remain closed. Closing borders will prevent the virus from becoming more airborne than it already is. Closing borders will also help prevent unaffected individuals from getting the virus.

Information should not be hoarded. Countries need to be open to sharing resources and practices with each other. China currently has no new cases of COVID-19, and so, their precautionary measures should be released. Countries should not be afraid of collaboration.

We’re literally living through a key event in history. It’s a concept that’s absolutely insane to think about. Our actions will set in a precedent for pandemics that follow after this one.

This stuff is serious, and although it’s heavy, reacting properly is absolutely critical for minimizing the impact of COVID-19. We need to be investing resources, time, and people into this issue.

The question now is, will you react properly and help flatten the curve, or will you be on the wrong side of history?

🔑 Key Takeaways

Social distancing is critical to minimizing the spread of the virus and to flattening the curve. It’s been proven to work before 😍
Lockdowns and border shutdowns, although scary, are the right precaution to take
Responding via individual panic and hostility is not the way to be approaching COVID-19. Hoarding resources and supplies only impacts the vulnerable
COVID-19 is a serious issue, and taking the proper actions now, will save us a lot of trouble in the future.

👋 Hey! If you liked my article and would like to read more of my work, feel free to follow me on Medium! I’m also always thankful to hear feedback so, if you would like to get in contact with me (I don’t bite, shoot me a message!), connect with me on LinkedIn!