essay on time management in covid 19

How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Serious disabled woman concentrating on her work she sitting at her workplace and working on computer at office

Getty Images

Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

10 Ways to Discover College Essay Ideas

Tags: students , colleges , college admissions , college applications , college search , Coronavirus

2024 Best Colleges

Search for your perfect fit with the U.S. News rankings of colleges and universities.

College Admissions: Get a Step Ahead!

Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S. News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy .

Ask an Alum: Making the Most Out of College

What to Wear to a Graduation

LaMont Jones, Jr. March 27, 2024

FAFSA Delays Alarm Families, Colleges

Sarah Wood March 25, 2024

Help Your Teen With the College Decision

Anayat Durrani March 25, 2024

Toward Semiconductor Gender Equity

Alexis McKittrick March 22, 2024

March Madness in the Classroom

Cole Claybourn March 21, 2024

20 Lower-Cost Online Private Colleges

Sarah Wood March 21, 2024

How to Choose a Microcredential

Sarah Wood March 20, 2024

Basic Components of an Online Course

Cole Claybourn March 19, 2024

Can You Double Minor in College?

Sarah Wood March 15, 2024

Newsletters

Site search

Israel-Hamas war
2024 election
Kate Middleton
TikTok’s fate
Supreme Court
All explainers
Future Perfect

Filed under:

Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

Share this story

Share this on Facebook
Share this on Twitter
Share this on Reddit
Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

Will you help keep Vox free for all?

At Vox, we believe that clarity is power, and that power shouldn’t only be available to those who can afford to pay. That’s why we keep our work free. Millions rely on Vox’s clear, high-quality journalism to understand the forces shaping today’s world. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today.

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via

Next Up In Culture

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

Thanks for signing up!

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

A metal container with a label reading “For use as a motor fuel only. Contains lead (tetraethyl)”

Lead pollution anywhere is a public health threat everywhere

An aerial view of a suburban housing tract.

Multigenerational housing is coming back in a big way

Biden speaks at a podium. Behind him, a large red banner reads: President Joe Biden: Lowering Housing Costs.

Biden wants to campaign on housing. He also sort of has to.

Senator Bernie Sanders raises a fist at a rally in support of United Auto Workers in front of a large banner that reads “UAW stand up.”

Want a 32-hour workweek? Give workers more power.

The harrowing “Quiet on Set” allegations, explained

A prison fence with thick rows of barbed wire. The sky surrounding is a deep blue with light streaming in from the right side.

The chaplain who doesn’t believe in God

Crisis Management in the COVID-19 Era

Explore more.

How I Teach

N o business is immune from crises—whether facing external forces such as the current health pandemic or situations of an organization’s own making. Yet, businesses are often measured by their responses to such incidents—from customers, investors, the media, or the public.

In this audio interview, Neeley School of Business Professor Mary Waller takes a deep dive into her MBA course on crisis management, a topic she says has struggled as a discipline despite its obvious importance. The tides have changed, however, with the current global impact of the pandemic. Hear her discuss her holistic approach to teaching crisis management and how the discipline—and her way of teaching—is evolving.

About This Podcast

How I Teach is an audio series that features conversations with educators who break down complex topics and explain their approach to teaching them. We pair the audio interviews with a full transcript as well as recommended readings to help you navigate classroom discussions on tough subjects.

*Audio Music: www.bensound.com

Listen to or read the full transcript of the audio interview to learn:

The rewards and challenges of teaching crisis management [3:06]

Why it’s important to introduce this subject matter to undergraduates as well as MBAs [5:31]

The difference between crisis management and disaster management [7:26]

How the Neeley School adjusted to the abrupt move to online learning, and what the fall strategy might look like [9:23]

What materials Waller uses in her crisis management course (and why), how she structures her course, and what she hopes students will learn by the end of class [12:21]

How Waller approached her asynchronous class—including using videos to walk through her slides each week [18:46]

How Waller used synchronous sessions to successfully run her end-of-course simulation [20:47]

What course planning looks like amid continued uncertainty [23:30]

Mark Rennella: Welcome to Harvard Business Publishing’s How I Teach podcast, where educators share their insights and approaches on teaching important business topics. I am your host Mark Rennella. Now that we’re deep into the COVID-19 era, we’ll also be including some questions that look into how this pandemic has—or hasn’t—had an impact on business instructors, their courses, and the institutions where they teach.

Today’s topic is crisis management, a skill that has historically been given relatively little attention in management training. But in the midst of our current outbreak of seismic cultural, political, and health predicaments, the ability for organizations to deal with crises will be increasingly sought-after.

It’s obvious that we need to cultivate strong leadership that has the capability to manage during these moments. What’s the best way to train leaders for the emerging uncertainties that lie ahead? This training relates both to major problems that originate externally from an organization (generally known as “disaster management”) and those that originate from within (which falls under “crisis management”). Each requires sophisticated training to supply executives with the tools and the perspective to deal with decision-making under significant pressures. Today, our focus is crisis management.

I’m delighted to have as a guest today Professor Mary Waller, who’s M.J. Neeley Professor of Management at the Neeley School of Business TCU in Fort Worth, Texas. She’s taught courses on crisis management, managing team dynamics, organizational behavior, introduction to management, and organizational theory.

Mary, thanks so much for your time and sharing your insights with our listeners.

Mary Waller: My pleasure to be here.

Rennella: Great. Well, let’s start with you. Could you tell us about your background and especially how it led up to your interest in team dynamics and crisis management?

Waller: Sure. I was a late bloomer coming to academics. I spent about a decade in industry. I started out working in oil and gas as a petroleum land man. I was going to school at night. I got a Master of Science degree in information systems. I moved from oil and gas to software development management. And during that decade working in oil and gas and software development, it seemed like I was always working in a team of people working under time pressure, working in some kind of crisis situation, usually of the organization’s own making. So, after that decade, when I decided to go back to school and get a Ph.D., it seems like a natural progression to study team dynamics in critical situations. So that’s how that all transpired.

And then at the University of Texas at Austin, where I got my Ph.D., I met Bob Helmreich , who did tremendous work in aviation psychology. I ended up doing my dissertation research with aviation crews and a full motion flight simulator. So, a lot of my research then was done looking at flight crews, nuclear power plant control room crews, underground mine rescue teams, as well as teams like emergency department trauma teams and those types of teams as they deal with critical situations.

Rennella: That’s a fascinating topic. It really is so interesting how you were just digging deeper toward there through your whole career.

Waller: Pretty much a one-trick pony.

Rennella: Well, it’s an important trick. So, getting back to crisis management, what do you like teaching about crisis management? What are its rewards and challenges in the classroom?

Waller: I think one of the big challenges is that crisis management as a topic rarely appears in management or organization behavior textbooks for whatever reason. So, it’s really struggled as a discipline, as a topic, to make its way into mainstream management and find its place in terms of legitimate topics in business schools. That might change, I think, with the pandemic.

