As you might have noticed, if you read the news, the first (Pfizer) vaccine for COVID-19 received an emergency use authorization 3 days ago. At the end of this week, the Moderna vaccine may receive a similar authorization. Vaccines are rolling out, and healthcare workers–though certainly not all of us–will start vaccination this week.
Most certainly, the pandemic is not over. It will take months for enough people in the USA to be protected to reduce the spread of this illness. I expect the next several months to be full of stories of overfull, overworked hospitals and people grieving for loved ones lost to this disease.
However, I am starting to feel a little hopeful that we might be at the very beginning of the end.
On that note, I thought I would share a number of posts related to the pandemic that struck my fancy over the year. Many are from the very beginning of the pandemic; it is interesting to note the difference in tone from April until now. And yet, I find the messages within remain relevant.
Passive Income MD shared 3 Important Lessons I’ve Learned From The Coronavirus Pandemic. Number 1 was the importance of an emergency fund, which I think many people learned to love during the spring.
Not to be outdone, DebtFreeDr wrote about 7 Lessons Learned During The Cornoavirus Pandemic. Some of the lessons are financial, some are not, but they are all important.
Hopefully, these lessons will last past the pandemic and help people going forward.
Not everyone started the pandemic with full coffers and plenty of reserves. And many people who might benefit from learning more about finances could certainly be put off by high-earners (like doctors) giving tips on saving and investing. So I read with interest this post at The Twenty Percent about a program in the UK to spread information in a different way. The use of peer to peer counseling sounds like other programs we use in medicine to help people move forward.
The About Page at Calibrating Capital states the blogger is a financial planner, but I wonder if he might really be an ID specialist in disguise. I say that because he leads off the with the important stuff –hand hygiene–in his post: What COVID Can (Re) Teach Us. Good lessons, financial and otherwise.
Some bloggers wrote about changes caused by the pandemic, trying to find the silver lining to the big dark cloud of infectious doom. Retire Before Dad wrote about Gratitude, Optimism, and Investment Opportunities, and Frogdancer Jones at Burning Desire for Fire noted that Lockdown was my retirement ‘training wheels.’
The Woke Salaryman did a lovely illustrated post COVID-19 is a test of LONG-TERM thinking. They are from Singapore, which appears to be doing a better job of controlling the virus than other countries.
Last, but not least, I was intrigued by some of the articles coming out in the spring, showing the effect of reduced activity (mostly automobile) on air pollution. This article showing the reduction in air pollution around Wuhan was dramatic; but the before and after photos in this article were even more so.
The effects haven’t persisted, but the drops in pollution do offer some data to suggest what the air might look like if we could reduce automobile emissions going forward. This article from a real, scientific site, describes in more detail the changes that were seen; it sounds like a lot of data was collected that still needs to be analyzed. I hope the lessons learned here will lead to lasting change for the good as well.
What lessons do you want to take away from the COVID-19 pandemic?