In the end, can we have positive effects and benefits from COVID-19?

After so many events that were unexpected like Brexit and election of Trump, we are facing a new one-COVID-19. It happened in the most unappropriated time-the growth of the economy is still slow because of several reasons. One of them is the USA-China trade war, and COVID-19 can be the last blow.

Coronavirus caught our society by utter surprise. During recent years we had experienced different flues and viruses, which didn’t affect our society at all. We continued to attend different social gatherings; to meet our colleges, friends, and relatives; to go eating at the restaurants and continue to go shopping; to travel-domestic trips and abroad… because we are “social animals”-we can’t stay locked in one space for a long period.

Also, our economy is based on our “physical presence” there. Few are the businesses and professions that are working remotely. Because of the boom of technology and the internet, this is possible, but few companies are practicing this because of two main reasons:

-their jobs can’t be transformed in remote work (delivery guy can’t remotely deliver your goods, the plumber or electrician can’t fix your problem remotely, the doctor can’t check your health remotely, the restaurants, and their staff can’t work remotely…).

-lack of desire and incentive from employers to transform the work to remote of their employees. As we mentioned above, not every profession is possible to be changed in a remote one, but more and more professions are capable to do this- accountants, lawyers, office workers, software engineers… Now, almost all public gatherings are forbidden including for work (with several exceptions) they are forced to adjust the working time of their workers to remote or their business would generate no revenue. Fortunately for them, with the current level of technology and higher Internet speed, all the process is easier now in comparison with 20 years ago.

And at the end, we have few professions which mainly are working online/remote-content writers, copywriters, Social media and SEO experts, video editors, web designers… All these occupations are rather new and they are the result of the technological changes in our society. Their number is small in comparison with other professions, but they are fast-growing and replace the old professions which are dead due to the technologies.

Now, not reaching the peak of Coronavirus and its economic consequences, we felt how harsh it would hit both our society and economy-many businesses would be forced to shut down, many people would lose their jobs…If governments don’t find a proper solution, it may cause social unrest.

But despite the negative effects, are there benefits and positive effects, which can change our society for better?

-Digitalization of the economy.

Forced of the harsh events, the private business will make their transition to a digital one. To prevent further spread of COVID-19, governments quarantined many people limiting their movements to only the most necessary one and temporally shut down many businesses with their restrictions. Unfortunately, these temporary restrictions would shut down permanently many businesses, and many people would lose their jobs. But even in these harsh times, some businesses are booming-as a result of the increased volume of online orders, it forced Amazon to hire more people to catch the level of online orders; YouTube and Netflix decreased the quality of their streaming services to be able to support the increased traffic since most people are under quarantine and they stay at home. Other online shops were also under pressure by cause of the increased number of orders (when your local store is closed, it limited your choice).

For example, most of the restaurants shut down their businesses following the restrictions let by the governments… but some of them remain open and to use the benefits of COVID-19-they make a transition of their business model to online orders and delivery. No one can eat at their restaurants, but they have full freedom to order the meal that they want and still make a profit.

-E-Government

Facing a new danger like coronavirus, many government agencies and offices were temporally shut down or had limited service and coverage. Government services are critically important to both private citizens and businesses and they can’t function properly without them. Fortunately, some of their services are online, but only few. COVID-19 would urge the governments to do quick changes if they want to limit the economic loss and consequences for society. If a new pandemic happened in the future, the impact would be less visible because of the new e-government that we would have. Even with tougher quarantine and restrictions, the governments will continue to deliver their services to the society.

So even COVID-19 can bring some positive effects to our society.

A great example of this is a tiny Estonia. Gaining its independence just in 1991(right before the collapse of the Soviet Union), surrounded by a hostile neighbor (Russia), with little population and lack of resources, Estonia had no choice, but to embrace technologies if it wanted to succeed… and the result was noticeable. The tiny country possesses one of the most advanced e-governments in the world which covers almost all of its services-from incorporation a new business, paying taxes, opening a bank account to online voting. It doesn’t matter where is the location of its citizen-he can still vote, pay his taxes or manage his business in Estonia with no physical presence there.

The example of Estonia would ease the opportunities for everyone and fortunately, this can happen sooner than we all thought.

-Remote work

To work remotely before 20 years was almost impossible before 10 years was reared and now, we have more and more people that are working remotely from their homes. This is more related to freelancers (content writers, copywriters, Social media, SEO specialists…) who mainly work remotely.

Parts of the companies offer some work to be done remotely, but this was rather an exception than a norm. Affirmatively, the trends are increasing, but it was not so exceptionally popular and the physical presence is still very important for the employers. Now this will change. Realizing that it is quite possible to have a future pandemic with a similar impact and magnitude as COVID-19 or worst, the employers are becoming more and more friendly to remote work. They realized, that with new and forthcoming pandemics, their employees are more vulnerable to them which would affect them in several ways:

-Sicker employees who suggest not enough people to fulfill their duties=loss of revenue

-Higher healthcare costs for the companies=more expanses

All this can be avoided when all professions that can be done remotely are transformed into remote work.

