Both Sides of Covid Explained - Tim Park

                                      

 The Story of Both Sides of Covid

As you may know, over the past couple of years, Covid-19 has affected the entire planet. As a global pandemic, Covid shut down thousands of businesses, prevented human interaction, and raised many questions about the global healthcare system. Many people may see Covid as a terrible event, which it was, but there were numerous cons and a few unexpected beneficial outcomes that can be discussed. More specifically, how Covid had some positive outcomes, rather than only being known as a terrible and catastrophic event

**As a possible trigger warning, I still think Covid was terrible and this blog is stating my opinion that there were outcomes from both sides, rather than one**

Obviously, Covid was terrible and was a major weakness towards society. According to the CDC, there have been a total of 81,028,797 cases and 990,208 fatalities in the United States. The amount of cases and casualties definitely negatively affected the population. Losing that many people over a small period of time affects the population and the way societies function. The global shutdown due to the pandemic was also a weakness towards society. 

There was a lack of resources during this period too because nothing was open or producing. This caused many areas of the world to have a shortage of certain things due to the high volume of products people were making. A prominent example of this is toilet paper. An article from North Carolina State said, “Nearly half of all grocery stores in the United States were out of stock of toilet paper for some part of the day on April 19, the latest date for which figures were available”. There are an infinite amount of ways Covid negatively affected society, but the high number of deaths and the disruption of global production (and function as a whole) were the main weaknesses Covid caused.

Strength can be overlooked, especially in a negative situation like Covid. However, there were a couple of positive outcomes of Covid. However, quick disclaimer; Anything said is not supporting Covid was beneficial, but rather saying it solved a few problems in society. As absurd as it may seem for one to say Covid had some positive outcomes, it shows that this opinion is genuinely in the minority. As terrible as it sounds, Covid actually had some positive outcomes. The environment definitely benefited from the pandemic. Due to the global economic and labor shutdown, there was a lack of harmful effects on the Earth. According to the National Library of Medicine, “Due to movement restrictions and a significant slowdown of social and economic activities, air quality has improved in many cities with a reduction in water pollution in different parts of the world”. These are two factors that greatly affect climate change and it was certainly  beneficial towards preserving the Earth for some time.

Covid also put many counties' healthcare to the test. Many of them struggled, but it showed that many countries needed to improve their healthcare systems. Lack of hospital capacity and not providing proper care to everyone fall under this category. For example, India had so many Covid cases, they pretty much ran out of room in the hospitals and there were numerous people that were not able to receive proper care. Hopefully they can learn from the pandemic and make improvements to their systems, so they are prepared if another pandemic occurs.

There is not a correct answer whether Covid was only bad or not. Realistically, it had its positives and negatives towards society. Of course, the negative effects outweigh the positive effects, but basically there was a mix of both, rather than only one option or the other. In my opinion, I thought Covid was terrible and genially affected civilization, but it also shined light on parts of society (like healthcare) that need improvement in a situation like this.