We were speaking of near immortality, we were speaking of moving our memories from our brains to an external device. Or even the other way round of moving a human brain inside a computer.

Our life, our health, our rationailty, our future is so exciting because of this relentless march of technology. It truly is.

Yet this non-living protein ball called COVID 19 has given us the perspective that we are right now but just travelers in this lifes journey to nowhere.

Nature has hit the reboot button. Humans better too hit the reset button.Actually we will, and come out better in 19 ways.

1) Trees- Finally we realize. Whether to avert the looming water induced world war or to avert climate change or to keep the wild animals and virus away from human species. We now will know we need the trees.

2) Building hospital infrastructure rather than military infrastructure- We should never again struggle for want of medical facilities from now. Same with R&D spends, shouldnt be a case of thinking what happens to the unsold medicine stock if the virus just goes away one day.

3) Right medical behavior- Whether it will be through telemedicine or otherwise, the unnecessary exploitation of the patients for money to meet targets of business people running hospitals will reduce in large pockets.

4) Education revamp, finally- Enough case studies will by now be generated on digital education. Will truly enable for an inclusive quality education for all, the basic building block to provide every person on this planet a fair chance to succeed.

5) Knowing our inner self- The most difficult part is to do the journey inwards. We will not all come out attaining salvation but for sure many of us will have a lot more perspective and rationality.

6) Digitized payments- We will finally humanize the Information Technology. We will enable people with technology rather than obstructing people with technology. Digital payments will be an imminent example.

7) Formation of true capitalist structure- Its not the governments business to run business. Governments will focus a lot more on health and education. Running businesses will be left to professionals. Government can regulate for security and innovations. Meritocracy will count even more.

8) Universal Basic income- This loss of mass livelihood will fast forward for a basic fund transfer to every individual which will enable everyone a basic dignity always without losing on the desire to work. The daily wage workers will have benefited the most in these situations.

9) Nationalism- We now know that fates of countries are tightly connected with each other. More importantly that just one individual can put the entire human species under threat. We will come out much wiser now.

10) Religion. Much of the virus spread initially have been from mass prayers. The name of the religions and countries have been different, the results were the same. We will now realize that we were responsible for creating gods, we were responsible for creating this virus and we were responsible for spreading it. We will think much more scientifically from now on without blind faiths.

11) Appreciation of limited resources to live with- We got habituated with too much resources, we consumed too much, we wasted too much. We will now know we can live with far less.

12) New ways of working- Work from home and using personal devices to access high-security office networks. Enough use cases will have been developed to carry on with this model permanently at a small scale. The benefits to individuals, family and to the overburdened traffic in the cities will be many. 5G internet will be a reality sooner.

13) Global supply chain- Multiple business continuity plans will emerge across the globe to make sure of a much better disaster recovery in times like these than putting all eggs in one basket. It will lead to more localization in the near term but will propel the world to a more distributed globalized model in the medium term.

14) Humour- Somewhere many places lost out on the humour and ability to laugh at ourselves and to laugh together. We rediscovered them somewhat in these most trying times and we will continue.

15) Personal space- This is especially true for many populous countries and where culture wasnt to provide personal space to one another in public areas. We learnt the virtues and dignities of it through social distancing and we will continue with that habit to an extent.

16) A less chaotic world- Similarly in many congested cities and as a culture. Chaos, car horns, absence of queuing were the norms. We now know what we were missing out. There will be lesser horns, more queueing when people goes back in the roads.

17) Spitting- The spitting is just a habit. Not just a very uncivilized one, but now we know it kills. Surely many places will have a lot less of it.

18) Liberated personal lives- Staying locked up under one roof will force many people into deciding to live real and liberated personal lives. Many drifting couples will fall in love and yet many will separate. A new beginning for many nonetheless.

19) Nature- Dolphins on the shore, penguins in the street, a mountain view from a city two hundred kilometres away. We now know what we missed our entire life. Nature will again recede when we come out, but we will now know we need to rebalance and we will.

Many of these 19 will not be visible immediately, but make no mistakes, the wheels have been put in motion.

Till then we will just stay at home and just get over this COVID 19.

This too will pass and our best is coming.

Watch out!

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Virus, 19 reasons why we will come out better - Economic Times