Covid Positives:

What good came from the Covid Pandemic?  Plenty. 

1. Lessons Learned: No one can be too smart. Local and federal governments locked down the economy of the world, instead of focussing on high exposure regions such as Milan and NYC.  We now know the virus spreads in situations of high exposure. The probability of spread is proportionate to the size of the inoculum. Viruses, like infantry, overwhelm defensive positions by relentlessly hurling huge numbers at immune battlements. Exactly the same way individuals become infected, populations of individuals get overwhelmed by large numbers of infected individuals and  super-spreader events. Respiratory Infections spread under well-defined conditions, large numbers of people gathered indoors, and among certain susceptibles as in nursing homes and vehement exhalation, like singing and coughing.  Therefore universal lockdowns should be replaced by targeted smart measures aimed at preventing superspreading events. As a direct result of locking down everything, many will die of food shortages and from poverty and disease.  Governments, like sharks, having gotten a whiff of command and control, will use this demic to enslave us forever. One example: Beijing is already moving in against Hong Kong.  At the very least, the human natural social instinct has been suppressed, and independent livelihoods destroyed. Our health systems are hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars while other conditions, some of them life-threatening, like heart attacks and strokes, went untreated, all out of fear and ignorance. In some American states infected and uninfected persons were locked together indoors, the better to spread this respiratory virus to the most vulnerable, as in nursing homes. In this, the Chinese did better than Americans. Epidemics 101: Separate infected from uninfected people. Schools did not need to be closed as we learned from Sweden and other examples. The vast majority of business might have stayed open and not gone bankrupt, using masks and reasonable care. By the way the Chinese with their command economy mobilized PPE,  respirators  and personnel to the worst affected places far more efficiently than did the Americans – a lot of lessons here from many quarters. Practically all human infectious disease comes from animals. Wholesale exploitation of wild and domesticated animals along with with ultra-close animal to human contact,  needs to end. This occurs in our own slaughterhouses as well as swaths of Asia and Africa.  Otherwise worse epidemics loom in our future. The list of lessons goes on. That’s why I advocate while fresh in our minds, gathering these lessons of agreed-on BEST PRACTICES for the next time. That is good work for WHO or CDC. Covid is a practice-demic that will lead us to smarter more adaptive future responses. Covid is a blessing in disguise.  
2. People who don’t know anything about viruses connect them with diseases. Viruses do much more than cause disease. As tiny envelopes of DNA or RNA they are information packets carrying genes that end up becoming part of us. Viruses are genetic messengers modern carrier pigeons of genetic material.  There is more viral genetic material in the human genome than human material. Check it out. Viruses and other infections have given good stuff like mitochondrias, memory and placentas. Our brilliant scientists figured this out a long time ago as viral vectors are widely used to carry genetic information from one species to another. And as we have seen from Covid in our 21st century now we have few methods that fundamentally alter how many of us will be infected no matter what our governments do. Covid could end up giving us good stuff as well as teaching valuable lessons. 
3. We can not only make do,  but are happier with less. Surprisingly we have starved out some of the evil fossil fuel producers accomplished much in global warming and have learned to get by very well with less consumption of what has to be seen as luxury. Spending and consuming doesn’t make you happy.
4. Many have been home from their occupations. Working all the time makes it very hard to find your true self outside of your work. Almost everyone needs to go to work to survive, some from hand to mouth. On the other hand many now see how hollow are most of our day to day occupations. Nearly everyone is employed at a meaningless unnecessary job. A life on incessant work is a poor bargain for most of us. A privileged few will at the end leave something beautiful that makes life worthwhile. The only way we learn this is to break away, to know yourself. 
5. Life on pause: The past few months can be viewed as a Sabbath, the better to appreciate true loves. We learned to separate what is truly fulfilling from what we don’t need. We can go out to restaurants and  beauty parlors much less, maybe not at all. Covid has locked down my own wanderlust. I expect not to fly for a long time. Maybe I can experience just as much near home. I feel like Dorothy clicking her heels. There is great beauty around that we didn’t fully appreciate.
6. Art and performance have changed in ways to make them personal and less social. At the same time it is easy to see the difference of experiencing with headphones and a screen rather than in 3 dimensions, but highly possible. If you like opera, I recommend the Metropolitan Opera App and subscription for your I-Pad. Otherwise museums can open already.   
7. For a time we had a common enemy and that brought people together in unexpected ways, mostly positive. Okay, I will forever cringe at the phrase, “We’re with you.” or “We’re in this together.” I’ve noticed a habit of avoidance among people, as if in each and every contact raises the risk of spreading a fatal infectious disease. We always knew this but it has been brought home as never before how we live in a sea of micro-organisms some pathogenic in the air, other media and on surfaces. Covid has not changed that and neither should the ways we interact with other humans which has evolved over thousands of years.
8. The stock market has gyrated wildly. No better time to buy low and sell high. 
9. Over all I see Covid as a transcendental experience and I mean this in the sense of Thoreau, of self-reliance and self discovery. With Covid government has stepped in to suppress the individual. I view Covid as a start to reaction against suppressive governments worldwide. I hope we are not too late.  
10. It will all be worth the sacrifice if it ends by changing the way we see everything, if we have learned something on how we should proceed in the future.
11. Covid Positives:What good came from the Covid Pandemic?  Plenty.