There is no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has touched every corner of the world. It has had a devasting impact on human health and the world economy. While the global death toll from COVID-19 approaches 3.5 million people, which is undoubtedly tragic and my heart goes out to all the families that have suffered the loss of loved ones, the global recovery rate is approaching 150 million from more than 168 million people infected with the disease, and that is a blessing. As a matter of fact, the COVID-19 pandemic is a blessing in disguise. Our planet, women empowerment, e-learning, e-commerce, ICT, families, and churches experienced opportunities to benefit during this challenging time.
I will focus on a just a few of the areas mentioned above as examples of the silver lining that has come with the dark cloud of COVID-19.
Women Empowerment
COVID-19 has helped us refocus our attention on what is really important to human survival: food, shelter, clothing, health, community, and the need to ensure equality. Just as the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, which took approximately 50 million lives, led to the creation of a favorable environment for the comprehensive equal rights amendment to help women work in roles previously reserved for men, a century later this pandemic is giving us the opportunity to recalibrate gender inequality. For instance, by ensuring equality measures for women in the Africa agriculture sector, the labor force will be empowered, a viable economic system will be created, and most importantly the food system will be strengthened to provide healthy nutrition to boost immunity needed to fight the coronavirus. The systemic gain of this process will definitely make the supply chain more robust, even post COVID-19.
In Africa, approximately 40 percent of women are involved in farming at a primary level. Approximately, 70 percent of the food eaten on the African continent is grown by women farmers, according experts. Women farmers tend to be the primary caregivers to their families. With emerging technologies, women can be empowered to scale up production and eradicate hunger on the African continent.
Church
Despite churches and places of worship being closed and/or gatherings being severely limited to just a few hundred people, access to religion and messages of hope has continued to grow.
According to a local media source, in a digital world church has no walls, and the founding pastor at Life Church Michigan, Jonathan Herron believes that virtual church is here to stay even in a post-pandemic world. Life Church Michigan has a growing online audience while fewer people are gathering in person for services. Rev. Hurley Coleman, Jr. of World Outreach Campus Church experienced growth online after Michigan churches closed their physical doors last year. People are able to share the services and more people can get the message.
For those that prefer to be alone while they pray and worship, the ability to watch a service on their phone is extremely valuable.
E-Learning
The COVID-19 pandemic is a once in a century event, hopefully, and it forced nations to go into lockdown, which impacted people and businesses all over the world. Although it made people stay inside, it also encouraged people to spend more time on the internet watching useful content, educating themselves and learning new skills.
In my case, my wife and have a company that was primarily doing event management pre-COVID-19, and our last physical event was a high tea on 08 March 2020 in celebration of International Women’s Day, which happens to be my late mother’s birthday, God rest her soul.
I am an African American based in South Africa and we went into a 21-day lockdown on 27 March, and more than 400 days later we are still in lockdown, Level 1. In order to survive the last year and two months, we had to pivot to generate income online working from home. We attended a comprehensive webinar series hosted by our local chamber of commerce to learn about e-commerce. Following the training, we implemented what we had learned and officially launched an e-commerce marketplace for women that my wife heads on 09 August 2020, National Women’s Day in South Africa.
Additionally, I started doing some business consulting online with a client in the United States. I made new connections through that network, and eventually it brought me in contact with The Michigan Banner. Now, I am writing my first article for my new column in the very same newspaper, and that’s a blessing for sure.
Environment
The pandemic is mother nature taking its lost ground from us human beings. The industrial revolution and relentless pursuit of profit, or need to establish supremacy based on the metric of material wealth has nearly destroyed what took more than a billion years to develop. Fossil fuels, natural reserves, glaciers, reefs, rivers, and more have been depleted or destroyed in less than 150 years. Just a few months of forced restraint on us has started healing the planet of its pollution, air is cleaner, rivers have fish again, and some endangered animals, like pangolins (the most trafficked in the world) are starting to recover.
COVID-19 has had drastic effects on social and economic fronts due to lockdown, but has some positive effects on the natural environment, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Industrial activities shut down globally, and the transport and manufacturing sectors have been heavily affected by the pandemic. COVID-19 has had a severe negative impact on human health and the world economy; however, it has also resulted in a reduction in pollution due to limited social and economic activities. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency) released data that indicates pollution in some of the epicenters of COVID-19, like Wuhan, Italy, Spain, the USA and others has reduced up to 30%. This fact could see a reduction in the people that die worldwide due to poor air quality, which is currently 4.6 million annually.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), other positive effects include reduced road traffic and road accidents, and the lowered levels of air pollution resulted in lowering heart attack rates. Crime rates have fallen and, in many places, expenses are reduced. Communication amongst families, community action, behavior, sanitation, hygiene, online and distance learning have all been positively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
I am fine, my immediate family, and most of my extended family are all doing well by the grace of God. We have been, and continue to be very strict with precautionary measures like wearing a mask, keeping social distance, avoiding large crowds, and meeting people online via video conferencing to minimize the chances of getting infected with the coronavirus.
It’s all about perspective. In spite of the pain caused by the pandemic, we can make lemonade from the lemons it has served up during this uncertain time. One of the most important lessons I have learned is that there is always an opportunity in every difficult adversity. Collectively, we should learn some important lessons, and one of them is about taking care of our environment seriously. Our nonstop activities around the world were creating endless pollution, which is not good for us or our future generations. The COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone stop and go into lockdown, which has benefitted our environment to breathe properly for some time.
COVID-19 and many such challenges will come and go, but most importantly we must not forget those we have lost, and the lessons we have learned and the advances we have made are blessings in disguise.
