• Question: How do you think Covid will affect the future?

    Asked by path50vet on 9 Nov 2021.
    • Photo: Andrew McGovern

      Andrew McGovern answered on 9 Nov 2021:

      I think we will all have a better appreciation for contagious diseases. I think we will all have more empathy for people staying at home when sick. I think that we will all understand and value science a bit better. I think public health will become the new standing armies, always ready for whatever enemy viruses may attack us, we won’t be caught by surprise again. We won’t ever let ourselves and the people of the world be so overwhlemed like this again.

    • Photo: Danielle Nader

      Danielle Nader answered on 9 Nov 2021:

      I think we have learned a lot from this pandemic. The world we knew before COVID is not going to be the world we live in now or in the future. With the increase in global population and climate change, we will definitely be seeing more pandemics and it is important we take notes on how to improve.

      Many countries can agree that there was a lack of preparation surrounding their response to COVID19. It’s important that we learn from our mistakes and prepare better for the next pandemic. This should include:
      -increased access to protective equipment and ICU beds
      -dealing with the public resisting the vaccine
      -increase amount of money going towards drug development research
      -have better stockpiles of essential food and medicine
      -overall have better coordination between countries

      On a smaller scale, we can all remember important points we learned from this pandemic. Now we know social distancing is very effective in reducing the spread of contagious viruses – in 2020, rates of seasonal flu were very low because of masks, hand sanitizers, and social distancing. More people prefer working from home and realize going into the office might not be necessary. So COVID clearly is going to affect the way we work and live daily.

    • Photo: Cyrille Thinnes

      Cyrille Thinnes answered on 10 Nov 2021:

      Covid, and how we are dealing with it, is an impactful learning experience for people all across society, all across the world. Probably one of the biggest legacies will be how fast we moved to an increasingly digital world, with many processes which were primarily ‘in person’ before, are now much more amenable to be conducted in a digital environment, with additional benefits to our lives, even outside the Covid issue. For example, many business meetings used to be primarily ‘in person’, including people flying all over the world for meetings that are now likely conducted online, with numerous beneficial changes including being more environmentally friendly, cheaper, and easier to organise.

      One question is: will people embrace change and transform their ways of living, or are they desperate to ‘go back to their old lives’, undoing any changes which were done in the short term. Only time will tell.

    • Photo: Ohood Alharbi

      Ohood Alharbi answered on 25 Nov 2021: last edited 25 Nov 2021 11:29 am

      Yes I believe so, unfortunately there is always a side effect even for medications and similarly vaccines, yet they are essential sometimes for survival. For instance studies have shown an association between antibiotic discovery and the start of using antibiotic and the rise of all other chronic disease that includes metabolic diseases, heart diseases, as well as cancer. Does that mean the same thing will happen with COVID, we don’t know but we know for sure that those who got affected by the virus there organs have affected too and never went back to how it was before.
      We will know better in the future when we start to look at retrospective data on the effect of vaccination, and anti-viral medication and this will either help in developing improved vaccines or confirm that we got it right and all is good. We just need to remember that that the Spanish flu killed 50 million and it got eradicated and we dont have it any more.. we are grateful it is not the same virus.

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