As the world continues to battle Coronavirus, write an article on the three biggest learnings for the world from the pandemic.
Answers
Explanation:
Our medical capacities are limited but we have huge reserve capacity: Medical capacities, especially in urban areas, have usually been taken for granted. Our worry has been the quality of care. But we have learnt now that the richest of nations are limited in their capacity to treat people if there is a large outbreak of a disease. To alleviate the massive pressure on the healthcare industry, governments, including the Indian government, have implemented several measures to enhance capacity – right from equipping tertiary medical care givers to getting healthcare on wheels activated. A pleasant surprise has been the return of 76,000-odd retired / qualified but not practising medical professionals to the New York medical system to boost the capacity of delivering medical care. India has a large qualified and capable base of medical professionals who are not allowed into regular practice and it is to our credit that we tapped into that base to tackle the pandemic. The existence of this reserve cohort of qualified medical personnel is a welcome realisation indeed.
The supply chain can snap: Companies manage to deal with supply risk by having more than one supplier for a commodity. Shutdowns are localised and the idea that nothing will be available from the supply chain is not something that is in the realm of consideration. This outbreak has shown that even this extreme possibility is real. We may argue that OEMs are shut anyway so supply chain disruption doesn’t matter. Well, the pain of restarting the supply line will prove that we have a problem. We now have an additional headache to manage when it comes to supply chain disruption. A headache we will do well not to forget when business resumes as usual.
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River Yamuna after three weeks of lockdown. (Express Photo)
We are living beyond the planet’s boundaries: If there is one lesson that is staring us in the face it is the fact that human beings live well beyond natural boundaries. Climate protagonists have been screaming about this for some time but we have largely ignored them. The rapid return of clear blue skies, breathtakingly fresh air, and clean water in moribund rivers; the chirping of birds, sighting wild animals in urban areas, arrival of dolphins in coastal regions, and even rapid healing of the ozone layer re-establish that we are messing nature up very badly the way we live. It is crazy to expect that a shutdown way of life will be the new normal and nature will get a chance to rejuvenate herself, but it is not crazy to expect that we will seek solutions that ensure simultaneous well-being of the economy and ecology. If we continue our high polluting way post the COVID-19 crisis, we may have dodged a bullet but will continue to imbibe slow poison.