Are we willing to do and spend what’s necessary to prevent another pandemic? From the data I’ve seen, it seems like the cost of critical preventive activities is far less than the costs we’ve already incurred, and will continue to incur, since COVID-19 has reached pandemic status.

Viruses vs. Pandemics

It’s important to differentiate between preventing viruses and preventing pandemics. Webster defines a pandemic as an “outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population.”

So, when the first cases of this latest virus were reported in China was it a pandemic? No, this was simply another new virus that had made its way from wild mammals to the human race.

In the following weeks, though, the COVID-19 virus wasn’t contained. And as it spread to other cities, regions, and continents, with a rising number of fatalities, COVID-19 crossed that admittedly fuzzy threshold to the point where it could legitimately be considered a “pandemic.”

Preventing/Minimizing viruses

There are hundreds of species of bats and they continue to carry a wide variety of constantly evolving coronavirus variants. Some of the viruses prove to be relatively harmless when passed to humans. Others are incredibly contagious and deadly.

Nipah, HIV/AIDS, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, and now SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) … it’s very likely that each of these was caused initially by animal-to-human contact. Unusually it stems from bats but sometimes other animals, such as pigs or camels serve as a middle mammal in the exchange.

To minimize the emergence of another new and deadly virus that can lead to pandemics, we, and this is a global “we” – including governments at the highest and lowest levels, can create systems to minimize the instances of these exchanges by:

• Eliminating the wildlife markets that exist in some countries and cultures
• Not only reducing deforestation, but increasing forestation to restore buffer zones between the habitats of wild animals and domestic livestock

Think what you will about the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and other regional or global collectives of national, sovereign governments, but these kinds of collectives are exactly what’s required to coordinate any kind of global efforts to accomplish this. There can be no weak links among nations because viruses cross borders with ease.

Manage the Meat?

But beyond minimizing the emergence of new viruses at their source, what about protecting our food supply? We should at least consider these steps as well:

• Prohibit the sale of raw meat that hasn’t been irradiated, cleansed with UV lighting, or undergone similar measures.
• Transition to lab grown meat, also called “clean meats” or “cultured meats“.
• Continue to develop and promote plant-based meat substitutes
• Stop eating meat altogether

These all make sense in theory, and they may be beneficial in their own right. But the fact is that pandemic viruses have never started with hundreds of people eating virus-laden meat. Pandemics all begin with one person.

Once that animal to human threshold is crossed in one person (Patient Zero), no amount of meat irradiation or vegetarianism will stop the virus. From that point on, it’s passed through normal, person-to-person interaction – sharing space, breathing air, or coming into contact with bodily fluid, as in the case of Ebola and HIV/AIDS.

So, we need to go back to that fundamental point: minimizing new viruses means reducing the likelihood of these initial interactions and infections ever taking place. That said, I don’t think it’s possible to prevent another viral outbreak, but we certainly can prevent another pandemic.

Pandemic-Proofing

Okay, so maybe we’ll always have some periodic emergence of localized, horrible viruses. How do we keep them from spreading? How do we “pandemic-proof” the world?

We’ve learned a lot in the last six months, lessons we seem to learn about every century or so, about how to slow a virus and contain its spread. Medical science has a lot to say about how to prevent a virus from becoming a pandemic. Trace the contacts of infected people. Quarantine suspected or actual cases. Dutifully wash hands and surfaces. Wear masks. Limit public gatherings. Socially distance.

We’ve also been reminded that healthcare workers need to have quick access to certain equipment and supplies, especially personal protection equipment (PPE), ventilators, and other medical necessities.

Additionally, in a recent article, William A. Haseltine, formerly of the Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health, points out that antiviral drugs (as opposed to vaccines) can control a coronavirus by binding and blocking the enzymes that most of them need in order to grow. Those enzymes are similar across all coronaviruses. He suggests that it’s not only advisable but very possible to stockpile combinations of these drugs under the BioShield program adopted after 9/11 that’s intended to prevent “new and emerging biological threats.”

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Yes, all of this costs money – from reversing deforestation, to educating people about consumption of exotic animals, to stockpiling drugs, to maintaining a significant cache of healthcare worker PPE and citizen masks. There’s no definitive figure that captures all of these, but let’s at least start with:

Conservation International’s estimate that we need to make an investment of between $22.3 billion and $30.1 billion per year (globally) to address deforestation and to minimize the spread of viruses from wild mammals to humans. They compare that figure to the $10-20 trillion that COVID-19 has cost the global economy in 2020 alone.

Researchers at Princeton University offer an even more compelling case for these expenditures. They estimate that the global price tag to regulate the wildlife trade, maintain adequate disease surveillance, and reduce deforestation in critical areas (all at a total cost of $260 billion over 10 years) is a little more than two percent of the estimated global economic cost of COVID-19 over time.

These are very rough estimates of course but if we compare a few billion to the trillions we’re currently spending, plus the magnitude of benefits to humanity makes these programs seem like a pretty solid investment!

Our goal needs to be to not only pandemic-proof our world, but to pandemic-proof our future!

Have you considered becoming part of the emerging drivable mobile office generation?

Yes, there has been a massive shift to working from home and 88% of organizations in the U.S. have encouraged or required their employees to work from home and 91% of teams in the Asian Pacific Region have implemented ‘work from home’ arrangements since the outbreak.

A recent Gardner study showed business endurance was a top concern for C-level executives with 71% worried about continuity and productivity during the pandemic.

However, remote work has done more than insure continuity, it’s had a positive impact on workforce retention, so much so that organizations should expect 75% of their staff to ask for expanded remote work hours in the future.

Managed correctly, remote work will dramatically boost productivity. Gardner concluded that remote workers are 35-40% more productive than people who work in corporate offices.

For the company, 77% of executives agree that it will lower operating expenses.

Because of this, remote work is here to stay and 74% of companies plan to permanently shift to more remote work as we move into the post-Covid era.

With these changes permeating business culture, workers are now being unleashed to explore far more exotic lifestyles by taking their work with them as they explore the world.

Developing Mobile Work-Life Strategies

For many, summer is the time to hit the road in a camper or RV, taking time off work to see the country from the comfort of a home on wheels.

But many free-spirited adventurers are now thinking summer never has to end. Taking advantage of the growing ubiquity of wireless Internet, the RV or camper can easily be converted into a drivable mobile office.

As of last year, 8.9 million American households owned RVs, and a smaller subset included roughly a half-million who lived full-time on the road. But it’s hard to know exactly how many of those full-timers and part-timers have actually learned how to work from the road.

After Covid-19, the nature of telework is making it easier than ever to work without a fixed physical location.

Naturally one of the critical components of having a remote office is good Wi-Fi. According to KOA CEO Pat Hittmeier, almost all 485 KOA campgrounds sites across the country have free Wi-Fi.

When Wi-Fi is not in range, those doing business on the go will turn to network air cards or satellite dishes.

We have seen a recent explosion of people opting to take their work in this fashion. A record number of RVs, motorcoaches, fifth wheel campers, and trailers are currently in the process of being converted into both office and living spaces.

If you ask why they’ve chosen to do their work from a recreational vehicle, many will cite the freedom that comes with a mobile lifestyle.

Whether they’re working from an RV park in Tuscan, a hotel room in Seattle, or their grandmother’s farm in Indiana, both their work-life and family-life will undergo a number of transitions along the way.

Establishing a Mobile Base of Operations

Mobile offices don’t need to be fancy, they only need to be functional! [/caption]People tend to forget the importance of their local traffic patterns, because where they go and people they meet with on a semi-regular basis is important.

