Silver Linings II

Last week, I wrote about the silver linings that may arise out of the COVID19 pandemic.  I enumerated our awakening to China as a geopolitical threat, rather than a responsible trading partner, the shift of supply chains away from China, the skepticism with which we must view models that purport to tell us what our climate is going to look like in 100 years, and the possible restructuring of our education system as issues that will likely gain momentum thanks to this little microbe.

But it turns out I have missed a few potential silver linings.

-        National  preparedness.   We were not fully prepared for this pandemic.  Our unpreparedness is a bit surprising because it was widely known that several countries had active bioweapons programs.  Additionally, we have been warned by a number of people that a pandemic was possible and, indeed, likely at some point.  Laurie Garrett’s 1996 book The Coming Plague spelled that out.  We should have had a game plan ready to execute. Yet we seem to have been caught flatfooted, perhaps because we assumed that a pandemic was a Black Swan event.

      

      Obviously, we continue to be under a potential nuclear threat from North Korea, but there are other threats that demand our attention.   The threat from the EMP (electromagnetic pulse), i.e., a single nuclear device detonated high above the U.S. could fry all of our electronics.  One task force estimated that an EMP attack would kill 90% of the population of the United States.  Similarly, a cyberattack on our electrical grid would have similar consequences.  Ted Koppel spun this all out in his 2015 book Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath. 

      Fortunately, we are beginning to address this vulnerability.  Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order regarding the hardening of our power grid.  Work needs to be done but it is at least a step in the right direction.  Follow up needs to be done as well as a review of how vulnerable our internet is.  We need to assume adversaries may launch multiple attacks (i.e. bioweapon plus cyberattack)

-        Tapping Creativity.   With the abrupt shutdown of all face to face businesses, many had to get creative to survive.  Restaurants quickly switched menus and went to curbside only service.  Cultural institutions quickly offered streaming events and exhibits.  Zoom became the preferred platform of “face to face” business meetings overnight.   With supply chains in food disrupted, some college students began to figure out how to get product directly from the farm to consumers.  Many workers figured out how to work remotely pretty quickly.  We will undoubtedly see some very creative ways to conduct business in light of the pandemic and some of these business methods and applications will be useful long after this recedes.

-        Time of re-examination.  One friend of mine reacted to the “shelter in place” order this way, “What’s the hurry to get out….to make 1 more widget?”  In a simplistic way, he drove home a point.  Americans have become a driven, frantic, exhausted people.  Many of us work constantly, with few vacations.  The pandemic was sort of a forced time out, to consider whether the trajectory we are on is the right one, to perhaps read some good books, to plan the next phase of our lives, to evaluate our relationships, to rewrite goals.  Instead of running on the gerbil wheel every day, we have an opportunity to slow it down, to go from playing fast break to a more normal pace, to be able to stop and hear birds, pay attention to the raindrops, to focus on the music on the radio, to take a little time to read deeply.   In some respects, this pause has been a hidden gift.

Sure, this harm caused by COVID19 has been enormous, and I don’t mean to minimize it in any way.  But there have been strands of silver linings.  And it is those things that keep us going.