Is there anything positive coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic?
by
Jacob Thomas
| May 27, 2021
Photo by Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash.
Social critics typically have the role of highlighting negative or problematic aspects of society, particularly when everything appears to be going well; however, during difficult, uncertain and chaotic periods of history, they can perform a potentially equally important role of pointing out positive changes that can emerge from a catastrophe. Is there anything positive coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic?
This paper highlights ten ways COVID-19 simultaneously exposes fundamental problems in societies and necessitates that we address them if we are all not to collectively suffer more now and later when another pandemic arrives. I recognize that some of these examples may seem to be mentioned too soon, the changes that have happened are possibly temporary, and this is by no means a complete list — though I do hope they will stimulate others to offer their own examples. I propose for a moment we view the “exogenous shock” of a virus as violently dislodging us from harmful patterns and structures in society and set us on a new path of progress toward a more humane society. But such changes will require enormous effort by all members of society to enable us to both cope with the crisis and (more importantly in the long run) better prepare us for another such shock in the future. Therefore, I use the word “could” rather than “may” because I believe that all I mention is hypothetically contingent upon whether we choose to make changes to our society that will make us more robust to a pandemic. Fortunately, I will mention several ways in which we have already immediately seen governments try resolving problems that they have ignored for years, which suggests that it is not so difficult to make progressive change but only requires the collective will to do so.