What do you hope we learn from covid?

[Dream of Freedom]

What do you hope we learn or changes we make because of covid?

My list:

• When we learn of an outbreak of a new disease travel to and from that area should be suspended immediately

• We should have less recirculating air

• We should wear masks when we are sick and have to be in public

• Hands free technology were possible (everything from electric doors to electric ketchup dispensers at burger king)

• The plexiglass they are installing between the cashier and customers should stay up

• Hospitals should stock more personal protective equipment

[jacob]

The main thing I've learned is that it's a good idea to dry run preparations just to work out any kinks in advance. For example, I have a plan for a water shortage, but I've never tried working through it in practice. I just assume it will work. Ditto other plans.

Two things I hope consumers learn are. First, that it's really effing stupid not to have an emergency fund. The neverchanging statistic that half of everybody don't even have $400 saved for an emergency when the median income is pushing $35,000 per year is just @#$@#$ irresponsible. This goes way beyond privilege and hardship-type excuses when so many fail to save even 1% of their gross income. Second, I hope those who "never have anything in their fridge, lmao" remember the benefits of having food in the house and the knowledge to cook it, because next time supermarkets might not stay mostly open and supplied.

Will this change? Probably for a few years and then it will be slowly forgotten until next time.

[Alphaville]

I have zero hope. It often leads to disappointment. Nevertheless, #1 in my wishlist is that we prepare for the next disaster instead of the last one. E.g., global warming, which will not go away in 6 months.

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ETA: Also, I almost forgot this, #2 in my wishlist is that we keep some aspects of quarantine as permanent features. I’m really enjoying reduced traffic and pollution and it would be so cool if some of that could remain. One person per gas guzzler needs to end already.

[Frita]

There are many things that I wish would happen. Hope has a probable feature, so I don’t have any. I foresee no sustained, long-term outcomes on a macro level.

[Sclass]

First, that it's really effing stupid not to have an emergency fund. That whole neverchanging statistics that half of everybody don't even have $400 saved for an emergency when the median income is pushing $35,000 per year is just @#$@#$ irresponsible.

While this is clear to everyone on this forum, I don’t think the rest of the world will get it. 2008 should have been a good enough of a lashing to get people to change but it seems the majority are still a paycheck away from broke.

I liked Gov. Cuomo getting peppered today by a journalist. “People are suffering. If you’re going to make us stay home you need to pay us!”

Really? How about a little gratitude for being alive today. He could have answered that it not his problem that people cannot survive a month without income but that wouldn’t go over well.

I guess this leads to my final takeaway that we need to rely on ourselves to a large extent. Waiting around for big brother to save you has not worked out well this time.

[IlliniDave]

I think we need to rethink our supply chains and determine a list of strategic industries where we ensure we are, or can readily adapt to be, nationally self reliant. IOW, some of the ere principals applied on a national scale instead of an individual/family scale. Food, medicine, energy, certain technology, etc. That would include maintaining strategic stockpiles in some instances, maybe.

We need to totally retool CDC, NIH, FEMA, etc. Can't get pantsed like this again because the next pandemic might be far more grave. Huge amounts of money poured into these organizations over the decades, need better ROI.

Also, for situations like c19 where the biggest threat is to an identifiable fraction of the population, we should consider national strategies focused more on humanely isolating and protecting the vulnerable than wholesale shutdown. That may not always be possible, but when it is it should be strongly considered. Over the next year I think we'll see aside from the communal bill we racked up, there will be a lot of long-term devastation on Main St.

There are a number of reasons to continue to shift more towards work-from-home. Disease is one, but I don't think it's the biggest day-to-day advantage. Savings in time and energy and reduced pollution and congestion would make this pay off all the time. That said, there's still a ways to go--my workplace is less efficient because they are still trying to preserve the old way of doing things in a now suboptimal environment for them. At the same time, I've noticed lots of middle management whose absence doesn't hinder anything (warning: may be a lot of confirmation bias in that observation ). Eventually businesses will figure out that it helps their bottom line to have the employees pay for workspace, electricity, connectivity, and HVAC as much as possible. The question is whether they are willing to relinquish an amount of micro-control in exchange for the money saved.

