THE NEW NORMAL? IS IT?

Living in these times.....

On a cold day in the month of Dec 2019, a discovery was made. The first human case of COVID 19 was reported by medical officials in the city of Wuhan, China. This virus spread across the nation then subsequently across the continent and eventually across the world. It is a very difficult time and actually one that I don’t know that we could have imagined even weeks ago, much fewer months ago. I mean when we first saw the images of what was happening out of China and then when it became closer and closer to us I think we began to see that this could impact us. But until it hit the country and so quickly and in such a visceral way I don’t think we processed what this really means. And I think for a lot of us we are experiencing this in deeply personal ways. Living every day in fear of becoming one of the numbers on the COVID 19 report, meeting up with friends and family with a barrier we call a computer screen, and praying day by day in hopes of a COVID 19 vaccine we are all familiar with this story but what if I told you that this virus thing will never end. Even if COVID 19 itself was to be eradicated today we would still be living at risk.

I actually think for all of us, we are all called upon to make sacrifices in a way that again we might not have imagined and could not have imagined. I mean the idea of schools being canceled, of businesses being shuttered and us not having gatherings. Even something as basic as not being able to shake hands or not being able to see relatives is just a very different time. For the first time, I think for a lot of us we are seeing just how interconnected all of our fates are. I mean we are in an interconnected world but in this case, my health is also instrumental to your health. Me being healthy and keeping my family healthy is also what’s going to prevent this disease from being transmitted in the community. And we know that coronavirus is not something that only affects those who are medically vulnerable and the elderly. We know that it’s something that could affect each of us. And so while it affects each of us it’s also our collective responsibility to stop the transmission of the virus from person to person. I think it just calls upon us to make peace with those sacrifices and to understand too that if other people are making much greater sacrifices than we are, then we have an obligation to do our part.

We always kind of find excuses to not make things work due to reasons best known to us until we are forced to do so. Last year as we all know we got hit by a pandemic in all sorts of ways and it changed everything all over the world starting from work from home to children going to school online and sitting in front of the computer screens for hours to people in their 20s ending up getting stuck with their families for over more than a year to people taking a lot of interest in cooking to finding all sorts of weird ways to survive the pandemic both physically and mentally. Service people started realizing that they had to suit up and wear masks and take temperatures and wash their hands. We had to start standing 6 feet apart in lines. We started working from home. Everything became virtual. We started learning all kinds of things because we had to. All that muscle around innovation and flexibility and creativity that we didn’t think we had but we had it all along. We now have realized that we can.

So what have we learned? What did we learn right away?

First of all, we learned we are not family. The Family is the toddler walking around behind you in the Zoom call with the pet. The Family is somebody needing their diaper changed. The Family is making sure you are taking care of your mom. That’s your Family. This is your own personally crafted Team. And we have also learned that the separation between family and work has become this balancing act and that when we used to say “Well, this is my Work Home and this is my Family Home, and those are 2 completely different things “. For many of us, it’s exactly the same thing. You are no longer at home and at work. For many of us, work is at home and the home is at work and all of it’s so damn confusing and it’s creating a whole different level of complexity and coordination so that we understand that it’s actually easier to work when we can separate the work that we do as a team from the work we do in our family.

Furthermore, in order to be able to do all that, we have to recognize that we are all adults. And here’s the deal about adults. Adults have responsibilities, obligations, things they have to commit to, and do you know that every single person that works for you from the shop floor to the executive suite is a grown-up? But we have been operating as if they aren’t. We operate as if only the smart adults are the people who are at the C suite and as we move through the organization everybody sort of gets a little dumbed down and the rules get a lot stricter and we have to have more control. And the truth is, everybody’s a grown-up. We can see it now. Everybody has all of these things to figure out and coordinate and so now we are expecting from people adult behavior. We are now focusing on the results that matter, not the work, and the way we track it now is we don’t walk by and see who’s working. We pay attention to what people are doing. And I think that that’s always been the best metric.

So, I think, we always talk about social distancing in these times but in a way, the social closeness and the interconnectedness of all of us are even more clear than it normally is. In terms of timelines, u know Dr.Fauci has said that we don’t get to make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline. We have been looking at this whole virus thing as an ongoing event with a not so soon end right now where we are having to very suddenly adapt to all of these kinds of changes. But I think that one of the things that we probably need to get used to is that this is something that will be with us in various ways for a very long time to come. We may need to go through multiple waves of lockdowns and other kinds of behavior modifications that, you know, will change our society. So the most important question that most of us might be thinking about is how to get back to the new normal slowly without disrupting anything major?

