OPINION: Scale of damage feels like something from a Hollywood horror writer
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Business Focus by Richard Jones
FAST forward to late summer 2021 and one sunny morning we wake up and switch on the news: “The Covid-19 pandemic is officially over, all restrictions are lifted, we can go back to life as normal.”
Yes, I can guarantee the nightmare will be confined to the history books, but did we learn anything from this history lesson?
No one around the world has escaped the grief that the unseen Covid-19 enemy has brought upon us.
The cost of getting to the point of reset has been mind-boggling, with politicians around the world talking in multi-billions and trillions of every currency as they support economies and search for the way out.
The best we can hope for is the range of vaccines which seem like manna from heaven right now.
The most terrifying part of Covid-19 is the huge amount of suffering in deaths of loved ones and permanent damage to the health of countless others, and of course it’s all far from over.
Then there’s been the cost to business and individuals who have suffered bankruptcy and loss of livelihoods, not to mention the immeasurable mental toll on millions of people. The scale of damage around the world feels like something from a Hollywood horror writer and goes way beyond anyone’s worst imagination.
However, there is some good news coming out of the Covid-19 saga. The level of carbon in our atmosphere dropped dramatically when cars went off the roads and the planes stopped flying. The strange thing is that pre-Covid, farmers were blamed for causing most of the carbon pollution, but of course food production continued throughout lockdown.
We cannot afford to ignore the facts that driving and flying less and converting to electric vehicles has to be the way forward.
Lockdown taught a lot of us that working from home is entirely possible and should probably become a new normal.
So looking forward to summer 2021, please can we remember lessons we learned over the long weeks and months of the pandemic?
My hope is that our old way of life stays where it belongs – in the history books.
- Richard Jones is founder director of FJA For.You