I think we need to be a little more demanding of the quality of "models" before we base public policy on them, and we need to use them more wisely. Companies in the business of making money who use modeling as a tool certainly do both already. Can't afford not to.

Businesses need to think through and prepare for continuity plans that include pandemics. Lots being learned now, need to remember for the future. I've been involved in drafting business continuity plans and pandemics were never considered. I imagine that is true for the plans of a lot of entities.

We need to cultivate new "news media" outlets who are more interested in providing useful information to the populace than they are in picking sides in ideological battles and personal spats. One of the most common things I hear is, "I don't even know who the &^%$ to believe any more." That's really bad during a pandemic.

On a personal level I think I'm going to be much more aware of "crowding" and will probably look for ways to maintain some semblance of social distancing even after the all-clear. Prior to all this I did so more for convenience--it's just easier to get in/out of the grocery store or whatever early on Sunday morning, for example. Being an introvert helps.

In an odd juxtaposition, I'll also be more aware of cultivating at least a minimum threshold of social interaction. Despite being a pretty strong introvert according to the various "tests", I am not Howard Hughes.

I don't like clutter and having lots of stuff to store and keep track of, but there are some things that I'm considering laying in a strategic supply of.

I agree with Sclass that sadly one of the most obvious takeaways for ordinary people, being to shore up their personal finance situations, will probably be ignored if not outright discouraged. When LBYM < FOMO + YOLO in terms of importance, the result is usually a brittle leveraged situation.

I think about this a lot and will continue to do so. The above is just a snapshot of where my thinking has been lately.

[Jason]

Good question.

I have no hope for what "we" will learn. Speaking in terms of USA, we are not only a-historical, we are probably anti-historical at this point. We are a "we will get through this" people, at best a "we will remember this" people but never a "we will learn from this" people. I think more people are planning their post-corona trip to Disneyland than the next crisis. Just like post-WW II. Let's have babies and buy washing machines. Corona will become our Communism. It's out there as a constant heteronomous threat but the cry will be, similar to post-911 - "We need to preserve our way of life. We need to prove we will not be defeated by this invisible enemy. Now go out and buy that new I-Phone." I think this is exacerbated by the fact that although we read all about the deaths, they are quiet deaths with extremely private funerals. And most are elderly deaths and therefore not the types of death we normally bring out the marching bands for. . Will there be post-corona public memorial? I know of Holocaust museums, and War memorials but not a 1918 Pandemic one. I mean how many people even knew of it beforehand. I did. But admittedly, I didn't watch the video until now. And since there is no specific location i.e. Twin Towers, Normandy, where do you put it? So yes, supply chain improvements, and extra-bandwidth will be in order. But do I think church attendance will grow? Or more traffic on sites like this one? Maybe. And then only for the first 10 minutes,

So what do I hope "I" will learn. More cash on hand. Remain consumer debt free. Low expenses. Always have non-perishables Increase savings rate. In summation, increase and approve my bubble until the grim reaper pops it and says "you're up, asshole."

[J_]

I have the same (first) drum: keep/have your health prepared in the best possible way.

Of course you can fall off the ladder while paper your walls, or fall off your bicycle when pushed off by a car. With C you see the survivors are those with the best health.

So I hope that people study more about nutrition and health, and have the discipline to act.

[jacob]

Another lesson is how thin some of these supply lines really are for some of the more "esoteric" self-reliance supplies and tools. I didn't figure just how fast the shelves would be cleared off of flour, yeast, canned tomatoes, garden seeds, sewing material, ... Basically, I figured this would be further down the line of domino bricks getting knocked over and that TV-dinners and dip sauce would be the first to go. It's essential that crucial supplies be stocked up during peace time, because just in time supply can't handle pressure for anything but business as usual demand.

[jennypenny]

I didn't figure just how fast the shelves would be cleared for flours, yeast, canned tomatoes, garden seeds, sewing material, ... Basically, I figured this would be further down the line of domino bricks getting knocked over and that TV-dinners would be the first to go.

