We are not (just) waiting to ease pressures on the health service, We are waiting for a solution.
You might have heard that lockdown measures are only in place until hospitals can cope — but is it only until then?
Are you in a form of lockdown like 20% of the world population?
If you are, you might have heard that our wait will help ease the pressures on health services. Hopefully, this measure will allow hospitals to cope with the rising demands of people becoming critically ill amid the coronavirus crisis. This is true, but only partially true. Allowing the health service some breathing space so they can cope is currently an emergency, but the long term goal is a little different: By now, we should understand that a simple ‘delay’ won’t work, and the sooner we come to terms with this concept, the better.
At the time of writing, the US is at the top of the sinister list of countries with most cases of covid-19 (more than 85,000 confirmed cases). I’m not big on charts, and I’m sure you’d be tired of them by now so I won’t put any; however, if you look at a mortality rate of 4–5%, you’ll see that once the hospitals start to cope with new admissions, the problem would have not gone away.
Take Spain for example. The country enjoys a free national health service and has reported over 3,000 deaths and 27,000 people needing hospital treatment so far. Its population circa 47 million with about 16% being over 65, but this number doesn’t even count younger people with underlying conditions. The maths are easy: 27,000/47m * 100= 0.057% being hospitalised, i.e. one person hospitalised for almost every 2,000 people. It means that if a solution is not found once the restrictions are relaxed, the whole chaos will start again in the blink of an eye. We need to be pragmatic about the situation: For how long our governments manage to support us and the economy around us?
However, not everything is doom and gloom, the world is tackling this problem using a wide range of approaches: Vaccines are the dream everyone seems to be asking for, but it is a long way away. Experts believe the availability of a vaccine will take at least 18 months. Other remedies look a lot closer although they might not be as effective. Manufacturers have joined the race to develop more ventilators, which is one of the cornerstones to keeping patients alive while they fight the virus; and many laboratories are testing several options, such as antiviral remedies and transfusions from recovered patients. Even herd immunity has been posed as a way forward. Unfortunately, all of these treatments carry a degree of risk and the acceptance of large numbers of people becoming infected.
But what can you do if you are not a health worker directly involved in the fight against the disease? First, think about those who need you the most. Karma is a b*** only if you aren’t willing to help, but if you are already ticking that box, there are major areas where you can be useful and keep paying your bills; whether this is going to take three months or more.
Think about it from a logical point of view:
- Work from home if you can. You might not be as productive but it’ll help to keep the world going, and by ‘world’, I mean the economy.
- Food and medical supplies — People who are in lockdown still need to eat and treat themselves, whoever they are. It might be an option to get a job in those areas, particularly in the contactless delivery market.
- If you have enough cash to keep yourself and your family going, maybe it is the time to invest in that career/business opportunity you never had the chance to start.
… and don’t forget that a wealth of opportunities will become available once this is over. As I explained in my short opinion piece “Essential”, people’s behaviours and understanding of life will have changed, which means new life challenges, perhaps previously unexplored, will come afloat.
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