The good thing about having three of my best friends being physicians is that I am able to get up to speed in medical matters fairly quickly and also from different perspectives: my best friend is an anesthesiologist, his wife is a gynecologist and I have a pediatrician friend who with I have been working over the last years, publishing a few statistical articles in medical journals.
Almost a month has gone by after I started to work from home and plenty of things have happened: events of all kinds have been cancelled, countries have gone into lock down and unfortunately, thousands of people have died due to Covid-19. Also, I can safely say that I have a firm understanding of what is at stake and I can give an unbiased opinion based on the facts.
As of today, it seems that the nature of this virus is to be very aggressive, which means that the use of masks and gloves must (not should) be mandatory. Every time I go to the supermarket I see about 20% of the people not wearing either of them. I have to admit that during the first days of March, I was one of them, so I don’t blame him because they may not be educated on the need of wearing PPE. I also underestimated the virus, meaning its strength and ability to spread, and more importantly, my ability to be infected by it. However, after speaking at lengths with my doctor friends, I was able to understand the nature of the situation, how the virus behaves, what does it do to people, how does it do it and what can we do to prevent becoming infected with it, or worse, infecting other people, as in people we care about. That is why rather than making fun or pointing fingers at people who are not wearing masks and gloves, you should first understand that maybe that person has not yet understood the magnitude of the situation, or simply has not been educated on the matter, which means a better approach would be you trying to educate him or her, so that they become aware and they are able to become part of the solution and not part of the problem.
To me things are now as clear as water, and it’s perfectly understandable why there won’t be any Ironman’s this year, or Burning man, or tennis events, or the Olympics, as it is quite evident that concentrations of large crowds are a key ingredient to spread the virus all over the world. Sadly, this will impact the global economy and most likely lead to a global crisis if mismanaged even by the slightest bit.
I trust our leaders and governments will act with ethics and responsibility.
Stay tuned.
HR
