-Upakar Paudel
Before I born 24 years ago,
Despite significant medical progress over the last centuries, infectious diseases such as influenza or malaria still represent a considerable threat to society and the whole world. While some are endemic to specific geographical regions, others can spread, becoming epidemics or pandemics. While the first and most crucial aspect of an epidemic is, and will always remain, the loss of human life, the spread of a virus can also have important repercussions for national or regional economies.
If COVID-19 had struck 24 years ago, consider the past 24 years and the rise of smartphones and tablets, when an informal coalition of sociologists, media outlets, politicians and others warned that screens are addictive and digital tools harm the ability to focus, to work or to build relationships.
Too bad so many bosses once resisted allowing employees to work from home — even though research has found that remote workers are more productive, take shorter breaks, take less time off and stay with their companies longer. That resistance inevitably limited the marketplace for video tools, leaving only a few options available when the pandemic crisis struck.Unfortunately, that’s how things tend to go with new technologies comparing past and now. Fear leads to smaller markets, reducing investment by innovators comparing the past 24 years and now.This story has repeated itself across time and culture. Screen-time opponents advise kids to pick up a good book — but novels, when the popularity of fiction boomed in the early 19th century, were equally villainized. In 1818, Thomas Jeffersonwrote that reading novels leads to “bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life.” It doesn’t take a bloated imagination to think that, given the opposition, many creative geniuses of their day would express their talents elsewhere.Such resistance tends to dissolve over time, but it can take generations. Culture adapts. We find new things to worry about: The terrifying novel looked innocent compared with the radio, which itself was considered a menace to young minds until television came along, and so on. Some scary future tech will eventually make parents nostalgic for iPads and Instagram.
Our global response would have been far less capable - all thanks to digital technologies.From Zoom meetings keeping the world in work to online shopping deliveries, the developments in technology over the last 24 years have helped prepare us for this pandemic.
In these difficult times, the press and the public are piling complaints on governments and corporations over their responses to the pandemic. Yet it is amazing how well shutdowns and quarantines have worked so far in the developed world. Supply chains continue to operate. Medical systems are functioning, if sometimes stretched to limits. There have been no large-scale bankruptcies that could start a contagion effect.A lot of this resiliency is from people doing the right and appropriate thing. But we also need to reflect on what might have happened had this virus struck 24 years ago. Undoubtedly, timing has helped ease the burden.
Consider the working world. Twenty Four years ago, there was no Zoom. Even Face time didn’t exist until 2010. Meetings from home with a group of people would have been well-nigh impossible for most of us at the turn of the century.Zoom went from 10 million users to 300 million users, and now many companies talk about maintaining remote workforces after the crisis ends. And innovation is blossoming: The company Around recently launched a videoconferencing tool that just shows your colleagues’ faces floating in small circles on your screen, not covering up your other work.
High-speed fiber broadband did not exist. Companies did not use secure cloud-based systems or virtual private networks (VPNs), but relied on internal systems connected directly. Office workers in a lockdown two decades ago would have been restricted to working on tasks that did not rely on anything more sophisticated than email. The end result? Quarantine would have been so economically damaging as to be unimaginable.
Another way of looking at this is from the standpoint of students in high schools and universities. My sisters at home and colleagues around the globe have fairly easily moved into online mode. Lectures can be recorded or streamed. Group work can be handled readily, with many assignments submitted as normal via systems like Canvas and Blackboard while presentations can be done online.To put things in perspective, nearly all university activity was face-to-face “chalk and talk” in 1995-2000. Leading online teaching platform Coursera, which is becoming so important in delivering higher education around the world, did not exist before 2012. In 2019 it offered more than 3,500 courses to 40 million students.It is true that some aspects of the teaching and learning function have suffered during lockdown – for example, where students need access to laboratories that cannot be made virtual. But 24 years ago, universities and schools would simply have shut down if the COVID-19 pandemic occur before 24 years ago.