There is a process and it’s not just I guess the virus dictating the timeline. Yes, the virus does dictate the timeline because it’s a disease and it’s a new disease. We don’t know exactly how this disease operates. But we are also not powerless against this virus either. There are very specific interventions that we can do that will change the trajectory of the disease spread. So when we look at what’s happened in other countries we know that if social distancing measures were applied aggressively and early and consistently then that would flatten the peak and reduce the peak rate of transmission and the total number of cases too. But if those social distancing measures were spread out over time and especially if they are implemented too late then you see a much higher peak. You see higher numbers of people who are infected. You see a longer-term infection and unfortunately, you see more people dying because of hospitals becoming out of capacity.

So what needs to happen is that we have to very urgently stabilize our healthcare system because that is going to be the reason for mortality and actually a reason for mortality that we just can’t forgive ourselves for if we have to ration care not only to those patients with coronavirus but also to other patients because healthcare continues to happen. People are still going to be coming up with heart attacks and strokes and diabetes complications and other things that need hospital care. And if they can’t get care then they will also suffer as a result. So we have to stabilize the healthcare system first.

Second is we have to get mass testing done on a more regular basis because otherwise, we don’t know the true spread of coronavirus in our communities. And that’s really important. We need data and science to guide our decision-making.

And only after this we are seeing number three which is the effects of our social distancing measures only after we are seeing the peak of the number of cases begin to decline consistently. Then we can start potentially rolling back these social restrictions. And ideally, we have the data at that point to roll them back one community, one region at a time, or several regions at a time but not all at the same time. I get concerned though that because we have been late because we have not consistently applied social distancing across the board. I am afraid that that’s actually going to cost us more time. Elijah Cummings used to say – that the cost of doing nothing isn’t anything. That there is a cost of inaction. And unfortunately, we are seeing that cost now when we don’t pay attention to public health, to prevention.

When we don’t act quickly enough, we see that actually there will be a lot more pain and suffering and lives lost. But we need to look forward. We can’t just navigate from where we wish we were. We need to navigate from where we are and we need to do everything we can and that means continuing to make these sacrifices that will seem very difficult but at the end of the day, they are what are lifesaving.

As, you know, we enter into this period of living with the virus, the process of starting to manage it and then, ultimately try to bring it under control?

The first is that there are tangible things that we can do in order to reduce our own risk and, very specifically, one thing that I think everyone has come to know in the last several weeks to months is the importance of hand and face hygiene which I hope is something that we’ll keep up even longer after coronavirus is under control. I hope we’ll keep on these types of good personal hygiene practices – washing hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water, using hand sanitizer, and if that’s not available stop touching our face or touch our faceless. I think those are good practices, regardless and

are things that we should continue to keep in mind.

The second is around social distancing. The healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists everyone who works in this have been doing a social media campaign holding up signs that say, “ I stayed at work for you. Please stay at home for me. “ And sometimes I think about What good I am doing just sitting on the couch, watching Netflix? It doesn’t feel like we are contributing to the greater societal good but I want people to know that that is the single most important thing that you can do to reduce the rate of transmission of COVID – 19.

This new coronavirus spreads person to person and if we are able to somehow stop that transmission in its tracks we are stopping the virus in its tracks. And the single most important thing you can do is actually to stay at home and watch Netflix if you will and physically distance yourself understanding how challenging it is. It is a big change for me personally and for a lot of people out there to go through this period of physical distancing. I mean imagining a life out of not going to schools and colleges for youngsters and kids, not being able to meet your friends or partners and hug them, not hanging out at restaurants, not being able to party and have drinks, not being able to see a movie in a theatre and limiting yourself to your home for most of the coming days to come is kind of challenging and at the same time the best thing most of us out there can do to protect ourselves and our loved ones. But, unfortunately, that is what I and you need to do.

And, I will just add one more thing, the third thing that I think for all of us, is that we know we are facing this period of uncertainty and a lot of people, everyone has given up a lot. Some people more than others but everybody is going through a lot. And the last thing that I will leave people with is that this is our opportunity to face this uncertainty with solidarity and to recognize the cooperation and collaboration that we all need and that to tolerate that uncertainty is also a level of sacrifice too and that we should be granting each other grace and recognizing each other’s humanity even more than we ever have.

You know what? The way we used to do it not only is not the way of the future but we are discovering so many wonderful things right now. Let’s not lose it. We want to create a new organization, a new workforce, that’s excited about taking all of the things that we have learned using that muscle, going forward.

One of the most important things that we can do is realize the things that we aren’t doing now. The stuff we have stopped doing and not go back and do it again. What if we don’t go back? What if we go forward and rethink the way we work?