For example, moving into a new city they’ll need to find good referrals for doctors, dentists, chiropractors, auto mechanics, and veterinarians.

While most interactions with bankers, accountants, and lawyers can be done remotely, getting an engine repaired, finding an electrician, plumber, or new tires will require adding a few new contacts to a smartphone.

Even coordinating the delivery of an Amazon package can be a challenge.

Those who are on specialty diets such as vegan, gluten-free, lactose-free, or vegetarian may have trouble finding restaurant options in remote locations.

Very few situations, however, will be considered serious show-stoppers for the determined traveler.

Mobile offices don’t need to be fancy, they only need to be functional!

Going Driverless

Driverless technology will invariably open the door to a whole new era of non-commuting vehicles, and one of the earliest examples we’ll see will be the driverless mobile office.

If you can imagine having an “office” pull up in your driveway, with dimmable windows, projectors, sound systems, 5G-enabled, with flexible, reconfigurable furniture that is perfect for both working alone and hosting meetings, you’ll get the picture.

Executives only need wireless access and the entire day can be managed from their mobile office, picking up people for each new meeting, and dropping them off before the next meeting begins.

Rather than working from an isolated home or a single office, mobile offices will add exotic new dimensions to every workday. But they can be far more than just an office.

A mobile office can also be working laboratories, tattoo parlors, manufacturing operation, arbitration court, zoning resolution station, police command center, mobile ER, fertility clinic, or pawn shop. Some will be owned by government agencies, some by businesses, but others will be part of a fleet and leased on a per-use basis.

Most importantly, these vehicles can operate as moving billboards, wrapped in branding slogans, with marketing messages emblazoned on every available surface.

In the not-too-distant future, driverless mobile offices will be common in most cities!

Final Thoughts

If you’re considering setting up a driveable mobile office, you’re not alone. But having the perfect office to fit your needs may be challenging.

Offices designed for a podcaster, videographer, graphic artist, programmer, script writer, jewelry maker, and movie editor will all require different toolsets.

In general, remote offices need a well-designed desk, good chair, great computer, ergonomic layout, solid internet connection, privacy, backup storage, and excellent lighting. You might also want to include extra video cameras, microphones, switchers, and backup plans for when things go wrong because things will always go wrong.

As the world emerges from the coronavirus, one nation after another will rise out of their collective cabin-fever. With lingering fears about social distancing and a possible return of the virus during flu season, travelers will most likely focus on drivable options.

Many places are already documenting an increase in camping and outdoor activities in areas where the current coronavirus hit earlier than the U.S., namely in Japan and Korea, where families are pitching tents rather than staying in hotels.

As air travel limps back into operation and most public transportation systems around the world are operating on drastically reduced schedules, people are re-imagining new ways to travel in a post-pandemic world.

Road trips are poised to make a resurgence as travelers shy away from international destinations requiring long flights and walking through crowded airports. They’re looking to travel and enjoy all the wonders of the world in ways that they feel are safe and comfortable.

For these reasons, we are witnessing a powerful new trend where the idea of working from a drivable office takes center stage.

Science behind “dangling carrots,” which is always about the money, shows it rarely works as planned!

The science of incentives has been hotly debated for centuries, primarily because we all know incentives work, but often not in the way they were intended to.

One story that illustrates the problem took place years ago when W. Edwards Deming made a visit to a shoe factory, and the plant manager proudly reported that he had sent one of his quality inspectors home for a week without pay. Inspectors were paid weekly according to the number of shoes they inspected.

When an inspector found a defect in a pair of shoes, they personally had to repair it before they could go on to inspect the next pair of shoes. So, the more defects they found, the fewer shoes got inspected, and the lower their weekly paycheck.

The plant manager said he had discovered one particular inspector gaming the system. He quickly figured out which production workers produced the fewest defects and focused his time just on them. For this reason, the inspector needed to be reprimanded, and was sent home for a week without pay.

Dr. Deming told the plant manager that he was the one that should have been sent home since he created the system. It was the incentives that drove the behavior, and the plant manager didn’t realize that he had created the circumstances that led to those results.

Throughout history business managers, politicians, and system designers have focused on architecting the right incentives. However, everything we thought we knew about incentives has been changing, and many of the ones we have today have been created by new kids on the block like tech companies, health insurance rules, retirement plans, investment advisors, and unemployment systems just to name a few.

In general, the best way to understand future trends is to study the incentives. Human behavior is often driven by a particular set of incentives hiding in the background. But you’ll see in a few moments why it’s so difficult to track incentives during the coronavirus era!

Riddled with bad incentives

As we went through the process of closing down businesses, parks, and restaurants, countless millions lost their jobs, and with it, we lost our sense of purpose. The goals that seemed so important last year suddenly became meaningless.

That’s when panic set in and the first visible signs of the pandemic were empty store shelves, empty streets, and a conspicuous sense of desperation.

We quickly dipped into survival mode.

The survivalist mindset is the most rudimentary level of thinking on Maslow’s hierarchy of need. Step one was hoarding – hoarding food, hoarding cash, and hoarding any supplies that made life doable.

Armored cars filled with cash made extremely large bank deliveries to calm the fears of panicked customers. Supply chains were slower to adapt, but were soon revamped to compensate for shortages.

Panic buying was replaced with binging – binge-watching television, binge-cooking, binge-eating, binge-playing video games, and binge-calling to fill our growing social void.

Now, with the reopening of society just a dangling carrot away, our full attention is once again switching to what comes next. And it’s during this time that the black fog of uncertainty starts to lift as we reset our passions, goals, and desires on high beam to decide the next logical move.

As we look around, we begin to realize how messed up our sense of reality is. While we were distracted, trying to survive quarantine, many new incentives were put into place, causing people to respond in a whole new way.

Problem #1: Paying more money to hospitals for COVID-19 deaths

Incentive: Medical systems do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Even if it’s only presumed they have COVID-19, without having an actual lab test confirming anything, they get paid more.

If it’s a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for, the payment is $5,000. But if it’s COVID-19 pneumonia, then it’s $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000.

This higher allocation of funds was part of the CARES Act which included a Medicare 20% add-on to its regular payment for COVID-19 patients.

Unintended Results: Skewed data is always a problem. All of the numbers we’re looking at to decide how risky it is to be around others has been artificially inflated by medical groups trying to make extra money.

Problem #2: Pay-per-click ads driving sensationalized headlines and news hysteria

Incentive: Any news site that derives its revenue from pay-per-click ads has a vested interest in posting headlines and topics that garner the most attention. Many even go through a series of A-B testing to see which headline attracts the most attention. Fear is a great motivator and any article that scares readers will invariably generate more money.

Unintended Results: Heightened levels of fear, anxiety, and depression lead to greater levels of drinking, spousal abuse, child abuse, and suicide. While elevated levels of hysteria may earn more money, the psychological toll it takes on the rest of society will be several thousand times more expensive.

Problem #3: Paying people more to stay unemployed

Incentive: Entire new classes of people are being encouraged to file for unemployment, receive an additional $600 per week for 2.5 months, and stay on unemployment for up to a full year.

Unintended Results: Many now make more money on unemployment and have no incentive to return to work. At the same time, many companies are looking at this as an opportunity to clean house. Older workers, minorities, vocal and activist employees are most at risk here. We will be witnessing the greatest job transition in all history.

Problem #4: First-come-first-serve stimulus money

Incentive: Tremendous amounts of money were put into play with the CARES Act, but when everyone found out there wouldn’t be enough to go around, panic set in.

