The upsides of Covid-19

Despite the vaccines, what I heard in the news every day is the death number, last Friday 450000 (0.45M) people died from covid-19 or covid-19 induced complications. 

The first upside of covid-19 is the very fact that 97% of  patients of closed covid-19 cases recovered, or 16.38 Million people recovered! It is not that dire after all.

The biggest upside of covid-19 is that it drove the global carbon emission in 2020 down by 7% from 2019, or 2.4 billion ton green house gases. This is of course due to reduced economical activities, including less driving, less flying, …. This also supports my conclusion that the root cause of global warming is over  consumption.

The other big upside of covid-19 is that it starts to drive people to form the habit to wear facemask to prevent contagious diseases, including flu; this has been demonstrated by 2020 Influenza activities. At least wearing facemask is no longer a weirdo. I hope that we will continue to wear facemask during flu seasons when pandemic is gone. This effect is very similar to 9-11 effect on people's reaction to fire alarms. 

A fourth upside of covid-19 is the acceleration of digital transformation, especially in communications - microsoft TEAM, Zoom and other applications, make virtual meetings, conference calls more robust and widely accepted. 

There are many small upsides - eliminated commune time due to work from home, more time to do other things outdoor, at least at Texas! 

Exploring our neighborhood, community parks, city parks, and state parks.  We actually traveled more frequently in 2020 than 2019, though not too far due to restrictions in other states and countries. We explored our community parks and neighborhood daily ! 

Snow geese at Hagerman National Wild Life Refuge

During the pandemic we finally bought our first kayak and explored lakes and rivers, frequently all by ourselves. Exploring and enjoying nature make us feel so alive!

Covid-19 is serious matter, take precautions, follow general guidelines, don't be scared, life goes on.

Note

We need to put the coronavirus death rate in perspective, e.g. compared to influenza infection rate and death rate, which I listed some examples in my random thoughts about coronavirus,  as well as overall mortality of the population. Here are mortality rates of the whole world, China,  and US.

World wide: 150,000 people died everyday in 2019
China:  27850 people died everyday in 2019 (mortality rate 7.261/1000, 10.2 million for the year).

United States: 7200 people died everyday in 2019 (mortality 8.782/1000, or 2.63 million for the year)