Then, if there is a new pandemic that would block our society again, the pain and suffer would be less because more and more people can continue to work from their homes.

-More investments in healthcare and healthcare infrastructure

Despite the investments in the healthcare, in general, healthcare was always underpaid/under-financed -the salaries were not enough for the scope of the work that the healthcare staff is doing, the equipment is not enough in case of a mass pandemic like now with Coronavirus when many people are needing help.

A great example of this is Italy-one developed country, 8th place of the largest economy in the world (IMF 2019), spending 8.9% of its GDP on healthcare or a little less than the average level of the EU-9.9% . Despite this fact, Italy (one of the richest countries in the world) was unprepared to solve such a pandemic like COVID-19. Not enough doctors and nurses, not enough rooms and beds for the patients, not enough equipment.

The society understood why they are important for us and was astonished by their heroism with the fight with Coronavirus. More and more people donate to the healthcare- to buy the necessary equipment, to buy more needed medicines for the patients… and even financial stimulus for their hard work.

In the future, we can expect that the governments would both understand and appreciate how important are they for us and will make everything sure to improve their conditions of work-higher salaries, more medicines, better equipment and more beds for the patients.

-Negative interest rates

We are still not reaching the pick of COVID-19, but we can see how devastating this would be for the world economy. From the beginning of the year, one of the most popular indices, S&P 500, had lost 21.34 of its value (27.03.2020), the other companies felt too, losing trillions of dollars. Many people are losing or would lose their jobs as a result of the current effects of Coronavirus. The governments are thinking now how to aid the business and to prevent too many people to be without income, which can cause social unrest and a new political atmosphere in Western countries.

The western values of democracy, freedom of speech and free economy can be undermined if the collapse of the economy due to COVID-19 is not avoided. Politicians from both radical left and right can use this situation to their advantage and promote policies that are quite opposite on Western values.

One way to recover the economy faster according to some economics is negative interest rates.

In this case, the borrower will not pay the interest rate over its loan but quite opposite. The bank or lender would pay him (a little) to borrow their money. For example, if we apply for a negative interest rate of 0.5%, it means that if someone borrows $100,000 for one year, at the end of the year he will return only $99,500 or with $500 less.

The idea of negative interest rates is to stimulate the economy-more money to be put in the economy-starting new businesses, investments in new stock and equipment, put in new investment opportunities. Not to stay in the banks where they do almost nothing useful. If money is active, this will stimulate the economy and creating new jobs, reducing the negative economic impact of COVID-19.

-Online banking, electronic transactions, and electronic currencies.

Even now, online banking is quite popular, but because of recent events, the popularity of it will only increase. With so much ban on freedom of movement, online banking is a savior for both many people and businesses who want to pay the necessary bills and to receive their payments.

It is quite possible for the banks to close almost all their physical offices to stimulate people to do mostly online banking, making them less vulnerable in the future pandemic crisis and reducing their costs.

Considering electronic cards and transactions, more and more people are not wearing paper money but pay their bills and groceries with electronic cards (Visa and Mastercard mainly). This trend would increase in the future as well. Fearing for their safety, more and more people would “forget” about paper money, fearing that they can catch a new virus that will harm them and their families.

COVID-19 can trigger a new boom of electronic currencies and to revive Bitcoin or create new electronic currencies. This scenario is possible if the Coronavirus devastates the Western economies and significantly weaken the value of their currencies. Therefore, people would lose trust in traditional currencies and will invest in electronic currencies like Bitcoin or other electronic currencies.

Therefore, it is quite possible that the final result would be a creation of one universal electronic currency that would be used by most of the population in the world.

Conclusion

Coronavirus or COVID-19 can be the most significant event after the end of the Cold War and could devastate both our society and the world economy. But despite the harsh consequences, we will survive(historically we survived more massive crises than this one) and it is quite possible all this to lead to rapid and significant changes in our society(one of the few positive effects of a crisis is that politicians stop temporally speak too much and devoted more energy in action rather than talking.

One thing is certain-the healthcare system would be improved and many fresh capitals would be invested there from both government sources and business organizations. Depending how hard the USA would hit, it can lead to drastic changes to the American healthcare structure. If COVID-19 hit very hard, the USA, and many Americans died, it could lead to the creation of a more centralized healthcare system or even creation of Universal healthcare (the typical model for Europe).

The changes in the business are obvious-the companies will try everything possible to transform their business online and most of their employees to work remotely-giving them more flexibility of working recognizing that they are too dependable and vulnerable to future pandemic crises. The governments will follow the business and will transform their services online.

It will invest the massive amount of capital in Science and research, to prevent future pandemic crises and increase the safety measurements making our life better and longer.