I talked about 3Ws to tackle the pandemic successfully. It was nothing new, but a focused blog with educational links to drill down the importance of 3Ws.
This blog is more ambitious. I am not an expert in healthcare and neither in politics, but my entire life has been one of solving problems – may it be limited to my personal doings or business. My extensive travel over the past 30 years across several continents has given me some insight into the ways in which communities are taken for a ride in times of crisis to implement a solution that may seem universal in nature, but at an individual level may not be appealing to embrace.
Community as a whole
Hence, as a community as a whole, we went about creating enforcement systems sweeping our perceived freedom aside to establish a structures where there is always a compromise to be made in varying degrees to carry out activities at individual levels. The structures we have created embodies many enforcement systems such as justice and law enforcement, governance and welfare, business and taxing, community and service. However, during the times of pandemic these systems fail because of their inherent enforcement nature. We need to convert these systems to nurturing systems during pandemic. How to do it is not the purpose of this blog, but rolling out the canvas to look for a possible solution is.
Who’s responsibility
I am not suggesting that politicians or health care professionals are failing. They know their systems well and will try their best to conform to the limitations of those systems to either deliver and adjust the system to deliver. Beyond that, it is more or less us, who are claiming to be experts based on a quick read of few articles that favors your opinion on the ways in which you would go about tackling any problems that are beyond your individual controls. Solutions, therefore, are being customized by the communities inadvertently through their whims and fancies of their perceptions, and, without being responsible enough to see the situation from the perspective of others who may think it differently.
Yes, it is true that we have built systems to keep ourselves organized having dealt with various forms of chaos previously and we don’t want anything now to upset that system or systems that are helping us to go about doing our daily businesses. When it upsets our daily routine, we flare up and view things in the ways in which it can keep our daily routines as normal as possible. Since we don’t want changes or want to deal with changes, we will not look for solutions that can work for everyone.
Pandemic perspective
At an individual level, either we heed the advice given to re-adjust our daily routines or rebel at various levels depending on our capabilities to deal with the enforcement penalties. So enforcement ends up partially effective, unless it becomes dictatorial.
Pandemic has thrown a bright light on such perspectives while offering a greater flexibility to deal with it because of the connected world we are living in today. Even then, it is becoming clear that responsible citizens are prone to rebel the systems that are in place having been let down by those very systems that they had valued before. Coupled with fast tracking of news from all corners of the world, painted in varying degrees and colors, it is no surprise that good thinking takes the back seat and the opportunistic thinking takes the front seat.
May it be making a quick buck out of essential items or taking advantage of strained law enforcement to embark on illegal activities or outright rebellious activities that don’t seem to heed the advice given, they all have one thing in common – irresponsibility void of common sense.
Solution?
Instead of politicizing the bad news, it may be better that the good news is amplified. But good news has a tendency of being ignored as it may be viewed as a sign of relief that everything is normal and only the bad news has a tendency to be the attention grabbers. Dealing with the bad news is a responsible behavior only when it takes the entirety of humanity, rather than conforming it within the geographical or political or religious boundaries. Moreover, within the community this effort becomes even more enormous. Peeling those layers off from everyone – rich or poor, educated or ignorant, religious or atheist, conformist or rebellious, young or old, male or female – is indeed difficult, but will help us to see families as one single unit trying to keep together their loved ones and will help us looking into the existing systems that we have built for ourselves to find solutions that can work as a family in times of need.
Understand this family as a basic unit to address the pandemic and strip all other systems address this, we then can see that the panacea for a pandemic is not going to be just a vaccine, but also the way in which we can hold each other hands in times of crisis as families understanding that the plight of other families as same us ours, the plight of our friends as same as ours and the plight of the humanity as same as ours.
Pandemic suspension or elimination is a much talked about topic when economy of a country is thrown in the middle of discussions, but economy is built upon the strong families who can survive the tough times. In my opinion, the answer lies in making families stronger during the times of crisis and not fear the weak economy or an unruly pandemic.