Unintended Results: The mad rush to apply for loans and stimulus money has been overwhelming, using dated systems that were never designed to handle this much volume. Extended response times and too few contact numbers has many people spooked. Small business owners are waiting in limbo to decide if they should close down altogether.

Problem #5: SBA programs creating an unwritten hierarchy of need

Incentive: Fast loans, minimal interest, with super low barrier-to-entry seemed like a dream come true for most small businesses. But now reality has set in.

Unintended Results: Recipients of the SBA loans are overwhelmed by the 19-page document full of onerous restrictions that make the accompanying loans or grants painful to manage. Many will choose to close rather than have the SBA looking over their shoulder. We will witness one of the largest closure of businesses in all history.

Problem #6: Public companies getting publicly outed

Incentive: All small businesses, both public and private, were encouraged to apply for fast and easy low interest loans and stimulus money.

Unintended Results: Since public companies are required to report on what they’re doing, public companies became the media whipping boys for perceived abuses to the programs. At the same time, private companies stayed hidden in the background. Once again, being a public company has lost much of its appeal, so don’t expect new IPOs anytime soon.

Problem #7: The political blame-game turns the whole country into a circus

Incentive: Everything about a pandemic makes it the perfect kind of crisis to blame on other countries, other cultures, and other political parties.

Unintended Results: Spin doctors are working overtime to cast aspersions on political opponents. There is a high likelihood national, cultural, and racial discrimination will manifests itself in increased trade wars and increased tensions globally.

Final Thoughts

As it turns out, McAllen, Texas is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the US. Medicare spends nearly double the national average on people in McAllen and twice what they spent in El Paso County, Texas, even though they have nearly the same demographics.

The cost difference stems from overuse of medicine and procedures. For example, Medicare found that patients in McAllen received 20% more abdominal ultrasounds, 30% more bone-density studies, 60% more stress tests with echocardiography, 200% more nerve-conduction studies to diagnose carpal-tunnel syndrome, and 550% more urine flow studies to diagnose prostate problems.

The research went on to show significantly more gallbladder operations, knee replacements, breast biopsies, and bladder scopes, as well as 200%-300% more pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, cardiac-bypass operations, carotid endarterectomies, and coronary-artery stents. They also found five times as many home-nurse visits.

The lesson here is that “more care is generally not better care,” because the outcomes showed no significant difference between McAllen and El Paso.

The researcher in this study identified three types of physicians.

• Those who are oblivious to the financial implications of their decisions.
• Those who think of the money as a means of improving what they do.
• Those who see their practice primarily as a revenue stream. They instruct their secretary to have patients who call with follow-up questions to schedule an appointment, because insurers don’t pay for phone calls, only office visits.

There is a widely held perception today that healthcare companies are just in it for the money. While that may be true in many cases, Mayo is doing just the opposite.

Mayo Clinic, which is among the highest-quality, lowest-cost healthcare systems in the country, figured out how to solve this problem decades ago.

The executive team at Mayo recognized that it needed to eliminate financial barriers, so they pooled all the money doctors and the hospital received and began paying everyone a salary. By doing this, the doctors’ goal in patient care couldn’t be tied to increasing their income.

Mayo promoted leaders who focused first on what was best for patients, and then on how to make this approach financially possible. The core tenet of Mayo Clinic is ‘The needs of the patient come first.’

They didn’t worry whether it was inconvenient for the doctors, or their revenues. To this end, doctors, nurses, and even the janitors, sit together in weekly meetings to work on ideas for making their service and care better, not to get more money out of their patients.

Part of the reasons people are so critical of the U.S. healthcare system is because they have no idea what incentives are being used to guide behavior in the background.

For this reason, it looks like we might be on the verge of a new transparency trend in the healthcare industry where people are given a clear understanding of costs before any charges are incurred.

If you have additional thoughts, ideas, or comments, please feel free to add to the conversation.

While it’s easy to focus on the negative, the true opportunities lie in the positive side of life!

For most, summer was filled with outdoor activities like going to sporting events, concerts, swimming, parades, festivals, and farmers markets.

Those things won’t be happening this year.

The same goes for all of our nightlife activities like dancing, fireworks displays, nightclubs, family gatherings, going shopping, and dining out.

Virtually every activity that we’ve come to enjoy over our entire lifetime has come to an abrupt stop, and business as usual is no longer business as usual.

So what is it that will fill the void?

We can only watch so much television. Our backyard barbecues lose their appeal when they happen every night. And everything we had planned for summer vacations has been delayed until next year.

While a few things can be delayed, others cannot.

Many churches have begun hosting drive-up church services with pastors, priests, and ministers speaking to the crowds through FM signals going directly to the car radio.

Restaurants in Michigan are experimenting with drive-up fish fry events for Lent.

It will be interesting to see how the Republicans and Democrats manage to host their big election-year conventions in advance of the Presidential Election.

Those of you who still have a job consider yourself either lucky or trapped, or both. Even the work-from-home crowds are hugely distracted by stress and anxiety of their surrounding communities.

For this reason, we’re seeing some great opportunities emerging from the woodwork for people who have the talent and creativity to sync up with the mindset of those needing a lifeline. If we were to make a list of all these opportunities, it would include substitutes for:

1. Sporting events – baseball, football, soccer, golf, basketball void
2. Entertainment, movie theater, gambling, trampoline park,
3. Shopping, farmers market, garage sale, lemonade stand void
4. Nightclub, dance club, casino, theater void
5. Concerts, rockfests, musicals, live performance void
6. Waterpark, playground, miniature golf, carnival, and swimming void
7. Convention, meeting, grand opening, expo, open house, events void
8. Parade, festival, street performer, magician, comedian void

Innovative people are now staring at a blank canvas trying to imagine ways to solve a pent up demand for finding new ways to interact with others.

So what does that look like? We’re part of a very creative culture so some of our future thinking involves questions like:

• Instead of car racing, will people become more interested in drone racing?
• Instead of boxing matches, will we see a surge in popularity of robot boxing?
• Instead of video games, will people start playing conspiracy theory games?
• Instead of fantasy football, will people start playing fantasy politics?

One fascinating example is the Getty Image Art Challenge, which sprung to life when the Getty Museum created a competition where people browse its online collection and recreate famous images, but with a modern day twist!

Joseph Ducreux, “Self-Portrait, Yawning” (1783), Recreation by Paul Morris
with British redcoat and twisty towel (courtesy the J. Paul Getty Museum)

8 Opportunities to Reinvent our World during the Coronavirus

We’re already seeing examples of virtual birthday parties, virtual funerals, virtual dinner parties, virtual workouts, and virtual happy hours. But each of these are but a stepping stone to what comes next.

1. Drive-Up Events

“Storytelling After Dark” would involve a simple stage, maybe in a shopping center parking lot, with a dramatic reading, comedy show, or theatrical performance, telling ghost stories, melodramatic mysteries, or historical tales to entertain crowds in a new and unusual ways, all transmitted through the FM radio on people’s cars. These could be sponsored by local businesses, libraries, or a city.

A variation might be “drive-up concerts.” With all of the musicians out of work, this becomes an interesting option for them. Once again, these events could be sponsored by neighboring brewpubs, restaurants, cannabis dispensaries, and retail shops. Phone numbers would be posted up front or handed out for people to order. Those attending could listen through open windows, FM radio, and even some strategically placed outside seating.