But the great thing about teaching crisis management, I think, is that it’s a very practical application of a lot of our organizational behavior and organization theory ideas and principles in a particular domain. So, we can take pieces of organizational behavior and pieces of organization theory and put them in this domain and really see them work in a particular context. That’s really exciting and really gives students, particularly more advanced students—I love teaching crisis management with students who already have some practical experience in organizations—a way to see, “Oh, gosh, the stuff that we talk about really does actually work.” That’s pretty exciting.

Rennella: Could you see it as part of any discipline? I did a previous podcast talking about cybersecurity, and the professor brought up the case that you can apply cybersecurity to every part of the organization. Is that the same here?

Waller: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are individual responses to a crisis situation and there are team-level responses. We know, for instance, contagion happens at the team level. We know that there are team-level responses to crisis situations, and we certainly know that there are organizational-level responses to crisis situations, and they all impact each other. They all fit together like pieces to a puzzle.

Rennella: And it’s not as if a crisis won’t happen, right? They always do. It’s interesting how you’re saying it should be in your intro course. You have a section on crisis management, because that’s just part of what organizations deal with.

Waller: Exactly. In the past, there have been these stances regarding crisis management. First of all, lower level students don’t need to know about crisis management because that’s something that the C-suite and the board are going to deal with, and we don’t need to bother undergraduate students with this type of stuff. Well, you know, undergraduate students do need to know that this kind of stuff is going on, because it’s certainly going to impact them. Or, crisis management is something that we’re going to farm out to a consultant. So, we really don’t need to be taking up class time with something like crisis management when that’s something that a PR firm is going to deal with for us. We know that’s an inadequate response. These types of responses just don’t hold water anymore.

Rennella: Is there anything you’re learning about crisis management that you didn’t see as clearly before our current health crisis?

Waller: Well, that a lot more people are interested in it now, just based on the number of phone calls and emails I’ve been getting recently. I think a lot more organizations are interested in business continuity now, which is probably a really good thing. They probably don’t have the bandwidth right now to devote a lot of time and energy to it right now. But I think they’re saying, "when we do have the bandwidth, maybe in six months, maybe in a year, we’ve got to be ready for the next one." And that’s a good thing.

Rennella: You brought up in a previous communication with me to be cognizant of the difference between crisis management and disaster management. Could you bring up the salient differences that people should know about?

Waller: I developed my course when I worked at The Schulich School of Business at York University. York has a wonderful program in disaster management outside the business school. The people in the disaster management program are the ones who really helped me develop an understanding of the difference between crisis management as it has existed in the management department in the business school and disaster management, because they really did have different training and it is a different discipline. It involves working with public institutions. It involves crises like a pandemic or like a natural disaster that are much longer lived than a lot of the crises that business organizations typically deal with. They deal with crises that are not self-inflicted, typically. They deal with crises that are universally affecting a wide range of organizations simultaneously so you’re all in the same boat. You’re competing for the same resources during the crisis. And those are qualitatively different situations than the crises that organizations deal with individually, like a product recall, like executive malfeasances, like the typical crises that we want our graduates who will find themselves in the C-suite or near C-suite situations to be ready to deal with.

Rennella: Just thinking about your own immediate environment, I’m curious about how your colleagues or your school or your department are dealing with this crisis right now. Any interesting things going on?

Waller: The organization as a whole, the university, just like every other university, is engaging in their organizational business continuity plans and trying to figure out, "OK, what’s the best strategy to employ for the fall semester and ongoing?" That’s unfolding day by day, trying to look at resources and figure out what the best plan is for everyone. But in addition to that, I think what I really appreciate about the Neely School is that, like everybody else, we’ve moved to having virtual department meetings, virtual faculty staff meetings where you have 100 people online at the same time. And you virtually raise your hand and you miss seeing people and communicating face-to-face and everything. But what I really appreciate is the Neeley School taking the extra step and really making an effort to do things like having virtual bingo games and carving out a little bit of time and effort and energy to have virtual time together that is just fun time. You know, we’re not talking about work. We’re going to meet, and we’re just going to be silly together. We’re just going to have fun together, because we just need some time together to blow off some steam. And that has been so nice.

Rennella: You might want to call that human continuity in this crisis situation.

Waller: Exactly. And at the Neeley School we do such a good job of celebrating with each other. It’s really part of their culture.

Rennella: Well, that’s unanticipated, but now that you mentioned, it seems to be an extremely important part of navigating a big crisis like this, you know, keeping our human connections. So, it reminds me of that apocryphal quote from Winston Churchill when they asked him, "Why are you funding the arts right now during WWII?" And he said, "Well, what are we fighting for, if not for this?"

Waller: Exactly. We have to be able to keep our culture intact, and our culture is high touch. We take such pride in knowing our students and having a personal, professional relationship with our students. And it’s hard to do that online. And we care deeply about each other. It’s hard to do that, electronically, but we’re doing our best.

Rennella: Getting back to the teaching of crisis management, I’m just wondering if you could give us a general description of the course you teach; maybe it’s central focuses and what students should know by the end of it?

Waller: I love the article by Pearson and Clair. I really let that guide me.

Rennella: What’s the title of that?

Waller: [Reframing] Crisis Management by Pearson and Clair. They had this wonderful model in that article, and we walk through that model from left to right during the progression of the course. It really starts out looking at the orientation of top management in the organization and the cognition of the top management as it pertains to crisis management and walks through to the point that a crisis actually occurs. Then looking at the aftermath of that event in terms of how teams might respond, how individuals might respond, and then the outcome.

So, we talk about that progress at every stage of the game, but really how I structure the course is talking about crisis management, like I said before, at the individual level, the team level, and the organization level. Then we put the pieces together. What I really want students to be able to do at the end of the course is to go into a crisis situation and be able to identify the type of crisis that they’re in and let the type of crisis guide them in terms of the strategic actions they should take. Then, we really key in on situational crisis communication theory in terms of the type of crisis communication they should engage in. So those two things: the crisis type (and we really rely on Lerbinger’s identification of crisis type and strategic actions that line up with crisis type), and then Tim Coombs’ situational crisis communication theory in terms of the strategic communication that they should be engaging in, and then, which stakeholders at which times should they be talking to.

Rennella: I imagine that something you might have to think about is to make sure that the students really assess a particular situation thoroughly and not come to it with a preconceived formula or framework beforehand. Do you find that that’s an issue?

Waller: Absolutely. And so, if I put some students in a situation of, "OK, imagine you’re the top management team of this organization. This, this, and this has happened and then you have this crisis coming at you. How would you respond?" Before they learn about crisis types and strategic actions, and how the public is likely to respond—we talk a lot about attribution theory—they give me one set of answers. And then after they learn about the strategic responses, attribution theory, how the public is likely to see certain actions, and we look at lots and lots and lots of real examples. The sad thing is that I have tons of real examples that I can bring into the class and show them, "Here’s what the organization did in this situation and here’s how the public responded. Why do you think this happened?" And then I can bump it against the theory, and I can show them, "Here’s what the theory said would happen. Here's what actually happened. Look. The theory actually works, right?"

