The Clock is Still Ticking: Why Epidemics Don’t & Can’t Stop Daily Life.
Here’s an analogy:
First world problems:
· Urgh, my jet plane is smaller than my neighbor’s plane.
· Oh, my kid won’t get into an Ivy League college because he didn’t understand AP Calculus math in 5th grade. I need to bribe admissions officers.
Developing world problem:
· Will I be able to feed my family tonight, even after driving a Rickshaw all day?
February 2020:
First world problem:
· The world is coming to an end because of the coronavirus (also known as COVID-19). Let’s shut down all companies — Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook. And oh, while we are at it, let’s shut down all the schools. But let’s not stop there…we should all go shopping to Costco and stock up on toilet paper and water, as all we’ll do for next 4 weeks — drink water and pee.
Developing world problem:
· Let’s fight and work towards fixing it until we can’t anymore and then we’ll shut down.
Point is — people are getting hyper-paranoid in Washington State and all over the US. My kids’ school district is not closing because they are following CDC directions and the whole community is bashing the school district officials. Seriously?
Let me remind you — world is not going to stop. Clock is still ticking.
The clock is still ticking. Keeping kids home for weeks is only compromising their learning, and probably driving everyone crazy cooped up in the house. For my 11th grader, SAT/ AP results are still expected on the same days, her college application is still due as scheduled, she still must earn all the credentials on her college application with or without the coronavirus health crisis. So, if she is out of school for four weeks, what will be the long-term impact and consequences of that? My 8th grader has been working on her NHD documentary for almost six months, but now she won’t get to present that because the whole competition got cancelled.
Look at the impact to our economy; Wall Street had its worst week since 2008. The Dow lost nearly 1,200 points — its worst single-day point drop in its 124-year history. Business travelers cancelling their trips is hitting the aviation industry. But I still must raise money for my startup. None of that is changing.
So, unless you can freeze every single clock in the world while you close down the whole country, you have to keep moving. We cannot come to standstill (which is exactly what we have done in response to the virus so far.)
I have lived through few epidemics in my life but never saw this kind of frenzy before. It’s one thing to enforce good cleaning habits with some restrictions. But it’s totally another when you start shutting down offices and schools. Do you know how many people rely on day to day wage serving to these offices and schools? How many free/reduced lunch students only get 2 meals — breakfast and lunch — AT SCHOOL. What happens if school is shut down? How many cafeterias in office buildings shutdown and along with that those worker’s paycheck? There are ripple effects that go beyond my kid or your kid going to school. This frenzy is costing us heavily.
I’m not a doctor or an expert in social issues and I don’t claim to be like rest of the world. But I have common sense, which seems to be fairly uncommon these days. I won’t even begin comparing the deaths that happen in higher number by commonly known disease. People don’t take flu vaccine but now demanding why the COVID-19 vaccine hasn’t been designed yet. Irony — huh. I’m not saying don’t do anything.
But on a scale of 1 to 10, we have gone 11 in handling it and shutting down the economy, at least in Washington state.
If this is our reaction to a flu like virus, how will we react if there is bio-terrorism? How will we react to massive hurricanes and tornadoes in not-so-distant future, caused by climate change?
Instead of mass hysteria — things we need to be working on — how to get treatment to people who don’t have access to healthcare. How to manage the homeless population, another epidemic in WA state, in this scenario. This episode is a great learning opportunity for us as a society and nation. Response to this will set precedence for future. So, we need to learn calm and collective response instead of mass hysteria. We need to learn comfort instead of fear. As someone has said, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.
Let’s work towards getting stronger, together!
Update: At the time of this writing — SxSW just cancelled its 2020 conference — A whopping $356 Million loss to city of Austin, not to imagine the nightmare for organizers to deal with all logistical changes. This frenzy has to stop.
Correction: Previous version of this blog said “wall street lost its gains since 2008”. Corrected version is Wall street had biggest losing week since 2008.