2. Competitions

When the whole world goes back to normal, many businesses will push hard to regain their customer base. For this reason, finding sponsoring companies willing to offer promotional items as prize packages could be relatively easy. Future events such as gambling weekends, train trips, cruise get-aways, and flight packages are just a few of many possible options. For this reason we will see a wide variety of new competitions ranging from treehouse designs, to pranks, situational photo contests, one-minute comedies, home office design, plant wall design, blank-wall painting, mowed-lawn-messaging, and, of course, a drone-spying competition, just to name a few. The range of these competitions is only limited by our imagination.

3. Parades

The idea of a megaphone parade is rather interesting. With no one on the streets, only people waving from doors and windows, a megaphone parade would involve an endless line of people in cars saying crazy things from their megaphones. Perhaps a variation of this idea would include a kid-and-puppy parade, kazoo-band parade, flashlight parade, or a scarecrow parade.

4. Reinventing Business

For those paying close attention to the changing nuances of human behavior, this is a perfect time to launch a new business. Virtual startup teams are now able to loop in all the top talent from other ventures, most of whom have been recently sidelined or laid off as the dangling carrot of stimulus money makes its way through the pipeline. This is a rare moment in time to think deeply about business models that have the potential to redefine life on planet earth.

5. Reinventing Funerals

– The funeral industry has not been one to instantly jump on the latest craze and experiment. However, with bodies stacking up in makeshift facilities everywhere, and virtually no one interested in traveling cross-country to attend a wake or funeral, we have an instant need for something new. The traditional grieving process has always involved crying, hugging, and human-to-human contact. So is there a way to duplicate this outlet for highly emotional feelings virtually? Keep in mind, it’s not just people dying from COVID-19. It is also people dying of heart attacks, cancer, liver failure, car accidents, domestic violence, gang wars, malaria, suicide, and every other cause imaginable. There’s a huge opportunity waiting for the person who can come up with a good solution.

6. Reinventing Childcare

Until now, most parents have acclimated to their own version of work-life-parenting balance. For many, being thrust back into the role of full-time parenting, coupled with homeschooling, lingering work obligations, phone-calls, Zoom meetings, grocery shopping, paying bills, filing for unemployment, and dealing with heightened levels of media hysteria has most young parent teetering very close to the breaking point. At the same time, virtually every one of them feels they have their hands tied as traditional daycare, babysitters, and grandparent options have disappeared. This is the perfect time for some ingenious person to reinvent child care altogether.

7. Learning New Skills

We’re shifting into an entirely new gear. Society is changing faster today than ever before in history. Once business returns to our next iteration of “normal,” we will find ourselves struggling to keep up. At the moment, it is up to us individually to decide what new skills will make us the most adaptable, resourceful, resilient, and marketable in the future. While others are sleeping in late, playing video games, and binge-watching movies, aggressive people everywhere are choosing this time to leapfrog ahead and become a whole new version of themselves.

8. Storytelling in the Post-Corona Era

Pay close attention. Our definition of heroes, success, and achievement is changing. So are our thoughts on villains, virtue, passion, and our quest for accomplishment. We’re desperately seeking new forms of leadership, decision-making, ways of setting priorities, and ways of getting things done. Our global consciousness has changed, and this is the perfect time for a new breed of storytellers to pave the way. We no longer feel comfortable with our old sense of morality, purpose, pursuits, and relationships. And it will be our next generation of storytellers who guide us towards our next-gen humans and next-gen human nature.

Final Thoughts

We live in great fear of the unseeable, unknowable, unmanageable forces of nature.

As a futurist, I’ve spent considerable time thinking about wild card scenarios and all the ways things can go wrong. And yes, the possibility of a global pandemic was certainly on the list.

But the piece that everyone missed was the unusual ruleset that came with this pandemic.

The way a disease is transmitted is hugely important, because there are literally millions of variables that come into play. Is it a sexually transmitted disease? Does it hide out in hair follicles? How does heat, light, and water affect it? How long will it live in our sewer systems? Will it pass from mother to unborn child?

At the same time, there are also millions of possible solutions that need to be considered. Can it survive under water, in ice, acid, mold, or underground? Is it affected by radiation, beams, waves, high frequency and high intensity of sounds,

How many deaths are considered an acceptable loss? Much of the thinking surrounding the actions has to do with the idea of bearable death-rates. How much is a human life worth? When does the death rate from economic loss start to exceed the death rate of the pandemic?

We are a long way from having all the answers. For this reason, I’ve created a new subscription service called “Foresight Journaling – Unlocking the secret truths to your hidden future!” to help you take control of your life during these uncertain times.

As always, please let me know your thoughts.

She specifically asked me to give a futurist perspective on the issues.

Never before in history have we seen the dashboard of life having so many knobs twisted, levers pulled, buttons pressed, and dials tweaked than we had in the first few months of 2020.

For this reason every macro trend we can identify will have countless micro trends associated with it. Every convincing scenario we sketch out will have countless nuanced versions that have similar rings of truth.

Throughout everything, technology will progress, our challenges will still be there, and every problem will still have an opportunity to solve it.

Every lifetime is still amazingly short so it will be up to us to make the most of the years we have to work with.

1. In your opinion, how will the coronavirus emergency that the whole world is experiencing change the concept of leadership?

Every day another 26,000 people die of cancer. Why isn’t that making headlines?

The reason I’m asking this is because good leadership is about perspective and priorities.

Statistics show that every year 730,000 people die of Malaria, 887,000 from Hepatitis B, 1.1 million for Tuberculosis, and 9.6 million from cancer. So how should our leaders be setting their priorities today?

We’ve just hit a giant reset button on all of humanity, but it’s largely being driven by our current state of fear and panic. It’s inconceivable to think that leaders won’t be severely criticized for bad decisions after things die down.

That said, I’m not sure it’s even possible to make good decisions in our present situation.

We’ve gone from “ignorance is bliss” to an era where “we know we have a problem but we don’t know what to do about it.”

Ratchet forward a few more years and we reach a time where we “know we have a problem AND we’ll know how to fix it!”

In spite of all our advances, we still only know enough to be dangerous.

Future leadership will be far more data driven with exponentially more data points to determine both perspectives and priorities.

A great crisis is where great leaders are born!

The recent wave of layoffs and unpaid vacations will force companies and factories to be more efficient when it is all over. Many business operations are seeing much more efficient operations during the crisis and now realize they can get by with far fewer employees and as a result cut back.

At the same time, many are using this time to launch new products, new businesses, and new services. Anyone who had been waiting for the right time to launch their “side hustle” understands that now is the right time.

2. How will it change the defense systems of various countries? Will states prioritize more preparedness for biological weapons use and preparedness for pandemics?

The age of heavy guns and hardware is ending, and bio, cyber, and mind wars are just beginning. The concept of imminent risk and menacing danger is being reframed around non-intuitive, non-visible, and non-obvious threats.

Most countries will amp up their AI detection networks designed around making invisible threats visible. Every border crossing, international terminal, and port of entry will have growing levels of sensor, video, and audio detection with an explosion of drone fleets and swarms to add coverage.

Border walls will become simultaneously visual and physical, audibly acoustic, digitally obvious, aromatically distinct, and tactically discernible. The goal will be that no germ, virus, bacteria, fungi, or protozoa will have the power to cross undetected.

At the same time, with Europe taking the lead on the “right to be forgotten,” we’ll soon see a number of similar type causes, driven by tech innovation, like the “right to be digitally invisible,” the “right to be physically invisible,” and the “right to be totally undetectable.” (Check out our interview with Privacy expert Jules Polonetsky).

Anyone crossing a border should expect the equivalent of a full cavity search, done imperceptibly, for the most part, with remote scanners, swarmbots, and AI networks.