I have tons of examples to show that yeah, this stuff really does work. Then, at the end of the course, we do a real-time crisis management simulation that lets them try it out on their own. And they usually do pretty well.

Rennella: That’s great. And just wondering, from all these great discussions and case situations you bring up, do you have one or two memorable moments in class, a super "aha" moment that the class just loved, or a surprise that occurred?

Waller: The most exciting things usually happen during that crisis management simulation at the end. They’re usually nervous. They don’t know what the crisis is going to be. They’ve gotten information about the organization that they’re managing—they play the role of the top management team. They get a lot of background information about the organization, and then they meet. They know that there’s going to be a crisis. The crisis unfolds. They talk about, "OK, what crisis type is this? What should we be doing?" They engage in those actions, and they’re getting real time emails and tweets from angry investors and the press wants to know stuff and customers want to know stuff. They’re responding to these people, and at the end of the simulation, they usually gasp for air and they say it’s stressful.

But the greatest thing is, at the end of the simulation, they lean back and high five each other. They’re relieved but they’re proud of themselves that, "We really did learn something here and we have a new capability that we didn’t have eight weeks ago." I think that’s a big revelation. That makes it all worth it.

Rennella: Yeah, I can’t imagine a more satisfying end for a teacher. For them to see all their proverbial light bulbs going on at the end of that exercise.

Waller: Exactly.

Rennella: You mentioned as well in our previous communication that your course became asynchronous online. I’m just wondering, are there any big takeaways for you about either the differences between teaching in class and online in an asynchronous manner or maybe some things you’ve learned about teaching asynchronously that you would bring to this the next time?

Waller: I made the choice to go asynchronous because of the situation that my students were in. They had all these demands on them. I wanted to make the course as flexible as possible for them. I did a module a week. I had my slides, and I did a video a week—a video voice-over of my slides—one a week, so they could watch that any time during the week that they wanted to. They had assignments with deadlines associated with them each week. So, they had to get that done each week, but anytime they wanted to watch the video, they could. If they were homeschooling and they wanted to watch the video at midnight, they could. If they want to watch it at six in the morning, they could. I really tried to minimize the amount of teamwork stuff that I did. Usually, when we meet face to face, I have team exercises that I do in class, and it really is a high-touch class with a lot of interaction. I had to find a way to work around that. But I really wanted to make it as flexible as I could for them in their situation right now. I wish that I had worked in a little more discussion board stuff in there for them, but I’m not sure they would have taken advantage of it. I did have one open discussion period, and nobody took advantage of it. I didn’t know quite how to interpret that, but they just didn’t need it. Their plates were so full.

Rennella: You mentioned how great it was to see them finish the simulation. So, I imagine they didn’t do that this semester. Did you have a substitute for that?

Waller: No, the simulation was the one thing that we did synchronously. We did it one team at a time, and we did it with Zoom. So, they did two things synchronously. They met as a team to discuss their crisis management plan. Each team put together a plan for this fictitious organization that they played the top management team for that role. Then the next week, we did the crisis management simulation. It was about 90 minutes long. We met via Zoom, and I watched them on Zoom go through the crisis management simulation. I recorded them as they went through the crisis management simulation so I could watch their simulation later and provide them debrief feedback. The next week, every team got some debrief feedback on that. And actually, I took all the text that they generated. All the emails that they generated as a team that went back to those characters that were sending them emails during the simulation. I took all the text that each team generated, and I fed it through linguistic inquiry and word count to measure the emotional tone of what the team generated. I did a little quantitative analysis to compare the team’s emotional tone, and then showed that to them. It was interesting because it really did line up with the strategies that the teams chose.

Rennella: Have they generally been appreciative of this asynchronous option?

Waller: Yeah; I asked them afterwards if they wished that we had done something more synchronously, and a few of them said, "Well, maybe once at the beginning, but otherwise it was fine." And that they did really appreciate having the flexibility. The flexibility was really, really nice.

Rennella: And was there any use of the current pandemic in your class?

Waller: You know, I did refer to it several times, but it was sort of like trying to hit a moving target. In terms of how the pandemic was being managed, it was a moving target. Even if I had wanted to use it as an example, it would have been difficult.

Rennella: Any anticipation of how you’re going to teach this the next time now that you’ve gone through this change? Of course, there’s all sorts of unknown factors, like are you going to have a blended class? Will you see these people? But I’m just wondering about any thoughts right now about how you might change how you’ve taught this compared to say, two, three years ago?

Waller: If we go to blended, I would start out with face-to-face first, and then maybe move to asynchronous with some kind of chat function or something like that, maybe. But the asynchronous worked pretty well, to tell you the truth. Everything worked pretty well. I couldn’t be happier, really, with the output of the students. Their crisis management plans were right on target. Their performance in the crisis management simulation was really good. And I’m comparing them with the face-to-face classes that I’ve taught in the past. And I really don’t have any regrets about that.

Rennella: It’s interesting, other professors I’ve talked to about other disciplines, they often say, "I use stuff in the news to bring into class so I can get people to start talking, or I’ll bring in a YouTube video that was made last month about XYZ, so they can get started talking." So that’s why I was thinking, "Oh, you’ve got this pandemic. Maybe it’s a disaster and not so much a crisis, but there’s some things to learn from that." But I guess it, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, I’m thinking it’s too big and sprawling to use right now?

Waller: It’s almost like COVID overload. It’s just too much. Plus, in my course—and I made this clear in the very first video, I think, that I made for the course—I focus mainly on event-based crises. So, we’re focusing mainly on crises like management misconduct or product recalls or things like that. Sort of traditional, if you can think of them that way, organizational crises that they’re likely to see. Even crises like hacking. Where there’s been some kind of attack against the organization. But the widespread disaster-type thing is really a different animal that really requires a focus on business continuity. I would love to teach business continuity, but I need another eight weeks to do that.

Rennella: I’m just thinking, what are the fundamentals of crisis management that never change? Each crisis has its own fingerprint, pretty much. But as far as my light acquaintance with the literature, it seems that there are tried and true ways to approach a lot of these. I’m just wondering, what are, in general, some of the things that don’t change in crisis management?

Waller: You know, a lot of people have a lot of different opinions about that. And that’s part of the problem with crisis management. Everyone has their own special sauce, their own special recipe. And that makes it difficult for organizations that reach out. There are a lot of purveyors of the fundamentals of crisis management.

Rennella: Like innovation in a way. Innovation has a million flavors, and people are selling lots of different kinds of innovation.

Waller: Exactly. In my course, like I said, being able to recognize the crisis type, the fundamentals of the type of crisis you’re dealing with and being able to let that crisis type drive a set of action strategies that you take. And those action strategies have actual empirical research behind them. Letting the research suggest to us what the best actions to take are versus some other source that we might choose. And then paying attention to things like Tim Coombs’ research on situational crisis communication to suggest to us how best to explain to people inside and outside the organization what we’re doing.

Rennella: I’m curious; what’s the best case study or moment? What’s what of your favorite things to delve into that seems very rich or very easy or interesting for students to get involved in?

