Discover 11 opportunities in COVID-19

Coronavirus has had a broad impact on the global economy. Particularly affected were the tourism, trade and industrial sectors, including the export and import markets. Demand for and consumption of goods decreased, and so did the international freight transport sector. The COVID-19 crisis continues to severely affect the container transport market and the current economic situation gives no hope for short-term recovery.

Dubbed ‘the great equalizer’ at its outset, COVID-19 has often been described as picking its victims at random. Blind to race, ethnicity, and gender, it sees just a human body, a host that enables it to do what all pathogens are programmed to do: spread. While this, from a biological perspective, may be true, the disease’s sweep of the globe has been anything but equalising. Data from both the US and UK - who along with Brazil compete for the honour of worst pandemic response - show that in terms of cases and deaths, minorities are hugely overrepresented.

Among the most common challenges faced by Universities we find the need to deliver course curriculum adaptable for e-learning experiences; the need to provide a solution to the current dilemma of international students, start their studies online, delay the start of their studies or turn to local institutions to start their studies; the demand for hosting virtual campus tours, virtual Q&A sessions, among others.

Universities around the world are currently experiencing a crash course in online education. The coronavirus pandemic has shaken the sector in a big way, leaving professors and students struggling to complete the academic year off campus and having to prepare for the next one under very uncertain circumstances.

In the midst of the destruction it’s wrought, the lives and livelihoods it’s taken, and freedom it’s limited, COVID-19 has given us one thing that may yet prove positive - the opportunity to reflect. Under lockdown, we’ve been compelled to consider our pre-COVID lives, the aspects we valued, the parts we endured, and how things could be changed. Separation from reality has renewed our perspective. And it’s come at a convenient time, for a choice hangs in the air.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so the old proverb goes. And with coronavirus spreading through countries, deep economic recession clambering at its coattails, the collective need has rarely been higher. In just four months, almost 300,000 lives have been taken worldwide, and lockdown, in its various forms, is threatening untold livelihoods - as of May 9th, 33 million jobs have been lost in the US alone. True to the saying, some invention has been forthcoming as incumbents have scrambled to protect their citizens and economies.

The ascension of the Chinese economy to global preeminence is not without precedent. China was, after all, one of the largest economies in the world from the Song Dynasty (c.900 CE) until the 19th century’s ‘Great Divergence’, when European industrialisation facilitated the long period of Western economic dominance that generations alive today know all too well.

As COVID-19 has spread globally, access to the outside world has shrunk, made increasingly off-limits by government lock-down, observable now only through glass. Our digital lives have expanded to fill the void, evenings previously spent with friends now passed plugged into laptops, obsessing over the latest figures, bailouts and newly-imposed restrictions - time blurs. Amid the chorus of leaders justifying ever more draconian measures, one thing has been hard to miss: the invocations of war.

As the world is ravaged by COVID-19, governments everywhere are enjoying burgeoning support. A glance at approval ratings finds presidents, prime ministers, even autocrats, overwhelmingly popular, in some instances irrespective of their actual performance. Of course, this is unsurprising: there’s long been a history of populations coalescing around established leaders in times of crisis. Amid uncertainty, we find their increased visibility reassuring. Speaking to the nation they look competent and confident; we feel inclined to trust them, and more often than not, we do.