The job of being a spy just got exponentially more sophisticated.

3. Talking about work culture and management culture – how will they be impacted by Covid-19? Will more and more people opt for working remotely, feeling more secure this way? Will it become a new normal?

This is such a unique period in history because the normal s-curve adoption rates in many areas of tech have been replaced with a straight vertical line. Anyone who can possibly work from home has been forced to learn all the tools and apps necessary to become functional in that type of environment.

Workers have had to learn on-demand food delivery apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub, Caviar, and Doordash; grocery delivery apps like Instacart, Peapod, and AmazonFresh; and supply delivery apps like Dolly, Amazon, UPS, and Postmates.

Dark stores, dark supermarkets, and ghost restaurants are quickly replacing traditional retailers with non-customer-facing distribution centers. A ghost restaurant is a food service business that serves customers exclusively through delivery of online orders. Many are being designed to facilitate a “click-and-collect” service for those wanting to drive up and take home the orders themselves.

The work-from-home culture requires a unique set of tools like fiber to the home, WiFi, and VPNs for security. It requires state-of-the-art hardware, computer, mouse, large display, camera, microphone, and keyboard. Workers need to be proficient in messaging tools like Slack, Teams, Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat. They also need to be well-versed in video conferencing tools like Zoom, Skype, Hangouts, and BlueJeans.

Ironically, most traditional colleges are not teaching the necessary skills for online tools and apps. Most home-based workers will need a solid understanding of collaborative tools such as Google Suite, Office 365, Office, and Quip; project management and workflow tools like Airtable, Trello, Jira, and Clubhouse; and file storage apps like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and iCloud. 

However, there is much more involved in having people work-from-home than tools, apps, and hardware. Workers need to be motivated self-starters, with good time-management skills, who feel comfortable in the isolation of their own homes. Managers need to manage differently. And homes will need the dedicated space conducive to home-based businesses. For example, young kids at home make it difficult to focus and conduct a Zoom call.

In general, we should expect to see a sharp increase in work-from-home operations, but at the same time, we’ll also see a sharp increase in demand for coworking spaces that fulfill our need for social contact in a collaborative workspace environment.

4. What about our daily routines and lifestyles – when the pandemic is over, how are they going to change in general? Are we going to travel less and feel more insecure in the globalized world? Which consequences may it bring?

For people all over the planet, the COVID-19 crisis is a deeply personal experience.

Some are watching every newscast waiting for the next update. Others are scrambling to reengineer their own career path to take advantage of emerging opportunities. Many are living in a state of fear, not knowing where their next meal will come from or who will take care of their children.

Every newscast is building on the fear and panic, driving many into a state of depression, anger, and hopelessness. Savvy politicians are trying to reposition their agenda to take advantage of it. No one is being left unscathed.

This is a pandemic that will never end. It will leave deep scars on both the social and business fabric of society. For many industries, like those working in travel and vacation businesses, the recovery will take years, maybe decades.

The entire world is now much more aware of itself than ever in the past. The crisis becomes the common thread we all share, and we feel comfortable sharing our own personal experiences with online acquaintances on the other side of the world.

For most of us, if we’re not in survival mode, we’re keeping a close eye on how close we’re getting to it. We’re constantly looking for signs of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, and random acts of kindness to give us the inspiration to move forward.

Many older workers, still clinging to the social moorings of their past will decide to permanently retire.

Ten Trends

While there are many scenarios we can envision for how the coming years will unfold, and how this brief moment in time will permanently alter the course of history, here are a few trend lines that make sense to me.

1. This will go down in the history books as the most expensive crisis in all history. Every country is having to engineer a bailout package to save their businesses and put food on the table for the average worker. Over the coming month, inflation will raise its ugly head as the infusion of new capital begins to create a whole new set of problems.
2. Governments will vow to be more digital, more prepared, and more crisis-ready. At the same time, they will attempt to take back much of the power and control they’ve lost to multinational corporations. They will also vow to never let a single disease shut down the world ever again.
3. COVID-19 has been both a unifying force and a divider of worlds. Even as people are becoming more open and conversant with our remotest regions of the planet, wealthy people are becoming more entrenched and determined to protect their assets.
4. The healthcare industry should be prepared for some radical overhauls. They were neither prepared nor capable of managing the myriad of problems that arose. The healthcare system has been a failure for victims of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, meningitis, malaria, and a variety of other diseases. We have now reached the breaking point. While the individual healthcare workers have performed extraordinarily well, it has pointed out some deep-seated flaws in healthcare systems all over the world. Both governments and its citizens will demand more.
5. Every movie, television show, book, game, comic book, and research study produced before COVID-19 will suddenly feel dated.
6. The airline industry will soon be transformed from the cattle car experience of hauling large numbers of people in cramped spaces around the world to something a bit more humane. It will take a long time to rebuild the industry to the traffic levels of the pre-2020 glory years.
7. Our great study-at-home experiment will change education forever. Virtually every parent and child in the world has gotten a taste of what homeschooling is all about, and many will not want to go back to the same government-run schools. This, combined with emerging technology that will make education far more hyper-individualized, and we suddenly have the “perfect storm” for education to be transformed
8. Dealing with a common enemy is a great unifying force. It’s much harder for people from another country, race, religion, or culture to be viewed as a threat when you’ve both endured the trying times of a global crisis.
9. Cocooning is about to become a new social norm. There’s something very therapeutic about being able to hit the “pause button” on all the stresses of daily life and cuddle up in your own cocoon.
10. The unintended consequences will be huge. In much the same way a magician uses sleight-of-hand movements to distract us from what’s really going on, we will see countless books written on being blindsided by the unintended consequences resulting from the fixes, patches, and corrections engineered by our politicians.

Final Thoughts

To paraphrase a famous quote, COVID-19 is a paradox, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Just when we think we understand the new rules of the game, they shift, grow bigger, or simply disappear.

Many times people refrain from major changes in their lives because they are afraid, and don’t think they can deal with it well. But in times of crisis, like now, when we have no choice, we suddenly do things we were afraid of in the past and realize that it is not that bad.

Despite all our progress and technological advancements, we are still very vulnerable. This time it was a pandemic, but next time it may be a massive solar flare, a giant EMP blast, an asteroid hitting the earth, or an unexplainable cooling of the core.

We all live in countries with aging systems, standards, and processes. Businesses with borderless economies are being taxed through a system that very much cares about borders.

Electric cars are wiping out money coming from gas tax. Cities that are heavily dependent on sales tax from car sales will soon have massive budget problems.

If technology progresses the way I’ve predicted, we are on the verge of an explosive transformation. Buckle your seatbelts, it’s going to be a rough ride!

As always, please take a few moments to consider the implications of these changes and let me know your thoughts.

As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel once said, “You should never let a serious crisis go to waste!”

We’re entering unprecedented times, and yes, the coronavirus will go down in the history books as the most expensive crisis in all history…. so far! Perhaps WWI and WWII were more expensive, but we’re not done yet!

We are witnessing the black swan of all black swans.

As a futurist, I view my role as being a diligent observer, an analyzer of trends, and researcher of signals in uncovering important shifts amidst the chaos.

I’ve been watching the coronavirus as it moves around the world, as public health officials have put together a patchwork of quarantines, travel bans, and social isolation measures. The disruption in events, travel, manufacturing, and trade has had a range of unintended consequences — not all of them good, and certainly not all of them bad.

Ironically, we’re about to discover we’ve never been more emotionally connected while being so physically distant.