Waller: A case study that I use is a film that is on PBS. It was produced by FRONTLINE and ProPublica on the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis . To me it’s a great example of how organizational culture can perpetuate an organization’s proclivity to be crisis prone. And it brings home a lot of the things that we cover in the course in one organization. It’s a great example, unfortunately. The students watch that film, and it’s a great video case study.

Rennella: Excellent. I really appreciate this; you had a lot of great insights.

Waller: That is great and thank you; it was fun.

Crisis Management Sample Course Schedule

Waller outlines her 8-week course’s topics and readings:

Week 1: Course Introduction—Waller, M. J., & Roberts, K. H. (2003). High reliability and organizational behavior: Finally the twain must meet. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 24(7), 813.

Week 2: Crisis Types—Pearson, C. M., & Clair, J. A. (1998). Reframing crisis management. Academy of Management Review , 23(1), 59-76.

Week 3: Imagining the Unthinkable—Staw, B. M., Sandelands, L. E., & Dutton, J. E. (1981). Threat rigidity effects in organizational behavior: A multilevel analysis. Administrative Science Quarterly , 501-524.; Roberts, K. H., & Bea, R. (2001). Must accidents happen? Lessons from high-reliability organizations. Academy of Management Perspectives , 15(3), 70-78.; Pearson, C. M., & Mitroff, I. I. (1993). From crisis prone to crisis prepared: A framework for crisis management. Academy of Management Perspectives , 7(1), 48-59.

Week 4: Organizational Factors—Neal, A., & Griffin, M. A. (2006). A study of the lagged relationships among safety climate, safety motivation, safety behavior, and accidents at the individual and group levels. Journal of Applied Psychology , 91(4), 946.; Tucker, A. L., & Edmondson, A. C. (2003). Why hospitals don't learn from failures: Organizational and psychological dynamics that inhibit system change. California Management Review , 45(2), 55-72.

Week 5: Crisis Teams and Plans—Waller, M. J., Lei, Z., & Pratten, R. (2014). Focusing on teams in crisis management education: An integration and simulation-based approach. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 13(2), 208-221.; Uitdewilligen, S., & Waller, M. J. (2018). Information sharing and decision‐making in multidisciplinary crisis management teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 39(6), 731-748.

Week 6: Crisis Communication—Stephens, K. K., Malone, P. C., & Bailey, C. M. (2005). Communicating with stakeholders during a crisis: Evaluating message strategies. The Journal of Business Communication (1973), 42(4), 390-419.; Stephens, K. K., Waller, M. J., & Sohrab, S. G. (2019). Over-emoting and perceptions of sincerity: Effects of nuanced displays of emotions and chosen words on credibility perceptions during a crisis. Public Relations Review, 45(5), 101841., Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. (2002). Helping crisis managers protect reputational assets: Initial tests of the situational crisis communication theory. Management Communication Quarterly , 16(2), 165-186.

Week 7: Simulation

Week 8: Quiz and Debrief/Wrap-up

The Reading List

Use the following articles, notes, and cases to further the discussion on crisis management in your classroom. Consider assigning these readings to students, or use them as tools to help frame the class discussion.

David Dao on United Airlines

The Organizational Apology

“We Need to Intensify Our Sense of Urgency”

“Reframing Crisis Management”

Simulations

Organizational Behavior Simulation: Judgment in a Crisis

Harvard ManageMentor

Harvard ManageMentor: Crisis Management

Other Resources

FRONTLINE: The Spill

Mary Waller is the M.J. Neeley Professor of Management at Neeley School of Business, TCU. Her expertise covers organizational behavior including team dynamics, interaction, and effectiveness; crisis management in organizations; and human factors in complex technological systems.

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience, including personalizing content. Learn More . By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

COVID-19 Was a Turning Point for Health

Our new book focuses on the lessons of the pandemic..

Posted February 15, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

To think comprehensively about COVID-19 is to think not just about the past but also about the future.
The narratives we accept about the pandemic will do much to shape our ability to create a healthier world.
Understanding the pandemic, and learning from it, means coming to terms with the emotions of that time.

In 2021, the United States was at a turning point. We had just lived through the acute phase of a global pandemic. During that time, the country had experienced an economic crisis, civil unrest, a deeply divisive federal election, and a technological revolution in how we live, work, and congregate. The emergence of COVID-19 vaccines allowed us, finally, to look ahead to a post-pandemic world, but what would that world be like? Would it be a return to the pre-COVID-19 status quo, or would it be something radically new?

It was with these questions in mind that, in 2021, I partnered with my colleague Michael Stein to write a series of essays reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic. Our aim was to engage with the COVID moment through the lens of cutting -edge public health science. By exploring the pandemic’s intersection with topics like digital surveillance, vaccine distribution, big data, and the link between science and political decision-making , we tried to sketch what the moment meant while it unfolded and what its implications might be for the future. If journalism is “the first rough draft of history,” these essays were, in a way, our effort to produce just such a draft, from the perspective of a forward-looking public health. I am delighted to announce that a book based on this series of essays has just been published by Oxford University Press: The Turning Point: Reflections on a Pandemic .

The book includes a series of short chapters, structured in five sections that address the following themes:

This section looks at the COVID-19 moment through the lens of what we might learn from it, toward better addressing future pandemics. It tackles challenges we faced in our approach to testing, our successes and shortcomings in implementing contact tracing, the intersection of the pandemic and mass incarceration, and more. Many of these lessons emerged organically from the day-to-day experience of the pandemic, reflecting “unknown unknowns”—areas where we encountered unexpected deficits in our knowledge, which were revealed by the circumstances of the pandemic. Chapter 8, for example, explores the necessity of public health officials speaking with care, mindful that our words may be used to justify authoritarian approaches in the name of health, a challenge we saw in the actions of the Chinese government during the pandemic.

Our understanding of large-scale health challenges like pandemics depends on more than collections of data and a timeline of events. It depends on our stories. The narratives we accept about the pandemic will do much to shape our ability to create a healthier world before the next contagion strikes. This section explores the stories we told during COVID-19 about what was happening to us and looks ahead to the narratives that will likely define our recollections of the pandemic moment. It addresses narratives around the virtues and limits of expertise, the role of the media as both a shaper of stories and a character in them, the hotly contested narrative around vaccines, and the role scientists, physicians, and epidemiologists played in shaping the story of the pandemic as it unfolded.

This section explores how our values informed what we did during COVID-19 through the ethical considerations that shaped our engagement with the moment. These include the ethical tradeoffs involved in questions of digital surveillance, scientific bias, vaccine mandates, balancing individual autonomy and collective responsibility, and the role of the profit motive in creating critical treatments. At times, these reflections reach back into history, grappling with past moments when we failed in our ethical obligations to support the health of all, as in a chapter discussing how the legacy of medical racism shaped our engagement with communities of color during the pandemic. Such soul-searching is core to our ability to evaluate our performance during COVID-19 and face the future grounded in the values that support effective, ethical public health action.

