Learning from COVID-19 Part One
The number of people testing positive for COVID-19 continues to increase as countries around the world have implemented extreme measures to try and prevent the spread of the virus. With many people staying at home and trying to make sense of the new normal, it may be as good a time as any to start looking at what this global crisis has taught us so far.
This is the first part of a series of articles aimed at documenting insights for resilience programming as we try to bounce back better from this crisis.
Importance of Disaster Preparedness
We have come to realize that we live in a world with risks. We cannot run away from this fact, and so the next best thing is to make the necessary preparations, so we become more resilient. We have, for the most part, made headways in terms of readiness for typhoons, earthquakes, etc. Now, with COVID-19, we have to start beefing up our preparations for pandemics. In the future, we may see lockdown drills being added to the usual emergency drills we go through.
Value of a Strong Public Healthcare System
Because we have never seen first hand the impact of a pandemic of this magnitude, we have never really given much attention to our public healthcare system. The efficient and effective management of the 2003 SARS epidemic was not published and institutionalized.
Those of us who can afford private health facilities or are covered by HMOs do not think about the potential danger that comes with a public healthcare system that is poorly funded and inadequately staffed. Perhaps in the future, our government can include our public healthcare system in their list of top priorities, maybe even consider making salaries and wages of our health care professionals more competitive and aligned with their very vital role in keeping the country safe.
Working From Home Can Work
One of the recurring suggestions, whenever we talk about the horrendous traffic in Metro Manila, is for companies to allow more of their employees to work from home. And for some strange reasons, only a handful of companies considered this. Now, every business organization, and perhaps even those in the public sector, can see that with the proper motivation (or demotivation), employees can be productive while working in the comfort of their own homes. And there are a host of benefits that come with this – more time to spend with families, less pollution because of lesser cars along major thoroughfares, and less electric consumption from offices.
When we get through this crisis, it would probably help companies scale up their bottom line if they can sustain the work from home set up among their employees. Of course, not every business can get into this for obvious reasons, but even a small reduction in the number of the commuting public can go a long way.
Not Everything Online is Factual
The problem with COVID-19, as with recent disasters like the eruption of Taal Volcano, is further aggravated by the unprecedented spread of fake news. It is easier to think that there are malicious forces out there who are bent on creating fear, panic, and confusion with their misleading or erroneous social media posts than it is to know that for the most part, the fake news that goes around are from people who meant well. In the future, we can expect a more stringent process for vetting information.
Too Much Dependence on Metro Manila
The lockdown of Metro Manila created a domino effect across the whole country because the National Capital Region houses almost all of the headquarters of major private and public institutions in the country. When we can get some semblance of normalcy, it may be a good idea to revisit the plans to decongest Metro Manila and allow other areas of the country to grow and benefit from the economic expansion outside the NCR.
We can also look at establishing redundancies in our systems so that we do not get paralyzed when a disaster causes one mega center to shut down and be as resilient as desired.