In the US, as in many other parts of the world, the past three months have changed per­sonal and so­cial lives sub­stan­tially. In fact, it has turned so­cial norms topsy-turvy. The pan­demic’s im­pact in the USA has been dev­as­tat­ing, yet it also re­flects the im­pact world­wide. Ir­re­spec­tive of age, the pop­u­lace want­ing to be open as the Face­book gen­er­a­tion is now hid­ing be­hind face-masks. For the first time, the en­tire world has been gripped by the un­sur­passed scale and di­men­sion of Covid19. All na­tions need to build and ac­quire in­fra­struc­ture for fu­ture pan­demics, ar­gues Hous­ton-based writer Bhupin­der Singh.

THE IM­PACT OF CORO­N­AVIRUS HAS BEEN SUD­DEN, dev­as­tat­ing and has changed the com­plex­ion of life and liv­ing in the USA and the world for­ever. More than 118,000 peo­ple have died from coro­n­avirus in the USA, and there have been at least 1.7 mil­lion cases. The pro­jec­tion by the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion of USA -CDC is over 123,000 deaths. It all started out as a trickle in mid-Feb­ru­ary and has now be­come a gush­ing flow. A lit­eral body blow to the fab­ric of the coun­try.

The United States of Amer­ica has been in lock­down since March 15. Ef­forts are on to re­open. How­ever, there are ques­tions and con­cerns on the set­ting of the pace of re­open­ing plus eval­u­at­ing the ef­fects of quick re­open­ing.

The news of pan­demic be­ing amongst us hit every­one with an un­ex­pected shock and sur­prise to un­pre­pared cit­i­zens. The net re­sult of iso­la­tion and move­ment re­stric­tions were first ev­i­dent in the store shelves for hand san­i­tiz­ers, face masks, hand gloves and toi­let rolls which were emp­tied by cus­tomers as if these items will never ever be avail­able in fu­ture.

All ma­jor so­cial gath­er­ing places, restau­rants, sta­di­ums, event venues, gyms, places of wor­ship were closed and travel has come to stand­still un­leash­ing an un­ex­pected vac­uum in the lives of masses. Many older peo­ple have be­come de­pen­dent on care­givers, friends and fam­ily to help with get­ting the food, med­ical sup­plies and gro­ceries as they stay shel­tered within the four walls of the house, un­able to leave. The lit­tle chil­dren have be­come ir­ri­tated, be­cause of the new cur­few-like re­stric­tions that have put chil­dren’s play­grounds and out­doors out of reach.

Life un­der COVID had a sud­den dis­rup­tion al­most like an earth­quake or a hur­ri­cane. Now work­ing from home was the new norm through Re­mote-Ins, video con­fer­ences, Zoom classes, lessons and the works. YouTube per­for­mances in­stead of live events be­came the new norm. The sud­den drop in ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic on the road pre­sented sce­nar­ios like a cur­few on the road.

With peo­ple not on the roads, at many places, an­i­mals ven­tured look­ing out for hu­mans and sim­ply en­joy­ing the new en­vi­rons. Gaso­line de­mand dropped so sud­denly that its prices dropped al­most to 1987 level. The car sales es­sen­tially tanked, but sud­denly bi­cy­cle de­mand has sky­rock­eted, as all the lock­down pop­u­la­tion sud­denly re­con­nected with child­hood fas­ci­na­tion of the bi­cy­cle. The bi­cy­cle traf­fic in the evenings is al­most five to ten times higher. Bi­cy­cling has sud­denly be­come some­thing of a fash­ion­able filler for the time in the ab­sence of other ac­tiv­i­ties.

The new trend for needs was curb­side de­liv­ery, house de­liv­ery while shop­ping on-line. All of a sud­den the en­tire movie (mak­ing and screen­ing) in­dus­try, travel, hos­pi­tal­ity in­dus­try were stand­still. Yet with more peo­ple spend­ing time in front of their TVs have re­sulted in a big boost to the sub­scrip­tion stream­ing ser­vices. Sud­denly the sub­scrip­tion to video stream­ing as Net­flix soared high and con­tent down­load­ing speeds were slow­ing be­cause of in­creased traf­fic.

Even the par­ties took the form of Zoom vir­tual events from home. Al­ter­na­tively, peo­ple were vis­it­ing the houses of those in­tend­ing to cel­e­brate oc­ca­sions to reg­is­ter their par­tic­i­pa­tion by honk­ing their car horn from out­side. Even child­birth, birth­day, quincean­era, wed­ding and grad­u­a­tion cel­e­bra­tions have be­come vir­tual pa­tio events, or front yard dis­plays.

Many tech-shy peo­ple are get­ting to ex­plore the con­nec­tive power of video con­fer­enc­ing. Even re­li­gious con­gre­ga­tions have be­come a vir­tual Face­book event. The tragic ef­fect of all of a sud­den lock­down is that it also dried the spig­ots of do­na­tions, bring­ing those re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions close to fi­nan­cial brink when they are the most needed to pro­vide sup­port. Many folks who were reg­u­lars at places of wor­ship were feel­ing sud­denly de­prived and dis­con­nected.