As human beings, we do not process events through reason alone. We are deeply swayed by emotion . This is particularly true in times of tragedy like COVID-19. Understanding the pandemic, and learning from it, means coming to terms with the emotions of that time, the feelings that attended all we did. Grief and loss, humility and hope, trust and mistrust , compassion and fear —both individual and collective—were all core to the experience of the pandemic. The simple act of recognizing our collective grief, as several chapters in this section try to do, can help us move forward, acknowledging the emotions that attend tragedy as we work toward a better world.

To think comprehensively about COVID-19 is to think not just about the past but about the future. We seek to understand the pandemic to prevent something like it from ever happening again. This means creating a world that is fundamentally healthier than the one that existed in 2019. This final section looks to the future from the perspective of the COVID-19 moment, with an eye toward using the lessons of that time to create a healthier world, as in Chapter 50, which addresses the challenge of rebuilding trust in public health institutions after it was tested during the pandemic. The section also touches on leadership and decision-making, shaping a better health system, shoring up our investment in health, the future of remote work, and next steps in our efforts to support health in the years to come.

I end with a note of gratitude to Michael Stein, who led on the development of this book. It is, as always, a privilege to work with him and learn from him. I look forward to continued collaborations in the months and years to come, and to hearing from readers of The Turning Point as we engage in our collective task of building a healthier world, informed by what we have lived through and looking to the future.

A version of this essay appeared on Substack.

Sandro Galea, M.D., is the Robert A. Knox professor and dean of the Boston University School of Public Health

Find a Therapist
Find a Treatment Center
Find a Support Group
International
New Zealand
South Africa
Switzerland
Asperger's
Bipolar Disorder
Chronic Pain
Eating Disorders
Passive Aggression
Personality
Goal Setting
Positive Psychology
Stopping Smoking
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
Child Development
Therapy Center NEW
Diagnosis Dictionary
Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

Coronavirus Disease 2019
Affective Forecasting
Neuroscience

The complexity of managing COVID-19: How important is good governance?

Download the essay

Subscribe to Global Connection

Alaka m. basu , amb alaka m. basu professor, department of global development - cornell university, senior fellow - united nations foundation kaushik basu , and kaushik basu nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development @kaushikcbasu jose maria u. tapia jmut jose maria u. tapia student - cornell university.

November 17, 2020

13 min read

This essay is part of “ Reimagining the global economy: Building back better in a post-COVID-19 world ,” a collection of 12 essays presenting new ideas to guide policies and shape debates in a post-COVID-19 world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of public health systems worldwide, casting a shadow that we could not have imagined even a year ago. As the fog of confusion lifts and we begin to understand the rudiments of how the virus behaves, the end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight. The number of cases and the deaths continue to rise. The latter breached the 1 million mark a few weeks ago and it looks likely now that, in terms of severity, this pandemic will surpass the Asian Flu of 1957-58 and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968-69.

Moreover, a parallel problem may well exceed the direct death toll from the virus. We are referring to the growing economic crises globally, and the prospect that these may hit emerging economies especially hard.

The economic fall-out is not entirely the direct outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic but a result of how we have responded to it—what measures governments took and how ordinary people, workers, and firms reacted to the crisis. The government activism to contain the virus that we saw this time exceeds that in previous such crises, which may have dampened the spread of the COVID-19 but has extracted a toll from the economy.

This essay takes stock of the policies adopted by governments in emerging economies, and what effect these governance strategies may have had, and then speculates about what the future is likely to look like and what we may do here on.

Nations that build walls to keep out goods, people and talent will get out-competed by other nations in the product market.

It is becoming clear that the scramble among several emerging economies to imitate and outdo European and North American countries was a mistake. We get a glimpse of this by considering two nations continents apart, the economies of which have been among the hardest hit in the world, namely, Peru and India. During the second quarter of 2020, Peru saw an annual growth of -30.2 percent and India -23.9 percent. From the global Q2 data that have emerged thus far, Peru and India are among the four slowest growing economies in the world. Along with U.K and Tunisia these are the only nations that lost more than 20 percent of their GDP. 1

COVID-19-related mortality statistics, and, in particular, the Crude Mortality Rate (CMR), however imperfect, are the most telling indicator of the comparative scale of the pandemic in different countries. At first glance, from the end of October 2020, Peru, with 1039 COVID-19 deaths per million population looks bad by any standard and much worse than India with 88. Peru’s CMR is currently among the highest reported globally.

However, both Peru and India need to be placed in regional perspective. For reasons that are likely to do with the history of past diseases, there are striking regional differences in the lethality of the virus (Figure 11.1). South America is worse hit than any other world region, and Asia and Africa seem to have got it relatively lightly, in contrast to Europe and America. The stark regional difference cries out for more epidemiological analysis. But even as we await that, these are differences that cannot be ignored.

To understand the effect of policy interventions, it is therefore important to look at how these countries fare within their own regions, which have had similar histories of illnesses and viruses (Figure 11.2). Both Peru and India do much worse than the neighbors with whom they largely share their social, economic, ecological and demographic features. Peru’s COVID-19 mortality rate per million population, or CMR, of 1039 is ahead of the second highest, Brazil at 749, and almost twice that of Argentina at 679.

Similarly, India at 88 compares well with Europe and the U.S., as does virtually all of Asia and Africa, but is doing much worse than its neighbors, with the second worst country in the region, Afghanistan, experiencing less than half the death rate of India.

The official Indian statement that up to 78,000 deaths 2 were averted by the lockdown has been criticized 3 for its assumptions. A more reasonable exercise is to estimate the excess deaths experienced by a country that breaks away from the pattern of its regional neighbors. So, for example, if India had experienced Afghanistan’s COVID-19 mortality rate, it would by now have had 54,112 deaths. And if it had the rate reported by Bangladesh, it would have had 49,950 deaths from COVID-19 today. In other words, more than half its current toll of some 122,099 COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided if it had experienced the same virus hit as its neighbors.

What might explain this outlier experience of COVID-19 CMRs and economic downslide in India and Peru? If the regional background conditions are broadly similar, one is left to ask if it is in fact the policy response that differed markedly and might account for these relatively poor outcomes.

Peru and India have performed poorly in terms of GDP growth rate in Q2 2020 among the countries displayed in Table 2, and given that both these countries are often treated as case studies of strong governance, this draws attention to the fact that there may be a dissonance between strong governance and good governance.

The turnaround for India has been especially surprising, given that until a few years ago it was among the three fastest growing economies in the world. The slowdown began in 2016, though the sharp downturn, sharper than virtually all other countries, occurred after the lockdown.

On the COVID-19 policy front, both India and Peru have become known for what the Oxford University’s COVID Policy Tracker 4 calls the “stringency” of the government’s response to the epidemic. At 8 pm on March 24, 2020, the Indian government announced, with four hours’ notice, a complete nationwide shutdown. Virtually all movement outside the perimeter of one’s home was officially sought to be brought to a standstill. Naturally, as described in several papers, such as that of Ray and Subramanian, 5 this meant that most economic life also came to a sudden standstill, which in turn meant that hundreds of millions of workers in the informal, as well as more marginally formal sectors, lost their livelihoods.