Here are 19 of the COVID-19 trend-lines we’re currently watching.

1. Most expensive crisis in all history.

No, we’re nowhere close to putting together a final tally for this but rest assured it will be massive. It is both global in nature and massively debilitating to close so many businesses all at once.

2. Rewriting the rulebook for dealing with future crises.

We now have a new rulebook in place for dealing with future contagions. At the same time, setting the stage for future problems. Even though 887,000 people die each year from Hepatitis B, and 730,000 die from Malaria, and 450,000 from the Rotavirus, every new virus will prompt a similar groan as people say, “Here-we-go-again!”

3. Hitting a giant reset button for planet earth.

We are now in the “pause” phase of effectively resetting life on planet earth. The implications of this “reset” will be felt for years to come as people begin to ask, “what things have changed, and what things remain the same?”

4. The economic pandemic will be far more painful than the virus pandemic.

To be sure, the coronavirus is more economically contagious than it is medically contagious. Death rates from a bad economy can easily make virus death rates look like a walk in the park. Bankruptcies, homelessness, suicides, scammer-campaigns, burglaries, petty theft, and other criminal activity will skyrocket.

One person’s spending is another person’s income. That’s how an economy works and what our $87 trillion global economy is all about. The domino effect fallout that happens when one segment of society stops spending is quickly multiplied, affecting people in every other country.

5. Shaking hands has suddenly become a symbol for “you’re an idiot.”

One of our most sacred business practices, of “sealing a deal with a handshake,” has been permanently tarnished.

6. Sweeping new powers for elected officials.

If you haven’t been paying attention, our wings of independence as workers and businesses have been permanently clipped. This is the first time in history governments have told private business to close. They are now exerting far more power and control than anytime in history.

7. The biggest job transition in all history.

Business interruptions are extremely messy, and layoffs are mounting. Some will view this as a great time to switch careers, while others will think about starting their own business. In general, companies launched during a downturn tend to be far more durable and resilient than those started in better economies. I think it’s safe to say that this round of job losses followed by reemployment trends will be far different than anything in the past.

8. Handicapped by the hiring process.

With HR departments mushrooming in size and countless new hiring laws taking effect over the past decade, most businesses are gun-shy about streamlining the process. This will be an ongoing impediment during a time of recovery.

9. Our increasing awareness of the world means we may have to play by someone else’s rules.

Once China got their teams focused on dealing with the coronavirus, they formulated a game-plan that would be replayed in every other country around the world. If the virus had started in Japan, Brazil, or India, we might be taking a radically different approach.

10. The coming reinvention of healthcare.

Just as the bubonic plague ushered in an era of labor reforms and improvements in medicine in the Middle Ages, the coronavirus will force a number of major improvements in healthcare. Since it’s still too early to accurately predict how post-coronavirus healthcare will differ from pre-coronavirus healthcare, this is an area I’m monitoring closely.

11. The entire airline industry is about to be reborn as something new.

For most companies moving forward, travel expenses will be dramatically lower. Once businesses realize they can survive with a lot fewer face-to-face interactions, any proposed travel expenses will receive far more scrutiny. Keep in mind, the original sales pitch for video conferencing was based on dramatic travel savings.

12. Education is about to undergo radical changes.

We are now seeing the digital classroom being implemented on a global scale. Every teacher that has resisted this approach in the past is being told to get over it because there are no other options. Remote and digital education is certainly not new. Programs like Khan Academy have been around for more than a decade. How long before we are constantly switching between digital and physical classrooms? As Peter Diamandis likes to say, this will be the perfect time to digitize, dematerialize, demonetize and democratize education.

13. Transformation of retail.

Large stores like Walmart, Target, and Costco have become panic zone central as shelves are wiped clean by people going into survival mode. On the other side of the equation, are stores that are either ghost towns or closed completely. Moving forward, traditional retail storefronts will be even more challenged in competing with their online counterparts.

14. Delivery business’s opportunity to shine.

Within just the past few weeks, virtually everyone in the country has had to learn how to use some new delivery app. Companies like DoorDash, Grubhub, Instacart, and Uber Eats are getting swamped with orders. Delivery people are in huge demand, and the entire delivery industry is one of the few bright spots in the freelance and employment world.

15. Rethinking storytelling on a global scale.

From here on out, all of Hollywood’s movie and television scripts will be separated into pre-corona and post-corona era material. Handshakes, hugs, and personal meetings are out. Washing hands, wearing masks, and buying toilet paper are in. And our lexicon is changing to include phrases like “flattening the curve,” “social distancing,” “self-quarantining,” and “shelter in place.”

16. Coming age of flexibility, adaptability, and resilience.

As we dip into survival mode, we will all need to hone our skills in the area of flexibility, adaptability, and resilience. No, they’re not easy to teach nor easy to learn! Future employers will prioritize them as some of the key skill sets their hiring for.

17. The coming baby boom.

Brace yourself for an explosion of Christmas and New Years babies. Many of us have wondered what we will call those who follow Gen-Z, and now it is clear that they’ll be called the Corona Generation.

18. Cocoon of isolation and the loneliness epidemic.

Virtual friends are not a substitute for human contact. While the implementation of social distancing is crucial to preventing the coronavirus pandemic from spreading, the practice is also causing a “social recession,” a collapse in social contact that especially affects populations who are most susceptible to loneliness and isolation. The elderly are particularly vulnerable to loneliness at a time where the CDC is basically placing seniors in solitary confinement. Even a week in solitary will cause muscles to atrophy and many to lose their health and mobility.

19. The unintended consequences of COVID-19 will be epic.

When dystopian thinking and transformational thinking collide, great things can happen.

We are about to enter the most innovative period in all history. When people have time to think and reflect, they also have time to innovate. Millions of new businesses will be created, millions of new products launched, millions of new services transformed.

But for those who cannot adapt to the new realities of life, the COVID-19 downside will manifest itself in many stress-related ways including a ramp up in things like domestic violence, child abuse, suicides, drugs, alcohol, and spousal abuse. We may also see protests, riots, and fighting, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

19 Silver Linings and the New Age of Opportunity

Take a deep breath. Now exhale. Do it again, maybe 200 times.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We’re all in this together. The entire world has been put on hold, so stop focusing on what you can’t do and instead, think of your life as a blank slate and start imagining how you can create the life you’ve always wanted.

1. Just do nothing. Imagine what it feels like to do nothing.
2. Catch up on your sleep.
3. Reintroduce yourself to your family.
4. Learn to be a good parent. Listen to your children. Calm their fears. They will love you forever if you seriously listen to what they have to say. Meaningful conversations are a fine art and practice makes perfect.
5. Learn to cook. Stop complaining about the restaurants you can’t go to anyway, and do it yourself.
6. Plan your next vacation. Spin the globe and see where it will take you.
7. A time for introspection. Learn to meditate, or yoga, or just sit quietly and listen to the sounds of life.
8. Go on a hike. While most gyms are closed, this is a great time to improve yourself physically and emotionally.
9. Volunteer to help a friend, or a nonprofit, or a community group.
10. Take an online course, or two, or twelve.
11. Take up gardening.
12. Create an online business.
13. Launch a movement, a cause, and learn the tools for making it happen.
14. Pick up a new hobby.
15. Write the book you’ve always wanted to write.
16. Write a movie script, a Broadway play, lyrics for a song, a business plan, or your own memoirs. But whatever niche you choose, just keep writing.
17. Create your own channel. Whether it’s a YouTube channel, TikTok channel, Instagram channel, Patreon channel or something else, your legacy is calling you.
18. Make a conscious effort to become the person you’ve always wanted to be.
19. Plan something big. Don’t let the walls that held you captive in the past determine the freedom you have to work with in the future.
20. Catch up on old episodes of the Futurati Podcast.

