Insight from COVID-19 pandemic crisis

One important insight from the COVID-19 crisis is the awareness it brings to humans across the world that people or groups of people who matter and make a difference in a society are not who we thought that group to be.

As such, it is not the superstars in sports or art! Not the singers, the actors, the celebrities nor fashion designers! 

We truly realize that we can keep going without Lionel messy, Tom Brady, Mo Salah, Barcelona soccer team, Lebron James, the NBA, the Kardashian’s and the many like them. This is not saying that they don’t entertain us nor that the sudden stoppage of sports games does not have an economic impact but it terms of priorities this can put close to the bottom! 

We realize that what matters in a society are (in no special order) the doctors, the nurses, medical staffers, paramedics, EMT personnel, pharmacists, fire fighters, truck drivers, researchers in various scientific domains (medicine, pharmacy, epidemiology, biology ..etc), statisticians , engineers across the spectrum of specialties (electrical, mechanical, biomedical..etc), factory workers ,teachers, police officers and many other professionals that are still working to keep life going on.

They are working to find a cure and a vaccine, to treat those who got the disease , to understand how it’s transmitted and model its spread, to design and manufacture those much needed ventilators in ICUs and those X-ray equipments used to detect and triage patients. They are tirelessly working to find the right chemical composition and dose of potential drug to treat the disease. They are also working to keep us safe in case things go out of control and to keep the flow of necessary goods coming to stores.

Those people have, often in the past, not gotten the respect they deserve , nor paid a salary that matches their contribution. (Doctors are probably the only exception here). While the Messi’s, the James’s, the Kardashian's and the Byoncés of the world were paid millions and millions. Nurses, teachers , engineers, police officers and EMT’s were paid much much less comparatively despite the tough work they do, the importance of their work and the risk they are exposed to in their line of work. 

If and when we emerge from this crisis, this wrong has to be righted by rethinking their role in society, giving them their due respects and paying them accordingly.