In addition, tens of millions of these workers, being migrant workers in places far-flung from their original homes, also lost their temporary homes and their savings with these lost livelihoods, so that the only safe space that beckoned them was their place of origin in small towns and villages often hundreds of miles away from their places of work.

After a few weeks of precarious living in their migrant destinations, they set off, on foot since trains and buses had been stopped, for these towns and villages, creating a “lockdown and scatter” that spread the virus from the city to the town and the town to the village. Indeed, “lockdown” is a bit of a misnomer for what happened in India, since over 20 million people did exactly the opposite of what one does in a lockdown. Thus India had a strange combination of lockdown some and scatter the rest, like in no other country. They spilled out and scattered in ways they would otherwise not do. It is not surprising that the infection, which was marginally present in rural areas (23 percent in April), now makes up some 54 percent of all cases in India. 6

In Peru too, the lockdown was sudden, nationwide, long drawn out and stringent. 7 Jobs were lost, financial aid was difficult to disburse, migrant workers were forced to return home, and the virus has now spread to all parts of the country with death rates from it surpassing almost every other part of the world.

As an aside, to think about ways of implementing lockdowns that are less stringent and geographically as well as functionally less total, an example from yet another continent is instructive. Ethiopia, with a COVID-19 death rate of 13 per million population seems to have bettered the already relatively low African rate of 31 in Table 1. 8

We hope that human beings will emerge from this crisis more aware of the problems of sustainability.

The way forward

We next move from the immediate crisis to the medium term. Where is the world headed and how should we deal with the new world? Arguably, that two sectors that will emerge larger and stronger in the post-pandemic world are: digital technology and outsourcing, and healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

The last 9 months of the pandemic have been a huge training ground for people in the use of digital technology—Zoom, WebEx, digital finance, and many others. This learning-by-doing exercise is likely to give a big boost to outsourcing, which has the potential to help countries like India, the Philippines, and South Africa.

Globalization may see a short-run retreat but, we believe, it will come back with a vengeance. Nations that build walls to keep out goods, people and talent will get out-competed by other nations in the product market. This realization will make most countries reverse their knee-jerk anti-globalization; and the ones that do not will cease to be important global players. Either way, globalization will be back on track and with a much greater amount of outsourcing.

To return, more critically this time, to our earlier aside on Ethiopia, its historical and contemporary record on tampering with internet connectivity 9 in an attempt to muzzle inter-ethnic tensions and political dissent will not serve it well in such a post-pandemic scenario. This is a useful reminder for all emerging market economies.

We hope that human beings will emerge from this crisis more aware of the problems of sustainability. This could divert some demand from luxury goods to better health, and what is best described as “creative consumption”: art, music, and culture. 10 The former will mean much larger healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors.

But to take advantage of these new opportunities, nations will need to navigate the current predicament so that they have a viable economy once the pandemic passes. Thus it is important to be able to control the pandemic while keeping the economy open. There is some emerging literature 11 on this, but much more is needed. This is a governance challenge of a kind rarely faced, because the pandemic has disrupted normal markets and there is need, at least in the short run, for governments to step in to fill the caveat.

Emerging economies will have to devise novel governance strategies for doing this double duty of tamping down on new infections without strident controls on economic behavior and without blindly imitating Europe and America.

Here is an example. One interesting opportunity amidst this chaos is to tap into the “resource” of those who have already had COVID-19 and are immune, even if only in the short-term—we still have no definitive evidence on the length of acquired immunity. These people can be offered a high salary to work in sectors that require physical interaction with others. This will help keep supply chains unbroken. Normally, the market would have on its own caused such a salary increase but in this case, the main benefit of marshaling this labor force is on the aggregate economy and GDP and therefore is a classic case of positive externality, which the free market does not adequately reward. It is more a challenge of governance. As with most economic policy, this will need careful research and design before being implemented. We have to be aware that a policy like this will come with its risk of bribery and corruption. There is also the moral hazard challenge of poor people choosing to get COVID-19 in order to qualify for these special jobs. Safeguards will be needed against these risks. But we believe that any government that succeeds in implementing an intelligently-designed intervention to draw on this huge, under-utilized resource can have a big, positive impact on the economy 12 .

This is just one idea. We must innovate in different ways to survive the crisis and then have the ability to navigate the new world that will emerge, hopefully in the not too distant future.

Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.” Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.” Prospects 49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.” BioRxiv (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.” Jama 323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

Cite this page

Similar essay samples.

Exploring the relationship between paranormal beliefs and thinking sty...
Workplace Bullying Amongst Faculty and Staff: A Qualitative Study
Evaluating the potential accounting issues raised by a combination of ...
A Case Study of the Assassination of Salman Taseer
Essay on Nursing
Intervention Report To Reduce Alcohol Consumption In A Sample Of 400 O...

CBSE Class 10th
CBSE Class 12th
UP Board 10th
UP Board 12th
Bihar Board 10th
Bihar Board 12th
Top Schools in India
Top Schools in Delhi
Top Schools in Mumbai
Top Schools in Chennai
Top Schools in Hyderabad
Top Schools in Kolkata
Top Schools in Pune
Top Schools in Bangalore

Products & Resources

JEE Main Knockout April
Free Sample Papers
Free Ebooks
NCERT Notes
NCERT Syllabus
NCERT Books
RD Sharma Solutions
Navodaya Vidyalaya Admission 2024-25
NCERT Solutions
NCERT Solutions for Class 12
NCERT Solutions for Class 11
NCERT solutions for Class 10
NCERT solutions for Class 9
NCERT solutions for Class 8
NCERT Solutions for Class 7
JEE Main 2024
JEE Advanced 2024
BITSAT 2024
View All Engineering Exams
Colleges Accepting B.Tech Applications
Top Engineering Colleges in India
Engineering Colleges in India
Engineering Colleges in Tamil Nadu
Engineering Colleges Accepting JEE Main
Top IITs in India
Top NITs in India
Top IIITs in India
JEE Main College Predictor
JEE Main Rank Predictor
MHT CET College Predictor
AP EAMCET College Predictor
GATE College Predictor
KCET College Predictor
JEE Advanced College Predictor
View All College Predictors
JEE Main Question Paper
JEE Main Mock Test
JEE Main Registration
JEE Main Syllabus
Download E-Books and Sample Papers
Compare Colleges
B.Tech College Applications
GATE 2024 Result
MAH MBA CET Exam
View All Management Exams