All of a sud­den a strong feel­ing of lone­li­ness has started grip­ping peo­ple. The sharp es­ca­la­tion in the num­ber of cases of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is a pointer. The job­less num­bers have climbed to 41 mil­lion which is a whop­ping 14.7% of the pop­u­la­tion. 

The psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact of Coro­n­avirus on the masses is that be­hind the back of their minds, there is a con­stant lurk­ing of the claus­tro­pho­bic feel­ing of be­ing trapped. For the Amer­i­cans used to larger than life liv­ing, it has been a tough act to shrink to. The re­sult is that the masses, not used to stay­ing at home, have started show­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact of lock­down – frayed tem­pers, shorter fuses.

The daily-wage earn­ers are the worst im­pacted as their need for work and money forces them to be­come more prone to con­tract­ing the virus.

The fed­eral PPP (Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Plan) to small busi­nesses to keep their staff on pay­roll has been a sil­ver lin­ing dur­ing the gloomy em­ploy­ment and busi­ness mar­ket for many em­ploy­ees and the sur­vival of small busi­nesses.

The Sikhs de­cided to gal­va­nize their ‘lan­gar’ ef­forts at feed­ing the af­fected pop­u­la­tion and the pri­mary re­spon­ders. How­ever, the pan­demic also had some Sikh med­ical pro­fes­sion­als caught in a predica­ment – choice of keep­ing fa­cial hair ver­sus serv­ing the suf­fer­ing com­mu­nity in need of med­ical care.

It is very sad that these pro­fes­sion­als who had made nu­mer­ous sac­ri­fices in their life for their zeal to serve had to choose be­tween keep­ing the ar­ti­cles of faith over to wear PPE in or­der to prac­tice med­i­cine and serve. No one should be put in such a tough po­si­tion, to choose be­tween keep­ing their faith ar­ti­cles and their pro­fes­sion. More so, when al­ter­na­tives ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing the req­ui­site face pro­tec­tion to the pro­fes­sion­als with their fa­cial hair, are avail­able.

On a side note, Prof. Sim­ran Jeet Singh of New York has pub­licly shared his own fam­i­ly’s strug­gles of deal­ing with Coro­n­avirus. His med­ical Doc­tor Wife work­ing on ad­min­is­ter­ing care to COVID 19 af­fected ex­posed her to the virus. She brought home the in­fec­tion from the hos­pi­tal, and their two chil­dren 4 and 1 also con­tacted the virus mak­ing them spend sleep­less nights. As of now the like­li­hood of con­tact­ing COVID in New York is 5%.

There may be a vac­cine down the road to cure the pan­demic and the pan­demic may be­come his­tory, but its last­ing im­pact on lifestyles will be tec­tonic. The post-pan­demic lifestyle, the work­place will not be the same as be­fore the pan­demic as more shop­ping and work will be done re­motely from the houses. This pan­demic has made it vi­able.

We are all in it to­gether, though the ex­pe­ri­ence in other na­tions could be slightly dif­fer­ent be­cause of so­cial, cul­tural, po­lit­i­cal, cli­mate and tra­di­tions. The virus is go­ing to bring a last­ing change in the world­wide com­mu­nity.

Now the lifestyle, the work­place will be trans­formed for­ever. There will be im­pacts in other ar­eas such as how med­i­cine is prac­ticed, classes are con­ducted, travel-both busi­ness and recre­ational is trans­acted, etc.

One thing that has clearly emerged from this pan­demic is that the USA was un­pre­pared for it. As fu­ture re­cur­rence of such pan­demics is be­ing pro­jected we need to have a plan in place to han­dle such emer­gen­cies. We need to build up a strate­gic stock of PPE, res­pi­ra­tors, make-shift hos­pi­tals and beds etc. just like the Strate­gic Pe­tro­leum Re­serve.

Per­haps we need to have vol­un­teer re­serve para-medic corps that can be ac­ti­vated to sup­ple­ment the reg­u­lar med­ical in­fra­struc­ture dur­ing such emer­gen­cies.

We are all in it to­gether, though the ex­pe­ri­ence in other na­tions could be slightly dif­fer­ent be­cause of so­cial, cul­tural, po­lit­i­cal, cli­mate and tra­di­tions. The virus is go­ing to bring a last­ing change in the world­wide com­mu­nity. There is a strong be­lief among a sec­tion of the so­ci­ety that this pan­demic is a mes­sage to change our lifestyles and make them more fam­ily-in­clined, faith-ori­ented in­stead of just be­ing ma­te­r­ial-ori­ented, and con­sump­tion-fo­cused.

An en­gi­neer by pro­fes­sion, hail­ing from Myan­mar, ed­u­cated in In­dia, Bhupin­der Singh is a Hous­ton-based busi­ness­man, with a keen in­ter­est in writ­ing books and ar­ti­cles on Sikh his­tory, mo­ti­va­tion and spir­i­tu­al­ity.