I'm actually pleased (and surprised tbh) that useful items sold out fast. People are smarter than I gave them credit for before this started. I'm also pleasantly surprised by how many non-craftsy people I know who have managed to make themselves decent face masks, or repurpose something into a mask. I also like the hilarious memes, the funny cooking experiments, the zooming entertainment, and the willingness of people to open up about what is particularly challenging about the lockdown*. I hope what people take from this is that they're more capable than they thought.

I also hope the forced slowdown helps people dial back the frenetic pace of normal life. The NYTimes ran an op-ed Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone? (<-- free version). In the piece, doctors said ER visits are way down and they're worried that stroke and cardiac patients are avoiding treatment because they are afraid of being infected at a hospital. While I'm sure that's true to a point, I wonder if part of the unusual drop is because people are working from home (no commuting or sitting in unhealthy offices all day), cooking instead of eating less-healthy takeout, walking because it's the only way to get out, and sleeping more reasonable hours. Maybe the slower pace of life right now is contributing to the drop?

*celebrities whining about being locked down in palatial homes excepted

[luxagraf]

I'm fairly confident the collective we will learn nothing, but I am curious to see if enough individuals learn something (and act on it), to have a broader impact on society.

At the individual level, Like Jacob said, the emergency fund and food for at least a week on hand seem pretty obvious. And I think at a community level it's pretty obvious that we need to relocalize key infrastructure, though it's less clear what that looks like, or how much work it will take.

Personally I've learned that I was not nearly as well prepared as I thought I was, despite having food and money and other tangibles on hand. I was (and to some degree still am) caught psychologically off guard, which has made it difficult at times to be rational in my decision making. Like just because you half expect things to go south, doesn't make it any less surreal when they do. Turns out the world doesn't give a fuck what my timetable for events might be

Unfortunately, most of the people I know seem to be dealing with this by watching netflix and ordering stuff off amazon, so even in the middle of a crisis event, not much learning happening.

[Sclass]

+1 on supply chain. The entire Just In Time strategy is ingenious till you get a surge in demand. I can recall fierce debates at my old employer where we got punished by accounting for stockpiling chips, technical alloy ingots and special glues. They never noticed when we got things right during a temporary shortage if we had materials in our vault. Purchasing would run to my desk with these awful delivery dates and I’d calmly retrieve parts from the vault and walk them down to the assembly line...nobody noticed or rewarded me. But then again I’d get called into the boardroom and yelled at for not stockpiling a particular chip that Apple suddenly disclosed they would be using on the newest iPad (and thus crushing the global supply). Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

While a shortage of chips only destroys a quarter’s profits, a shortage of PPE kills. The demand shift of N95 masks from 80% industrial 20% medical to the opposite was a sight to behold. As idiotic as the Chinese people (I teased) at Home Depot looked buying cartloads of masks were, they were just responding to a thin supply chain that was shifting like loose sand. They burned right through the industrial inventory in a week.

When I bought replacement elastic bands at Walmart for my old respirators back in Feb I noticed they had seven packs of the 1/4” x 2’. Not much I thought as I bought 20% of their stock. Now I hear elastic band for masks is unobtanium locally as all the seamstresses are making masks. I don’t blame Walmart for having a shallow inventory. Nor do I blame the country for having no stock in the US. Nor do I blame the Chinese for diverting their elastic production to local shops. It’s ingenious up to the point it’s not.

Somebody needs to think about this...as we used to say in the robot army.

I’m hoping people in the big metro areas will recognize the value of clean air. I’ve never seen GLA sky like this. I was a child during pre catalytic converters in SoCal and it has never been like this my entire life. It’s like having a glass of filtered water for the first time after drinking muni water. The “normal” haze is just gone. Maybe just maybe people will like things this way and try to change.

Or maybe they’ll just jump back in their Yukon Denali and order Orange Frappe-chinos on their credit cards.

[flying_pan]

First, that it's really effing stupid not to have an emergency fund. The neverchanging statistic that half of everybody don't even have $400 saved for an emergency when the median income is pushing $35,000 per year is just @#$@#$ irresponsible. This goes way beyond privilege and hardship-type excuses when so many fail to save even 1% of their gross income.

