Could Covid-19 be the Great Accelerator of our Time?

DOOM(JUST)SAYING

Last week, my wife just gave birth to our second daughter amidst the relative safety of Singapore’s robust healthcare system, that’s seemingly handling the Covid-19 situation quite well compared to the rest of the world. Our feelings of gratitude and fortune living here in Asia’s little red dot during are even more amplified by the fact that we’re seeing countries, including our very own, go into differing stages of lockdown as the pandemic has reached new levels of devastation.

Needless to say, birthing a new life into the world at this time is causing a massive existential crisis for us parents, as the world is entering a period of colossal uncertainty, one that hasn’t been seen in recent modern times.

Compared to other global and regional crises that I remember going through, this one just feels the most dire for me. Perhaps it’s coming at a time where I have the most to lose as a family man.

The Asian Financial Crisis in ’97 and 9–11 in ’01, albeit tragic, seemed like a breeze to me as a carefree teenager. I don’t remember feeling the pressure of the Great Recession in ’07-’08 because unlike many of my U.S.-based friends who lost their jobs, I got to keep mine in the Philippines at the time. The more recent viral outbreaks: SARS, H1N1 and Zika, all seemed like distant threats.

Unlike all these catastrophes, Covid-19 changed our modern way of life in a matter of weeks, largely because world governments have justifiably overreacted to restrain their citizens’ movements to curb the spread of the virus.

I’m seeing my friends and family in my home country going into panic mode. A global recession is a certainty. The recent stock market crash wiped out a couple of year’s worth of gains in my portfolio. I am increasingly worried about job security in the coming year. And l’m already considering having a Plan Z that involves Walking Dead levels of preparedness in case the world goes to hell this year.

And many experts say that this is just the beginning.

#FML

CAUTIOUS PREDICTIONS

I’ve found a strange sense of comfort reading through a fascinating framework by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, as featured in an article by BBC Future.

The think tank essentially outlines four possible long-term trajectories for humanity in the face of a global catastrophe:

1. Status quo trajectories, in which human civilisation persists in a broadly similar state into the distant future.
2. Catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilisation.
3. Technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilisation on a fundamentally different course.
4. Astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos.

Source: The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute via BBC Future

We’ve seen global catastrophes occur throughout human history. And we’ve gone through some really massive ones in the 20th and 21st centuries. And given that we’re so far NOT extinct, I’d like to think that each recovery we do actually elevated our status quo, true to the adage “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”

Here’s a run down of some major global catastrophes in the 20th and 21st centuries and the resulting advancements that happened, whether as a direct or indirect result of the event:

Source: Wikipedia

With Covid-19 poised to becoming a landmark global catastrophe of the 21st century (possibly second to the pending ultimate effects of Climate Change), which I am quite confident that we will eventually resolve, I foresee two possibilities for humanity post-Coronavirus, the first one more realistic than the other:

Status Quo (Realistic) — Assuming a vaccine is developed within or faster than the 12–18 month estimated timeline, we simply go back to our old way of life, and we see the Coronavirus as an extended “pause button” to the status quo. In this case:

• We pickup a few lessons in outbreak preparedness, and governments and businesses around the world will adapt better systems, at varying degrees of course, but perhaps not remarkably different from the ones we have currently.
• Work from home will become a more prevalent option in mainstream corporate culture simply because businesses will jump in the bandwagon of modern responsible governance, but it’s likely most people will just show up to the office anyway.
• Stimulus packages do their jobs of mitigating the economic effects of the outbreak, albeit with a lot of casualties mostly from the SME sector, which will take some time to recover to their baseline levels pre-coronavirus.
• The stock market will go into a massive upswing, as severely affected businesses such as travel, tourism, retail and F&B will bounce back big, but will eventually normalize to pre-virus levels of consumption

Technological Transformation (Idealistic) — Assuming a vaccine is delayed from the projected 12–18 month timeline, and humanity is forced to reinvent our way of life, reassess our values, refocus our priorities, and accelerate some meaningful innovations that we’ve put in the back burner.

• The world will put a much more aggressive focus on its economic and innovation efforts towards issues that matter like biotechnology, sustainable energy, sustainable food supplies, poverty, political progress etc. etc.
• New economic models and businesses will be borne out of this aggressive refocus
• Once a vaccine is mass-produced and vast swaths of the world population are eventually rendered immune to Covid-19, the world will be a different place, ideally one that’s more pragmatically aligned to more meaningful pursuits

BUT LET’S FACE IT…

Pragmatically speaking, the world post-Covid19 will probably be somewhere in between the two projections I’ve outlined. And if I understand our technological capabilities, we will most likely develop a vaccine by sometime mid-next year, not long enough for a prolonged economic and societal depression that we’ve seen during the Great Depression or WWII.

Obviously, a we’d want a vaccine to come in sooner than later. It is ideal that there will be a swift return to the status quo in the short-term to mitigate the human and economic costs.

The downside of reaching a status quo swiftly is that it could reinforce humanity’s desire for short-term gains. We’re so eager to get back to business-as-usual that we may neglect the lessons that we could learn from the time of Corona.

Let’s not let it come to that. Now that many of us, including the world’s most influential political, business and social leaders have time to think in the comfort of their own homes, it’s time to think about what we as individuals can do better in the long-term, based on the vulnerabilities that this pandemic has exposed in our current systems:

• We are massively underprepared for global pandemics. Our healthcare systems will need a major overhaul, not just to prepare for another virus, but to cater to the day-to-day needs of everyone, especially those who cannot afford quality healthcare by today’s standards.
• Our collective brain power, our human capital, needs to be focused on economic activities that solve more meaningful problems
• Despite our globalized economies, our politics, our societies are still largely selfishly nationalistic. It’s time again to reemphasize the need for global cooperation, even in times of peace.
• Our rampant consumerism is a main cause of both our global-scale problems (climate change, pollution, income inequality, animal species extinction… the usual) and our own individual existential woes (i.e. you, me, everybody is just itching to go back to the mall / bar / faraway beach destination to spend our hard-earned money for more things and experiences we don’t really need)

As the same BBC article I cited asserts that short-termism is our civilization’s greatest threat. And if there’s one thing that we could learn from this pandemic, it’s that we should start thinking and acting for the long-term, not tomorrow, but now.

To be realistic, the quick progressive change is a stubborn SOB. But I’d like to think for progress to happen, we just need a huge kick in the butt to get things going, even it will take some time.

But If there’s anything I’m realizing during this Covid-19 crisis, it is that most of us are rearing to go back to our lives before the virus, the status quo, even if our values, priorities, and behaviors are wasteful, decadent and harmful to the environment and to our individual and collective well-being as people.

My plea: let’s use this time to reflect, plan for some action points, and try to change something within ourselves now and aim for bluer skies in the future.

A photo of the Metro Manila skyline before and after the 16 March lockdown. Source @dougkramer on Instagram.

Next few posts: Deeper dives on business, politics and society post-Coronavirus….