Final Thoughts

As a kid growing up in the 60s and 70s virtually everyone knew about quicksand. For filmmakers it was the perfect recipe for excitement. Create a pool of water, thicken it with oatmeal, and add pieces of floating cork

Viewers were instantly gripped by the panic of “we’re sinking!” Can our heroes possibly escape this life-threatening situation before it’s too late?

Nearly every movie and television show during my childhood had a scene where someone important ran into quicksand, and we all got to know the rules for surviving it quite well.

But quicksand is far less of a threat than we were led to believe. Studies have found it is impossible to be completely submerged in quicksand because humans are less dense than quicksand and a person will only sink to their waist or chest before they begin to float.

For most kids, quicksand was a source of ongoing nightmares because it occupied a disproportionate chuck of our brain power.

Quicksand is an interesting analogy for what the coronavirus hysteria has been feeling like. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

We are entering the golden age of opportunity. This will become a turning point in everyone’s lives.

COVID-19 will accelerate our digital lives, so we should begin to think in terms of unlimited possibilities. It’s offering us time to seriously reinvent every aspect of modern living.

It’s our time to help those in need, connect with old friends, forge new relationships, and clean up old to-do lists.

Knowing this, how will you use this opportunity to change your life and the lives of others?

How do we stop the panic?

Whether you think the coronavirus is a festering pandemic or an overhyped version of the common flu, there are many things we can learn from how the world is responding to the news of the coronavirus and what indicators may signal a permanent global shift.

While Warren Buffet said, “The market collapse in the fall of 2008 was much more scary, by far, than anything that’s happened here,” it’s too early to understand the full impact and both short and long term impacts.

Several factors make this different than past crises including our heightened levels of awareness, the speed with which companies and countries are reacting to it, and the long term effects that will permanently change humanity.

The good news is that the speed used to form a panic, is the same speed with which it can be defused!

Please don’t misread this as trying to brush off the dangers of our quickly escalating pandemic. Rather, the goal should be to find a way to recalibrate our response in a method that will cause the least amount of damage.

Every bad decision sets a precedent for more bad decisions as they charge forward!

The Speed of Panic

As we move into a world where the accelerating speed of bad news can be measured in exponential adoption curves, and the speed of panic is even greater than the risk of coronavirus itself, we are faced with some very hard choices.

Everything is a balancing act. Is the risk of alarming people greater than the risk of not informing them? Is the risk of destroying the economy greater than the risk of being under-protected? How can anyone know if they’ve struck the right balance in protecting employees at the same time trying to protect the companies and jobs they’re depending on?

Most crises in the past have followed a similar pattern. As our level of awareness grows, an accelerating problem leads to accelerating panic, and that leads to an accelerating financial crisis, followed by massive layoffs, and a huge number of bankruptcies. This is a lose, lose, lose, lose pattern that has been repeated time and again throughout history.

The truth is, this is on a scale unlike anything we’ve seen in the past. This is the first time we’ve had to deal with anything globally, simultaneously, and exponentially all at once. Our digital landscape has become far more pervasive, faster, and reliable than ever before, making it a particularly unique challenge to contend with.

While most feel the need to err on the side of caution, the unintended consequences of every drastic action is beginning to feel like we’re all crew members aboard the ill-fated Titanic with no lifeboats.

Yes, our hearts go out for everyone affected by COVID-19 today, but it’s still a long ways from being our biggest problem.

Biggest Death Risks (2016 data)*

It is highly unlikely that the risk of death from COVID-19 will even break into the top 15 leading causes of death this year:

1. Cardiovascular disease – 17.65 million
2. Diabetes, Blood and Endocrine disease- 10.4 million
3. Cancer – 9.6 million
4. Smoking – 7.1 million
5. Respiratory diseases and infections – 6.5 million
6. High blood pressure – 6.5 million
7. Air pollution – 4.9 million
8. Obesity – 4.7 million
9. Driving fatalities – 1.24 million
10. HIV/AIDS – 942,000
11. Suicide – 800,000
12. Influenza – 650,000
13. Malaria – 620,000
14. Homicides – 464,000
15. Medical errors – 440,000

* Sources: UNODC, WHO, the Global Health Data Exchange of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)

Understanding Exponential Growth Curves

In the startup world, it’s every entrepreneur’s dream to unleash a super scaleable product and have it go viral. But there’s little concern for the back end of the curve in the consumer products world.

However, in just two weeks people in Italy went from saying “It won’t hit here!” to having the whole country locked down. Yes, this is an incredible teaching moment about what exponential change feels like, but this is different.

While it’s a great case study in accelerating growth strategies, it’s important to differentiate how the exponential curve of panic is far different from growth curves of the disease itself.

Every country in the world has now pushed the panic button.

Decisions affecting literally billions of people are being made in the heat of the moment with little to no understanding of how to find a way back to normal.

Shutting down the economic engines of society does little to solve the problem; it simply compounds the issues.

Any decision made without resistance will be done in haste, without consideration of consequences or repercussions.

Resistance is a powerful tool. It forces well-meaning people to refine their intentions, deliberate over possible outcomes, and be held accountable for shallow thinking and ill-suited arguments.

Final Thoughts

This period of time represents a significant turning point in human history, and understanding the full impact of everything that’s changed will take months, maybe years.

Very likely we will be rethinking personal space in light of “social distancing.” But it could work just the opposite, creating a stronger need for intimacy where we crave human touch and social contact.

We may see the proliferation of businesses helping you “pandemic-proof” your life.

With massive layoffs coming from drowning businesses, we may see coaches offering ways to “bankrupt your way to health and happiness.”

Over the coming months, we’ll be searching desperately to reengineer our strategies around a “new normal.” Is extreme complexity the new simplicity? How does our changing need for personal space change the human interface? Where are the opportunities?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What am I missing, overlooking, or not paying attention to? Take a few moments and let me know what you’re thinking.

Are our leaders making good decisions about managing the coronavirus?

In 1998-1999, the world was being gripped by fear. It wasn’t the fear of war, famine, uprisings, or a coronavirus-like pandemic, instead there was a growing anxiety over Y2K.

Today, we tend to laugh at how the world was festering over something as trivial as the time clock limitations built into our computer hardware and operating systems, but at the time, it was anything but trivial.

This isn’t to say that there was no underlying problem with Y2K, but it quickly got blown out of proportion and the news media was very complicit in the fear-mongering, with disaster scenarios being played out on the six o’clock news and being repeated by politicians who didn’t want to be viewed as do-nothing officials.

That was only twenty years ago. Today we’re seeing a similar set of challenges unfold surrounding the coronavirus. And virtually every elected official is being gripped by the “fear of doing nothing.”

History has a way of treating officials harshly for making bad decisions, and no one wanted to risk having their legacy ruined because “they did nothing.”

As a result, any work order that came across a manager’s desk saying it would make their system “Y2K-ready” or “Y2K-compliant” was instantly rubber-stamped and given the green light.

To be sure, there were a lot of snake oil salesmen hovering around the tech world at this time, but very few wanted to risk being caught with their pants down.

Few people realize this but all the money corporations freed up to ensure they were Y2K compliant is what fueled the economic boom of the late nineties. This is the money that drove Silicon Valley through the first boom and bust bubble of Internet 1.0.

