I’d like to offer a different perspective of COVID-19 that we should all be thinking about it. I know, one crisis at a time – but we need to understand how this experience is going to change us and how we can control that change. This is going to transform us on a personal, social and cultural basis.

While we have everyones attention focused on this rediscovered vital currency called “health”, now might be a good time for some vision – to plan forward for the next curve and prevent it from happening.

With COVID-19 we don’t know what the future looks like – from a health care perspective I would argue that. This is not a black swan event. The warning signs were there. We were just distracted and stuck in three machines.

Dopamine Machine
Comfort Seeking Machine
Self-Preservation Machine

This is a crisis, but it’s also an enormous chance to learn and build better for the next time. If we respect the sacrifices made, the lives lost and the huge economic stimulus packages put in place to deal with the COVID-19 curve, maybe we can help offset things.

Maybe we can avoid a next time. We need to get unstuck from the three machines because they are hard at work building the next curve.

Consider COVID-19 as a warning call in disguise for all of us to collectively change our behaviours and shift the culture of health care to a more proactive, value based sustainable model. 

What the COVID-19 curves aren’t showing.

The COVID-19 curves only show the health care systems additional capacity to manage the influx of COVID-19 cases and the need to keep the curve as flat as possible so the physical capacity of care – for example the number of ventilators, doesn’t break down.

What the Covid curves don’t show is that health care systems where already stressed in a big way, prior to the pandemic. The cause of this stress – a chronic disease curve that has been building for decades.

The human capacity of care.

Prior to COVID-19 the chronic disease curve was already showing its sign placing many health care workers in burnout mode. The demands of health care systems fuelled by rising pressures to produce better outcomes and value at lower costs had created a significant health care challenge.

While health care is an inherently high-stress field, workers were reporting worsening rates of burnout, which is often characterized by emotional exhaustion and a low sense of personal fulfillment from work. A problem that was destroying people’s personal lives, resulting in high turnover, reducing productivity and increasing the risk of suicide.

Heroes Squared

And now these health care workers have to step up in a big way in the face of COVID-19. They are risking their lives to save people. Working long hours, under stress, compromising their own immune systems.

This isn’t good. More than 100 throughout the world have died.

Given this sad reality, we need to honour these people plus all the others who will lose their lives to COVID-19 by taking pressure off of health systems to avoid this next curve.

We need to shift our behaviours now in how we cope with COVID-19 and do this in a way that will change the current model of “reaction” health care, so in the future it becomes a prevention empowerment based system. It’s the least we can do for people risking their lives today - so we can all have a tomorrow.

We also need to see this as an opportunity to shift our collective mindsets and act in a way were something good can come from all this anxiety and stress.

Yes, we have to deal quickly with actions to flatten the COVID-19 curve and provide stimulus for the economy. But let’s not ignore the chronic disease curve that will hit us within 10 years.

The global population age 60 or over is growing faster than all younger age groups and faces the tide of chronic diseases threatening their quality of life and posing challenges to healthcare and economic systems.

As a society, we’ve never been more depressed or less active. Depression and anxiety were already at epidemic levels pre-COVID-19. The current “illness care” system needs to become a true “health care” system. Chronic disease rates are on the uptick worldwide, affecting every region and socioeconomic class.

We are burning the candle at both ends.

A mere 16% of Canadians get enough physical activity to see any health benefits. 63% of Canadian millennials are considered to be at high risk for developing mental health problems. Most people nowadays lose their health years before they lose their life. Treating chronic disease eats up 67% of Canada’s healthcare spending. That number can shrink if we start investing in people’s health - getting them healthy and keeping them that way before they get sick.

All of this prevention care stuff, staying or getting active, improving your nutrition and sleep habits, embracing a sense of “new” connectedness is not that hard to do in comparison to the front line health care battles of COVID-19. It's also a good way to reduce stress and build up your immune system.

Reacting and coping. We all do it differently.

We all cope with stress differently. This is true. Some of us are taking deep dives into comfort food and marathon movies while others are embracing fitness challenges and eating rainbows. It is also important to understand that our lives prior to COVID-19, the amount of internal and external stress we had to deal with, was very different for all of us.

But one thing that connects us is that no one can do this pandemic alone. We will be dependent on each other for our survival and wellbeing beyond the need for physical distancing. And maybe this is one way that we can react together – by choosing to show up and redefine ourselves by the quality of our connections to each other.

Practising compassion and intention for each other now, can make an impact in the future.

We all are in this together. Let’s pay this forward collectively.

This is the perfect time to become the leader of your own life by taking note of your creative and emotional resources to help get you through today plus take control of your future. “We are all in this together” can become a source of motivation for how we can take this time to build purposeful patterns of spiritual, social and physical health.

If we can get these right our mental health will improve and with it our ability to re-think a better future.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressing Canadians April 1, 2020
“These are the biggest economic measures in our lifetime to defeat a threat to our health.
These historic measures that will support Canadians to stay at home. But the government alone cannot win this fight. We all have to answer the call of duty. This is a service that most of us have never been called upon to do. Each of us has to live up to our end of the bargain, we must fulfill our collective responsibility to each other. Listening to public health rules, staying home.
So be smart about what you do, the choices you make. That is how you will serve your country and how we will all help each other.
It’s in our hands. it’s in your hands. We all have a role to play. I am appealing on your conscience to protect others.

“I am appealing on your conscience to protect others” Let’s pay this sentiment forward and remain faithful to our values of protecting each other now – and also in the future.

Let’s make sure we’re taking positive lessons forward.

We need to start planning or be smart about taking the lessons we learn from COVID-19 and move them forward to re-shape a better culture. Because culture is the “critical base” on which the economy and healthcare systems balance.

It’s hard to find this balance when everything under us is shifting. But the need to get ahead of the next curve so it doesn’t hit us, is in all of our hands. Collectively we can do something about this.

We’re never going to be the same again. We are not going to forget what happened here. The fear, anxiety, the loss of control and social disruption – that’s just not going to go away.

There will be a new normal, the future will be a different place, it always is and that’s the whole point. We get to choose what part of the old normal we value and want to go back to.

We also get to use our creativity and the constraints of COVID-19 as a tool to make sure that this transformation and change is positive and not negative for the future, and for the new normal.