Colleges & Courses

MBA College Admissions
MBA Colleges in India
Top IIMs Colleges in India
Top Online MBA Colleges in India
MBA Colleges Accepting XAT Score
BBA Colleges in India
XAT College Predictor 2024
SNAP College Predictor
NMAT College Predictor
MAT College Predictor 2024
CMAT College Predictor 2024
CAT Percentile Predictor 2023
CAT 2023 College Predictor
CMAT 2024 Registration
TS ICET 2024 Registration
CMAT Exam Date 2024
MAH MBA CET Cutoff 2024
Download Helpful Ebooks
List of Popular Branches
QnA - Get answers to your doubts
IIM Fees Structure
AIIMS Nursing
Top Medical Colleges in India
Top Medical Colleges in India accepting NEET Score
Medical Colleges accepting NEET
List of Medical Colleges in India
List of AIIMS Colleges In India
Medical Colleges in Maharashtra
Medical Colleges in India Accepting NEET PG
NEET College Predictor
NEET PG College Predictor
NEET MDS College Predictor
DNB CET College Predictor
DNB PDCET College Predictor
NEET Application Form 2024
NEET PG Application Form 2024
NEET Cut off
NEET Online Preparation
Download Helpful E-books
LSAT India 2024
Colleges Accepting Admissions
Top Law Colleges in India
Law College Accepting CLAT Score
List of Law Colleges in India
Top Law Colleges in Delhi
Top Law Collages in Indore
Top Law Colleges in Chandigarh
Top Law Collages in Lucknow

Predictors & E-Books

CLAT College Predictor
MHCET Law ( 5 Year L.L.B) College Predictor
AILET College Predictor
Sample Papers
Compare Law Collages
Careers360 Youtube Channel
CLAT Syllabus 2025
CLAT Previous Year Question Paper
AIBE 18 Result 2023
NID DAT Exam
Pearl Academy Exam

Animation Courses

Animation Courses in India
Animation Courses in Bangalore
Animation Courses in Mumbai
Animation Courses in Pune
Animation Courses in Chennai
Animation Courses in Hyderabad
Design Colleges in India
Fashion Design Colleges in Bangalore
Fashion Design Colleges in Mumbai
Fashion Design Colleges in Pune
Fashion Design Colleges in Delhi
Fashion Design Colleges in Hyderabad
Fashion Design Colleges in India
Top Design Colleges in India
Free Design E-books
List of Branches
Careers360 Youtube channel
NIFT College Predictor
UCEED College Predictor
NID DAT College Predictor
IPU CET BJMC
JMI Mass Communication Entrance Exam
IIMC Entrance Exam
Media & Journalism colleges in Delhi
Media & Journalism colleges in Bangalore
Media & Journalism colleges in Mumbai
List of Media & Journalism Colleges in India
CA Intermediate
CA Foundation
CS Executive
CS Professional
Difference between CA and CS
Difference between CA and CMA
CA Full form
CMA Full form
CS Full form
CA Salary In India

Top Courses & Careers

Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com)
Master of Commerce (M.Com)
Company Secretary
Cost Accountant
Charted Accountant
Credit Manager
Financial Advisor
Top Commerce Colleges in India
Top Government Commerce Colleges in India
Top Private Commerce Colleges in India
Top M.Com Colleges in Mumbai
Top B.Com Colleges in India
IT Colleges in Tamil Nadu
IT Colleges in Uttar Pradesh
MCA Colleges in India
BCA Colleges in India

Diploma Colleges

Top Diploma Colleges in Maharashtra
UPSC IAS 2024
SSC CGL 2024
IBPS RRB 2024
Previous Year Sample Papers
Free Competition E-books
Sarkari Result
QnA- Get your doubts answered
UPSC Previous Year Sample Papers
CTET Previous Year Sample Papers
SBI Clerk Previous Year Sample Papers
NDA Previous Year Sample Papers

Upcoming Events

NDA Application Form 2024
UPSC IAS Application Form 2024
CDS Application Form 2024
CTET Admit card 2024
HP TET Result 2023
SSC GD Constable Admit Card 2024
UPTET Notification 2024
SBI Clerk Result 2024

Other Exams

SSC CHSL 2024
UP PCS 2024
UGC NET 2024
RRB NTPC 2024
IBPS PO 2024
IBPS Clerk 2024
IBPS SO 2024
Top University in USA
Top University in Canada
Top University in Ireland
Top Universities in UK
Top Universities in Australia
Best MBA Colleges in Abroad
Business Management Studies Colleges

Top Countries

Study in USA
Study in UK
Study in Canada
Study in Australia
Study in Ireland
Study in Germany
Study in China
Study in Europe

Student Visas

Student Visa Canada
Student Visa UK
Student Visa USA
Student Visa Australia
Student Visa Germany
Student Visa New Zealand
Student Visa Ireland
CUET PG 2024
IGNOU B.Ed Admission 2024
DU Admission
UP B.Ed JEE 2024
DDU Entrance Exam
IIT JAM 2024
IGNOU Online Admission 2024
Universities in India
Top Universities in India 2024
Top Colleges in India
Top Universities in Uttar Pradesh 2024
Top Universities in Bihar
Top Universities in Madhya Pradesh 2024
Top Universities in Tamil Nadu 2024
Central Universities in India
CUET PG Admit Card 2024
IGNOU Date Sheet
CUET Mock Test 2024
CUET Application Form 2024
CUET PG Syllabus 2024
CUET Participating Universities 2024
CUET Previous Year Question Paper
CUET Syllabus 2024 for Science Students
E-Books and Sample Papers
CUET Exam Pattern 2024
CUET Exam Date 2024
CUET Syllabus 2024
IGNOU Exam Form 2024
IGNOU Result
CUET PG Courses 2024

Engineering Preparation

Knockout JEE Main 2024
Test Series JEE Main 2024
JEE Main 2024 Rank Booster

Medical Preparation

Knockout NEET 2024
Test Series NEET 2024
Rank Booster NEET 2024

Online Courses

JEE Main One Month Course
NEET One Month Course
IBSAT Free Mock Tests
IIT JEE Foundation Course
Knockout BITSAT 2024
Career Guidance Tool

Top Streams

IT & Software Certification Courses
Engineering and Architecture Certification Courses
Programming And Development Certification Courses
Business and Management Certification Courses
Marketing Certification Courses
Health and Fitness Certification Courses
Design Certification Courses

Specializations

Digital Marketing Certification Courses
Cyber Security Certification Courses
Artificial Intelligence Certification Courses
Business Analytics Certification Courses
Data Science Certification Courses
Cloud Computing Certification Courses
Machine Learning Certification Courses
View All Certification Courses
UG Degree Courses
PG Degree Courses
Short Term Courses
Free Courses
Online Degrees and Diplomas
Compare Courses

Top Providers

Coursera Courses
Udemy Courses
Edx Courses
Swayam Courses
upGrad Courses
Simplilearn Courses
Great Learning Courses

Access premium articles, webinars, resources to make the best decisions for career, course, exams, scholarships, study abroad and much more with

Plan, Prepare & Make the Best Career Choices

Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

Construction
Entertainment
Manufacturing
Information Technology

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary.

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive.

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Geotechnical engineer

The role of geotechnical engineer starts with reviewing the projects needed to define the required material properties. The work responsibilities are followed by a site investigation of rock, soil, fault distribution and bedrock properties on and below an area of interest. The investigation is aimed to improve the ground engineering design and determine their engineering properties that include how they will interact with, on or in a proposed construction.

The role of geotechnical engineer in mining includes designing and determining the type of foundations, earthworks, and or pavement subgrades required for the intended man-made structures to be made. Geotechnical engineering jobs are involved in earthen and concrete dam construction projects, working under a range of normal and extreme loading conditions.

