There is no reason to think for a moment that COVID-19 is anything to NOT be taken very seriously.

But I do think we need to understand what it is we are being concerned about. You may not agree with my concerns, or the way I prioritize them, but by listing mine I allow myself the time to force myself to think about them and also open myself to your scrutiny. If you disagree with any of my thinking I would like nothing more than to hear your thoughts and reasoning.

This is first a health issue. We all want to stay healthy and avoid being exposed to viruses, infections and diseases. But COVID-19 is unique for the time being because it is something new that we have been exposed to. We do NOT have a known vaccine or a treatment. I am confident we will find a vaccine and / or a treatment in the very near future. Near Future is of course relative. For a lot of people it is already not near enough and for many more it will not be.

We now know for sure that it is a Worldwide Pandemic. While most of the individuals who will be infected will have mild to no symptoms, 1) they will be transmitting to others 2) some will be affected enough to require hospitalization 3) and some will be in critical condition. The main takeaway here is that not all are being affected the same. So it is very difficult to predict how it might affect me if / when I do get exposed.

Though the number of individuals who will be in critical condition is low compared to all who will be affected, the total number of critically affected individuals is very high – compared to the capacity of our health care facility. The ability to quickly increase this capacity is not a very easy one but we are trying.

China so far seems to be the only place where things have stabilized. The situation is getting worse almost all over the world. The number of new individuals affected are rising, the number of life lost is also rising. The number of individuals who are recovering is also rising but not nearly as fast as those newly affected.

We are still not testing nearly as many as we need or want to. Which is making things only worse in being able to see the real trend.

Once we try to see past the health issues we quickly see the affect this is having in our societies. To make things complicated this being a a Worldwide issue, societies across the globe is having their own way of reacting to and dealing with it. This reaction is not uniform. But there are certain commonalities that we can see. We are all scared. Scared because of the things we don’t know, the things we do know and all that we think we don’t know. We are not at our best to deal with something of this gravity when we are all scared.

Businesses and Governments are adapting to their own constituent’s concerns. While there are a few businesses that serve people across the globe, most businesses still are responsible to their primary stake holders – i.e., the stockholders / owners and employees and the governments they operate under. Each government is responding to their own citizens first. All of these are causing inconsistencies. While we may all understand and accept that it is not reasonable to expect consistent response across the board, it is still difficult for us to navigate the inconsistencies. Causing more fear.

– manzoor