Anything positive about the coronavirus?

Published in El Pais 14 March 2020 and Los Tiempos, 15 March 2020.

Closed universities, cancelled events and flights, full hospitals, empty supermarkets and minimized transportation movements. The coronavirus is controlling the world and causing it to panic. More than 30 countries have their borders fully or partially closed. It’s easy to panic and get depressed. But as legendary footballer Johan Cruijff once said, “Every disadvantage has its advantage.” What advantage could all this coronavirus problem have?

For companies, all this represents a threat and it is very likely that some will lose income. Airlines, for example, are losing between 10% and 50% of their revenue. But there are also opportunities. Yesterday a few moments after I heard that the theaters were going to be closed, I received an offer from CoolBlue (online store) to sell a giant TV with speakers with a “home theater” effect. The company obviously tries to understand and react to how demand changes. Same for supermarkets. As people are going to be more at home, some supermarkets are offering products to “survive” being at home all the time. Other examples are Google and Microsoft that are offering for free their applications to work from home for this period without having to leave the house. Universities and schools are also teaching online, which is an advantage to distinguish yourself from the others that did stop.

But there is not only creativity on the business side. The house is also full. Parents will be working from home, children who do not go to school and do not have their daily activities. To some it sounds like a total nightmare. A friend said to me: “It is going to be a serious problem that we are all at home all day, what am I going to do?” In the end people get creative. It is a time to do more things with the family as in the old days. A board game, watching a movie together, reading a book, and chatting. At last there is time to really do a full chess or monopoly game that is usually interrupted by other events and the incomplete game stays forgotten on the table all week.

Let’s try to take advantage of this distressing condition to opportunities to discover other things that help us to forget the worries of the day or put our health in danger. If you live alone, call a family member who lives far away or an old friend to catch up.

Staying at home is not boring. Let’s be positive, if everything goes well, maybe we will even have more babies this Christmas!