I have a pretty cynical view and I don't think it will change anything on scale. Sure, some people will change and start to plan for something unexpected, but for majority the signal is that if there are enough of them, broke and scared, government will take care of them. Right now it is stimulus check + deferred taxes (not really important for many W2 anyway) + increased unemployment benefits, but the message is clear: people treat government as it has to give them money, not as their own fault for not saving enough to be able weather something like this.

[jacob]

I’m hoping people in the big metro areas will recognize the value of clean air. I’ve never seen GLA sky like this. I was a child during pre catalytic converters in SoCal and it has never been like this my entire life. It’s like having a glass of filtered water for the first time after drinking muni water. The “normal” haze is just gone. Maybe just maybe people will like things this way and try to change.

One tends to go nose-blind. The filtered vs muni analogy is apt. When we went to visit my parents on the Danish farm for the first time in ten years, I was astounded twice. First at how clean the air was. Second, on returning home, how much Chicago actually stinks. It's not just the smell. There's "something" in the air similar to how one can detect/feel allergens w/o having to smell them. I wonder how much expected lifespan we're losing over this.

Anyway, starting about a week ago, I started "smelling" clean air outside. There's the occasional whiff of some industrial plant if the wind is blowing the wrong way but otherwise fantastic.

Another thing I've noticed is that we've gained about two orders of magnitude in terms of how many stars we can see in the night sky because the haze is gone. All those spotlessly clean scifi cityscapes are real for the time being.

[7Wannabe5]

Obviously, the average behavior of the average citizen is going to inform public policy. Given that eternal growth defines the central economic policy, the fact that the average American is spent down to the nubbin is signal of true patriotism. There is no inconsistency.

I have been reading some more books on the topic of other possible upcoming crises. An epidemic stands out in strong contrast from most other possibilities due to the quick devaluation of much social capital.

[luxagraf]

An epidemic stands out in strong contrast from most other possibilities due to the quick devaluation of much social capital.

That's it right there, that's why I felt caught off guard. Thanks for putting that in words.

[J_]

I also hope the forced slowdown helps people dial back the frenetic pace of normal life.

YES! it does! Time for thinking and reflecting what we all are doing.

One see the un-essentiality of sport events, like the tour de France, the relentless tennis tournaments around the world, the futility of the Olympic Games, the European soccer games..

Yes I know, those games give also a lot of entertainment to many people, who think they are sportive..Perhaps they realize now that to sport themselves is as rewarding.

[Freedom_2018]

In addition to stuff mentioned by others above:

- In some ways the Internet is the worst invention of man (especially in relation to news/media ...worse than the virus itself). It creates a proximity of events without humans having evolved the psychological mechanisms to deal with information from everywhere all the time.

- Eventually. this will likely be much ado about nothing....other than to realize that most people will give up their rights at the drop of a hat...the same way they give up their hard earned income at the sight of a shiny advertised bauble.

- By trying to save everyone, we have made the system more fragile.

[Alphaville]

the futility of [...] the European soccer games..

oh no... i have plenty of bread, but i miss my circus. saturday mornings are not the fun they used to be.

i never took the sport too seriously, but i loved it. heroes and villains, triumph and defeat... it’s our modern epic legends without the bloodshed.

watching the glory that was liverpool undefeated, then getting a black eye against watford, or seeing haaland, a mere kid, score 5 goals in one game— awesome. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FhshArCfzsA

but then the gods sent a plague and blam! liverpool denied in their run to the title, haaland who knows where now.... it’s like reading the odissey as it happens.

sure there’s books and movies and things like that but they’re all scripted. sport is all about the unexpected.

[Freedom_2018]

In addition to stuff mentioned by others above:

- In addition..in situations like quarantine, lockdown..better to shelter in a Red state vs a Blue one as the govt (state..cities are generally blue) is less likely to put a kibosh on individual freedoms...writing this from Arizona where I have been instead of California since returning to the US. People are keeping social distance etc but hiking paths are open and people fish, boat, cycle etc.

I am politically non-aligned and think all our leaders are only there for entertainment value.