What We Gained From The Pandemic

5 Silver Linings from a Time of Hardship and Pain

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This week marks the second anniversary of widespread shutdowns from Covid-19. My indelible memory of those early days are the tears of my daughters as they learned that first their school, then their activities, then their birthday plans were all shut down—one, after the other, after the other. So much of what we’ve lost can never be regained—the loved ones who died, the businesses that shuttered, the mental health that continues to be battered.

Covid-19 is a story of pain.

But even accepting that pain, is it possible to say we’ve gained anything from our collective experience? When I posed that question recently on Facebook, some people fierecly rejected the premise. What did we gain? Karen: “Nothing.” David:

Yes, we have new perspective. A new wisdom. Yes, we know which relationships really matter. Yes, it's much easier to tell a friend that you love them. But respectfully (and you know I'm sincere there), I just don't buy your premise. This has been a shattering event, which followed another shattering event and—we now know—preceded yet another shattering event. This is all about loss.

David is a beloved and trusted friend. We have been in each other’s lives for almost 40 years. But respectfully, as he says, I disagree.

Here, on this sad anniversary, are five things we’ve gained from the pandemic:

1. Vaccines

The global vaccination program has been the largest in history. As of today, 10.9 billion doses have been administered across 184 countries, according to a tally kept by Bloomberg News. The rate was roughly 21.2 million doses a day. In the United States alone, 557 million doses have been given so far.

The lasting impact of the biggest real-time experiment in the history of science is profound. fiercely

As Dan Barouch, MD, Ph.D., the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard Medical School told the Association of American Medical Colleges, “The vaccine field has been forever transformed and forever advanced because of Covid-19."

The real impact, added Florian Krammer, Ph.D. who runs a research lab at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, is that the mRNA technology can be easily tweaked for other problems. “It’s very easy to change the vaccine; you just have to change the sequence. This is an ideal platform to deal with a pandemic or outbreak.”

2. Zoom

It may seem hard to remember, but not that long ago, few of us had ever said, “You’re still on mute.” Now, it’s the lingua franca of the 2020s. The only thing the world agrees on anymore is, “You forgot to turn on your camera.”

Zoom gatherings soared during the pandemic. The company's daily downloads went from 56,000 in January 2020 to 2.1 million in March 2020, according to the research firm Nira. Annualized Zoom minutes went from 200 billion in January 2020 to 3 trillion by October, CNBC reported.

Along the way, Zoom transformed the world of work. As Prithwiraj Choudhury, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who studies remote working, told Wired, work that can be done remotely will now partly always be done remotely. This hybrid model "reduces the cost of office space and travel, can avoid complications with visas for foreign employees, and can appeal to a broader range of talent, such as parents seeking flexible arrangements or military spouses who move frequently.”

These gatherings also changed families. As Katherine said on my Facebook page, the biggest upside of the pandemic was “more comfort with Zoom meetings. Family, friends, book club, church groups, volunteer board meetings, etc.” Dana said her family still holds weekly get-togethers: “We have immediate family in two states...plus often the 'grown kids' join in if it's a special occasion. My dad, his wife, and my three siblings have a Zoom call almost every Sunday... 🙂”

3. Tele-life

Zoom, along with Microsoft Teams and other platforms, are just the technology. What I call tele-life is how these technologies have been implemented. Beyond work and families, we’ve all been touched by new uses of long-distance connecting. I was both fascinated and heartened by the number of people who shared novel ways they’ve employed new rituals and solutions.

Doris, a behavioral pediatrician, wrote: “I learned that seeing my patients in their own homes added an extra dimension to my understanding of their lives. My father was a doctor who made house calls. In 2020, I was doing them too, but virtually.

Two patients who suffer from chronic illnesses said tele-life has given them new leases on life.

Nina: “The biggest for me was actually education. Due to medical issues, I miss a good chunk of classes sometimes because of my medical issues. Since I’m in college now, missing class is a huge struggle. Having a Zoom option for me has absolutely changed my life helped to not miss my classes!”

Heidi: “My employer realized that it is possible for the employees to work from home and that they are more productive working from home. Now I personally can continue working full time even if I suffer from chronic fatigue as I only need to be in the office once a week.”

One more topic came up: long-distance mourning. The pandemic brought with it the unbearable sadness of not being able to say goodbye to loved ones in traditional weays. Tele-life brought with it new options, especially for those who would otherwise never have traveled to a funeral or shiva. The next time a loved one I’m close to dies, I can’t imagine we won’t have both in-person and remote ways of honoring the deceased and comforting the bereaved.

4. The Invisible Made Visible

To me, the most under-discussed benefit of the pandemic is that it made invisible threats more visible. For decades experts had been warning about pandemics; most people ignored those warnings. As a result, clearly our society was unprepared for everything from personal protective equipment to backup supplies of everything from ventilators to toilet paper. That visible threat has now been made visible.

The most obvious beneficiary of this newfound appreciation for global, non-national threats is climate change. As the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health stated in a white paper called “Coronavirus and Climate Change”: “The separation of health and environmental policy is a ​dangerous delusion. Our health entirely depends on the climate and the other organisms we share the planet with. We need to bring these communities together.” The paper went on to say, “Largely we still view the environment, and life on earth, as separate. We can and must do better if we want to prevent the next infectious pandemic.”

If there’s one thing the pandemic made clear: Some threats do not recognize national borders. If that recognition persuades even a few thought leaders or politicians to take more of these threats seriously, we all stand to benefit.

5. Appreciation

Finally, life is precious. That answer was the most common one I heard:

Jay: “We’ve gained a new insight on what is important in our lives that without the pandemic, although terrible, we may never have come to those realizations.”

M.A.: “A sense of urgency to travel and have new experiences. No longer will I put off opportunities for adventure, thinking I’ll do them at some point down the road.”

Sheri: “Having more unstructured time & time for contemplation.”

Perhaps no one has expressed the view better than the Dalai Lama, who told the BBC: “As human beings, we all share the same sorrows, the same hopes, the same potential. The Covid-19 pandemic has reminded us how interdependent we are: what happens to one person can soon affect many others, even on the far side of our planet.”

He went on:

Therefore, it is up to all of us to try to cultivate peace of mind and to think about what we can do for others, including those that we never see. It is natural to feel worry and fear at a time when so many are suffering. But only by developing calmness and clear-sightedness can we help others and, in so doing, even help ourselves. In my own life, I have often found that it is the most difficult challenges that have helped me gain strength.

Who better to take the last word? We will be tallying the pain of the pandemic for generations. Here’s hoping we take at least a few moments to tally some of the ways we've adapted and grown.

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Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, or scroll through my other posts.

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Or check out my books that inspired this newsletter: Life Is in the Transitions and The Secrets of Happy Families.

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