While Federal Reserve Board chairman, Alan Greenspan referred to it as “irrational exuberance,” the available money floating around the tech world was truly staggering.

We are now caught up in global fear mongering with no end in sight!

The Fear of Doing Nothing

Today’s headlines were dominated by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordering all schools to be closed in Japan for the next month, even though it doesn’t appear to affect kids.

Virtually every headline is about how fast-moving and dangerous the coronavirus is, even though the basis for these claims seem flimsy at best. So far the coronavirus has killed 2,814 people, while a recent study shows the flu kills 291,000-646,000 annually.

In fact, if I’m reading the definition right, the only true pandemic we have in the world today is cancer. The leading cause of death worldwide is cancer, with an estimated 9.6 million people dying annually. Yet nobody is referring to cancer as a pandemic.

Yes, the death rate for coronavirus is estimated at 1-2% while the flu is only 0.1%, but the fear being generated appears to be far more devastating than the disease itself. And let’s be honest, the death rate for cancer is somewhere around 50%.

The latest wave of headlines is being dominated by public officials wanting to “do something,” and the only safe thing to do is to restrict travel and have people avoid other people.

Unlike Y2K, the fallout from the fear surrounding the coronavirus doesn’t seem to come with any type of silver lining, at least not yet.

Complicating things further, there doesn’t seem to be any reliable source of truth about the outbreak.

Information coming from the U.S. government is a mixed bag. The CDC has situational updates that are noteworthy, but not particularly useful, and the CDC states its assessment in rather ambiguous terms: “It’s important to note that current global circumstances suggest it is likely that this virus will cause a pandemic. In that case, the risk assessment will be different.”

For medical advice, the CDC’s says you should wash your hands with soap and water, and to not go near people who are infected. One important factoid is that hand sanitizers are most likely not strong enough to replace thorough hand washing as a preventative measure. So slathering your hands with Purell, in all likelihood, is a giant a waste of time and money.

While all this is interesting, the fact remains that millions of businesses are going bankrupt and people’s lives are being destroyed by the news media’s constant push to sensationalize headlines and drive the number of pageviews.

Global Businesses Collapsing

Most of the world relies on Chinese manufacturing for the products they buy. With over 604 million products sold on Amazon and over 46 million sold at Walmart, a huge percentage of them are made in China.

Millions of companies across China are now in a race against the clock to stay afloat.

A survey of small- and medium-sized Chinese companies conducted over the past month showed that only a third of them had enough cash to cover fixed expenses for one month, with another third would be running out within two months.

With the coronavirus dominating headlines, only 30% of them have managed to resume operations due to a complicated local government approval procedure as well as a lack of employees and financing.

China remains the manufacturing engine for the world!

Despite accounting for 60% of the economy and 80% of jobs in China, private businesses have long struggled to tap into the funding they need to expand and contract during the normal boom and bust cycles. About two-thirds of the country’s 80 million small businesses, including many mom-and-pop shops, lacked access to loans in 2018.

Since the outbreak, the support from China’s banking giants has been piecemeal, mostly earmarked for directly combating the virus.

Many of China’s businesses were already grasping for lifelines before the virus hit, because of the trade war and a lending crackdown that sent economic growth to a three-decade low last year.

Those most at risk are the labor-intensive catering and restaurant industries, travel agencies, airlines, hotels and shopping malls.

Airports have turned into scenes straight out of the zombie apocalypse!

Killing the Travel and Tourism Industries

The global response so far has been isolation, isolation, and even more isolation. 

The only known prevention for coronavirus has been to isolate people from any contact with other people. Except, even that is no longer good enough.

U.S. health authorities said they’ve identified the first case of coronavirus that doesn’t have known ties to an existing outbreak, a worrying signal that the virus is circulating in the U.S. despite all the precautions.

The hospital where the patient is being treated at UC Davis in California is described as one of the more serious cases of infection so far in the U.S.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control said the patient doesn’t appear to have traveled to China or been exposed to another known case of the coronavirus. Health authorities are increasingly concerned about what’s known as community spread, where the virus begins circulating freely among people outside of quarantines or known contacts with other patients.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown,” the CDC said in a statement. “It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of Covid-19.”

In the meantime, the fear is causing the travel and tourism industries to collapse.

• France has seen a 30-40% drop in tourists.
• More than 40,000 hotel bookings on the Indonesian island of Bali have been canceled.
• China has experienced a 70% drop in tourists over last year.
• Facebook cancelled their 5,000 person Global Marketing Summit scheduled for March in San Francisco.
• The Tokyo Marathon has been reduced to elite runners only, cancelling the race for 38,000 other runners. 
• North Korea has canceled its Pyongyang Marathon scheduled for April.
• Mobile World Conference canceled its February event in Barcelona.
• British rapper Stormzy postponed concerts in Japan, China, and South Korea as part of his world tour.
• Dalai Lama, the Buddhist spiritual leader announced he would postpone all ordination ceremonies for new monks and cancel all his public duties until further notice.
• Fashion weeks in Beijing and Shanghai, both set to take place at the end of March, have been postponed.
• Venice, Italy canceled its carnival, one of the most popular in the world.
• The Saudi government announced it is temporarily banning foreign pilgrims from entering the country, which is home to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
• At risk are massive failures in airlines, cruise ships, theme parks, hotels, trains, conferences, conventions, and much more.

Have we reached a crossroads in human existence?

151,600

151,600 is the number of people that die every day in the world.

Some die from old age, infectious disease, car accidents, cancer, childbirth, heart attacks, suicide, gunshots, or any of dozens of different causes. The ending of human life is a sobering reality, happening relentlessly, every second of every day.

Whenever I get lulled into a false sense of “this will never happen to me,” I realize this same number begins its countdown every morning of every day. There are no exceptions.

“What’s the role of our healthcare and governmental systems in this number?”

Is it simply to rearrange the dead, to change the order of how and when some of us will die?

Every baby that’s born into this world comes with an expiration date. We don’t know when anyone will die, but so far, no one has managed to live forever.

As a society, we grieve all of our losses but we abhor premature deaths, all of the ones that could have been prevented. We go out of our way to guard against disease, mending wounds after an accident, and protecting against those who wish us harm.

In the future it will no longer be good enough to just be healthy. We will demand ways to be physically stronger, more alert, super resilient, exceptionally durable, intellectually brilliant, and so much more.

Final Thoughts

I normally don’t go off on a rant, but every approach to the coronavirus I’m seeing seems wrong on so many levels.

It’s Y2K all over again but with a demented twist.

So we isolate people for a while… and then what? Every day we’re hearing about new cancellations and postponements… and then what? We’re on the verge of destroying our global economy… and then what?

Are we really waiting for someone to discover a cure? The healthcare industry has a terrible track record when it comes to finding cures. They are far more motivated to find a solution for the symptoms rather than the disease itself, but maybe this time will be different.

Furthermore, isolation does not work. It goes against human nature. Instead of separating people from people we need to start working together and ask the tough questions.

If we have an outbreak of the coronavirus in a large prison, how do we manage that? If we have an outbreak in a refugee camp, how do we manage that? If we have a massive outbreak among the 1.2 billion people that live in Africa, how do we manage that?

Recently, Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch stated, “I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately not be containable.”

Lipsitch goes on to predict that within the coming year, anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But, he clarifies emphatically, this does not mean that all will have severe illnesses.

It seems inevitable that we will all come into contact with it. But today’s fear about the coronavirus is exponentially worse than the disease itself. Why do we have no checks and balance systems for the hysteria being created?

That said, I’d love to hear your thoughts.