It’s all at home
With millions of schoolchildren’s stuck at home and relying on screens for education and entertainment, you don’t hear so much worrying about kids’ screen time. Instead, you hear about how ill-prepared teachers were to hold classes online and the shortcomings of the few digital education tools. Don’t blame educators. If adult wariness of children’s screen use hadn’t been so entrenched, there might have been a better-developed marketplace for interactive digital classrooms.
A lot of press has been made about travel and airline cancellations and disruptions to manufacturing and trade. Yet groceries have remained stocked with basic necessities as the food supply continues to operate, even if it’s in lieu of more variety.Thanks to online delivery, most people in quarantine have been able to buy food without major problems. Even three years ago, only around 30% of world chains had online delivery as it also got increased in Nepal. In Kathmandu alone, there are many food delivery companies that have not shut services during the lockdown, instead, they got busier to serve the public Foodmandu, an online food delivery platform, has introduced its new segment, Foodmandu Fresh, to deliver fresh groceries. The company is partnering with six vendors to collect the fruits and vegetables every morning and deliver them as ordered. Another popular food delivery platform, Bhojdeals, has also changed its module a bit and continued to partner with KK Mart to deliver the essentialsBhat-Bhateni Supermarket and Sales berry have been delivering their own supplies. So far they have been swamped with delivery requests if the pandemic occur before 24 years ago in KTM what would had happened? Each of the companies receives around 250 delivery requests per day. Even when it comes to remaining sane at home, there is Netflix and Amazon Prime Video – both of which barely existed a decade ago. There is Apple Arcade, Google, VR headsets, to mention only a few other forms of sofa entertainment.Zoom allows for virtual happy hours, virtual family gatherings (keeping the grandparents safe), and even virtual meals. No mobiles phone were there before 24 years ago, no internet facility available in Nepal but technology development had changed a lot .The irony is that when many people pre-lockdown went out for a meal or drink, they would spend much time looking attheir phones rather than whoever they were with. Because they now have to look at a screen to see the other person, they actually may end up talking to them more.
Lessons learned
Governments and companies are making a better job of responding to the pandemic because they have learned from past crises. The 9-11 terrorist attacks highlighted the need for tighter government monitoring of border activities and travel. The 2002-03 SARS epidemic led to more resilient systems for quarantining and for controlling transmission across borders – in some countries more than others, admittedly.The 2007-09 financial crisis brought to the fore the limitations of government policy in keeping markets moving, and hence the need for central bank intervention. This time around, the central banks have shored up the system much more quickly.Where governments have addressed corporate needs, they seem less keen on direct bailouts than last time. Having said that, these may be less necessary as major corporations have far more cash than ten years ago. They, too, seem to have learned from being caught short in 2009.One final advantage over 24 years ago is today’s technology. It has allowed for almost real-time tracking of infections, with information pushed out via the likes of What’sApp (founded 2009).Telemedicine is also improving. Many people didn’t trust the service before, and government regulations made it cumbersome and less financially rewarding for doctors to offer. But with demand up, regulations are being wiped away and innovation is kicking in.At the same time, individual’s movement can be monitored over their mobile phones drones can help enforce social restrictions and health officials can quickly identify infection clusters and track the individuals who may have passed through them.Some countries have been more wary than others about these capabilities, and clearly there are legitimate concerns about the surveillance state. But unquestionably, such technologies have played a part in the global response to the pandemic.In a densely populated area like Kathmandu, the risk of infections spreading quickly has been countered by such monitoring. Officials have been able to identify cases and inform people if they are in danger of infection, for example via electronic wristbands. In the UK, and soon the US, an app is allowing individuals to self-report symptoms, providing better tracking of the location of potential cases.
For those in self-quarantine and going a bit stir crazy, it is worth remembering these things. Had this coronavirus swept the world 24 years ago, it could have been so much worse for you, your family and the economy in general.How will we handle the next wave of innovation? That will be our greatest collective challenge. The pessimists will surely have something to say. It would be good to think back to this moment, recalling the many ways that feared technologies came to be seen as a blessing. Then we can encourage something that really does improve lives. It isn’t resistance to change. It’s change.
(Radiological Technologist)