The Other Side of The Plague Year

This picture is taken from the cover of the Economist magazine published on March 27th 2021

 The year 2020 has been a gloomy year for all of us. The pandemic has been regarded as a once-in-a-century event and has caused much suffering to the world. Since the first case of SARS-COV-2 was found, more than one million people have died from the virus and its complication. Almost entire industries have ground to a halt, the stock market crashed, the world’s leading economies are in recession, and the inequality in our society widened. 

With all the agony that it has caused, it is easy to overlook the other side of what the pandemic has brought us. The pandemic forces profound changes in almost all aspects of our society and has been the most significant global disruption since World War 2. The sense of urgency for survival has enabled us to look for solutions that might not seem to be appetizing under normal circumstances. While it has destroyed many businesses, especially small-scale businesses that operate around customer service, it has also created many business opportunities and spurred innovations in some of the most conservative industries.

Remote-working seemed to be an unviable option before the pandemic. Still, more and more people consider it an efficient alternative as it eliminates commuting time and transportation costs. The public health crisis has also motivated healthcare institutions and governments in many countries to adopt the digitalization of their database, eliminating the long bureaucracy of the paper-based system and enabling quick access to information. More and more customers are moving into cashless payments, which minimize the spread of the virus via cash and can be an efficient transaction method in the long run. The adoption of many digital tools in the education sector also enables teachers to automate many administrative tasks and spend more time creating creative content for their classroom lectures. Several innovations in the pharmaceuticals and biotech sector have allowed us to reduce the time it takes to produce a vaccine significantly. 

All of these changes would typically take at least 5 years hadn’t the pandemic hit. In other words, we could say that the covid pandemic also acts as a catalyst for digital transformation. Without denying the grief it has caused, now is the time for us to embrace the change and consider it as an opportunity to innovate.