Current Pandemic, There Are Silver Linings

July 20, 2020,

Residing in places for an extended period of time without relieving your outside energy can be frustrating and demoralizing.

Even when it’s your own home.

Then before you know it, not only do you have to shelter in there, you have to work there as well.

Are you happy about that? Sure can save you some gas money. All of those lunches you had with co-workers, that adds up to. We haven’t even gotten to the coffee yet.

According to Next Gen Personal Finance, “The average 25- to 34-year-old reported spending $2,008 per year at coffee shops, and according to a survey by the money app Acorns, 41% of millennials admitted to spending more on coffee in the past year than they had invested in their retirement accounts.”

Okay, there you have it. Now you have more money to invest into your retirement account.

That is, if you are still working. From home.

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If you are, and so many do, then you are saving money on lunch too.

As posted by moneyunder30.com, “The average American household spends about $3,000 a year dining out, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

Okay, so we included dinner as well.

Might as well.

There are so many nuances to this new pandemic lifestyle that many of us are living.

Will we actually ever get used to it? Do we want to get used to it?

We may have to. Until they find a vaccine.

How is that going anyway?

Are we getting closer? We sure hope so.

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The always reliable www.webmd.com enlightens, “More than 100 possible vaccines are in various stages of development around the world, according to the World Health Organization. Some have begun human clinical trials. Even when researchers find a vaccine that works against the new coronavirus, it could be 12 to 18 months at best before it’s ready for the public. That’s only a fraction of the usual time.”

Oh no.

Please tell us we didn’t hear what they just said. Eighteen months? Two football seasons? Two years without a real NBA schedule? Viral concerts only?

Yuck. Double yuck.

We understand the extensive timeline. Before any vaccine can be widely used, it must go through development and testing to make sure that it’s effective against the virus or bacteria and that it doesn’t cause other problems.

So this is the current normal. We can’t say new normal because during these global pandemic times, what is and was the new normal is always subject to change.

Sometimes for the good.

National Public Radio posted, “About a third of Americans are working from home because of the coronavirus. The technology that enables this has been around for many years, but it took a pandemic to force the move to remote work.”

Even though we can’t dine out and work in offices like we used to, we can still go shopping in masks.

Apparently those stimulus checks are working.

The global news source CNN reports, “America's retail sales surged 17.7% in May from the previous month, a record increase, as shoppers headed back to newly reopened stores that had closed their doors for months. This was the biggest one-month surge in history, dating back to 1992. Still, sales in May were down 6.1% compared with last year, according to the Census Bureau.”

Okay. We’ll take all of the good news that we can.

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The team at reuters.com relates some very good news as well, “The upbeat retail sales data helped push S&P 500’s Retail index 2.3% higher, led by Nordstrom Inc. and Kohls Corp, which surged by 12.9% and 9.0%, respectively. Much stronger than expected homebuilder sentiment data helped home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc. provide among the biggest boosts to the blue-chip Dow. Its shares rose 3.6%.”

That is wonderful news. It certainly provides us with hope that the economy may rebound.

Hope springs eternal.

Sometimes the worst of times can bring about stellar innovations.

Over 100 years ago, much of America worked from their homes on farms. Now look at us. We’re working from our homes again.

It saves on gas and car maintenance.

It helps the environment as well.

The worldwide disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in numerous impacts on the environment and the climate. The considerable decline in planned travel has caused many regions to experience a large drop in air pollution.

In China, lockdowns and other measures resulted in a 25 per cent reduction in carbon emissions and 50 per cent reduction in nitrogen oxides emissions, which one Earth systems scientist estimated may have saved at least 77,000 lives over two months.

As the expression goes, there is always a silver lining in every pandemic cloud.

In Venice, water in the canals cleared and experienced greater water flow. The increase in water clarity was due to the settling of sediment that is disturbed by boat traffic and mentioned the decrease in air pollution along the waterways.

As people stayed at home due to lockdown and travel restrictions, some animals have been spotted in cities. Sea turtles were spotted laying eggs on beaches they once avoided (such as the coast of the Bay of Bengal), due to the lowered levels of human interference and light pollution.

Sounds beautiful.

A study published in May 2020 found that the daily global carbon emissions during the lockdown measures in early April fell by 17% and could lead to an annual carbon emissions decline of up to 7%, which would be the biggest drop since World War II according to the researchers.

There’s more.

A report by the London-based think tank Carbon Tracker concludes that the coronavirus pandemic may have pushed the fossil fuel industry into "terminal decline" as demand for oil and gas decreases while governments aim to accelerate the clean energy transition.

It predicts that an annual 2% decline in demand for fossil fuels could cause the future profits of oil, gas and coal companies to collapse from an estimated $39 trillion to $14 trillion.

Only just a year ago. Who would have thought?

There is so much uncertainty surrounding the global pandemic because in modern times we have never experienced anything like this before. Everything is new to us and the factors affecting our civilizations and lives keep changing.

Nothing is predictable. That much is consistent.

So we wait. For silver linings.

For the next new normal.

Capture it.