Cartographer

How fascinating it is to represent the whole world on just a piece of paper or a sphere. With the help of maps, we are able to represent the real world on a much smaller scale. Individuals who opt for a career as a cartographer are those who make maps. But, cartography is not just limited to maps, it is about a mixture of art , science , and technology. As a cartographer, not only you will create maps but use various geodetic surveys and remote sensing systems to measure, analyse, and create different maps for political, cultural or educational purposes.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Product Manager

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Operations manager.

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Bank Probationary Officer (PO)

Investment director.

An investment director is a person who helps corporations and individuals manage their finances. They can help them develop a strategy to achieve their goals, including paying off debts and investing in the future. In addition, he or she can help individuals make informed decisions.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues.

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

An expert in plumbing is aware of building regulations and safety standards and works to make sure these standards are upheld. Testing pipes for leakage using air pressure and other gauges, and also the ability to construct new pipe systems by cutting, fitting, measuring and threading pipes are some of the other more involved aspects of plumbing. Individuals in the plumber career path are self-employed or work for a small business employing less than ten people, though some might find working for larger entities or the government more desirable.

Construction Manager

Individuals who opt for a career as construction managers have a senior-level management role offered in construction firms. Responsibilities in the construction management career path are assigning tasks to workers, inspecting their work, and coordinating with other professionals including architects, subcontractors, and building services engineers.

Urban Planner

Urban Planning careers revolve around the idea of developing a plan to use the land optimally, without affecting the environment. Urban planning jobs are offered to those candidates who are skilled in making the right use of land to distribute the growing population, to create various communities.

Urban planning careers come with the opportunity to make changes to the existing cities and towns. They identify various community needs and make short and long-term plans accordingly.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description: A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems.

Naval Architect

A Naval Architect is a professional who designs, produces and repairs safe and sea-worthy surfaces or underwater structures. A Naval Architect stays involved in creating and designing ships, ferries, submarines and yachts with implementation of various principles such as gravity, ideal hull form, buoyancy and stability.

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Veterinary Doctor

Pathologist.

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Speech Therapist

Gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

Hospital Administrator

The hospital Administrator is in charge of organising and supervising the daily operations of medical services and facilities. This organising includes managing of organisation’s staff and its members in service, budgets, service reports, departmental reporting and taking reminders of patient care and services.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs.

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Videographer

Multimedia specialist.

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion.

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Linguistic meaning is related to language or Linguistics which is the study of languages. A career as a linguistic meaning, a profession that is based on the scientific study of language, and it's a very broad field with many specialities. Famous linguists work in academia, researching and teaching different areas of language, such as phonetics (sounds), syntax (word order) and semantics (meaning).

Other researchers focus on specialities like computational linguistics, which seeks to better match human and computer language capacities, or applied linguistics, which is concerned with improving language education. Still, others work as language experts for the government, advertising companies, dictionary publishers and various other private enterprises. Some might work from home as freelance linguists. Philologist, phonologist, and dialectician are some of Linguist synonym. Linguists can study French , German , Italian .

Public Relation Executive

Travel journalist.

The career of a travel journalist is full of passion, excitement and responsibility. Journalism as a career could be challenging at times, but if you're someone who has been genuinely enthusiastic about all this, then it is the best decision for you. Travel journalism jobs are all about insightful, artfully written, informative narratives designed to cover the travel industry. Travel Journalist is someone who explores, gathers and presents information as a news article.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product.

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

Merchandiser.

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans.

Metallurgical Engineer

A metallurgical engineer is a professional who studies and produces materials that bring power to our world. He or she extracts metals from ores and rocks and transforms them into alloys, high-purity metals and other materials used in developing infrastructure, transportation and healthcare equipment.

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party.

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

ITSM Manager

Information security manager.

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack

Business Intelligence Developer

Applications for admissions are open..

JEE Main Important Chemistry formulas

As per latest 2024 syllabus. Chemistry formulas, equations, & laws of class 11 & 12th chapters

Aakash iACST Scholarship Test 2024

Get up to 90% scholarship on NEET, JEE & Foundation courses

Resonance Coaching

Enroll in Resonance Coaching for success in JEE/NEET exams

TOEFL ® Registrations 2024

Thinking of Studying Abroad? Think the TOEFL® test. Register now & Save 10% on English Proficiency Tests with Gift Cards

ALLEN JEE Exam Prep

Start your JEE preparation with ALLEN

NEET 2024 Most scoring concepts

Just Study 32% of the NEET syllabus and Score upto 100% marks

Everything about Education

Latest updates, Exclusive Content, Webinars and more.

Download Careers360 App's

Regular exam updates, QnA, Predictors, College Applications & E-books now on your Mobile

Cetifications

We Appeared in

Share full article

Supported by

Student Opinion

How Did the Covid-19 Pandemic Affect You, Your Family and Your Community?

This week is the fourth anniversary of the pandemic. What are your most lasting memories? How did it reshape your life — and the world?

A movie theater marquee with a message saying that events in March are postponed.

By Jeremy Engle

It has been four years since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. The New York Times writes of the anniversary:

Four years ago today, society began to shut down. Shortly after noon Eastern on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid — or “the coronavirus,” then the more popular term — to be a global pandemic. Stocks plummeted in the afternoon. In the span of a single hour that night, President Donald Trump delivered an Oval Office address about Covid, Tom Hanks posted on Instagram that he had the virus and the N.B.A. announced it had canceled the rest of its season. It was a Wednesday, and thousands of schools would shut by the end of the week. Workplaces closed, too. People washed their hands frequently and touched elbows instead of shaking hands (although the C.D.C. continued to discourage widespread mask wearing for several more weeks). The worst pandemic in a century had begun.

For some people, the earliest days of the pandemic may feel like a lifetime ago; for others, it may feel like just yesterday. But for all of us Covid has indelibly changed our lives and the world. What do you remember about the earliest days of the pandemic? When did it first hit home for you? How did it affect you, your family and your community? What lessons did you learn about yourself and the world?

In “ Four Years On, Covid Has Reshaped Life for Many Americans ,” Julie Bosman writes that while the threat of severe illness and death has faded for many people, the pandemic’s effects still linger:

Jessie Thompson, a 36-year-old mother of two in Chicago, is reminded of the Covid-19 pandemic every day. Sometimes it happens when she picks up her children from day care and then lets them romp around at a neighborhood park on the way home. Other times, it’s when she gets out the shower at 7 a.m. after a weekday workout. “I always think: In my past life, I’d have to be on the train in 15 minutes,” said Ms. Thompson, a manager at United Airlines. A hybrid work schedule has replaced her daily commute to the company headquarters in downtown Chicago, giving Ms. Thompson more time with her children and a deeper connection to her neighbors. “The pandemic is such a negative memory,” she said. “But I have this bright spot of goodness from it.” For much of the United States, the pandemic is now firmly in the past, four years to the day that the Trump administration declared a national emergency as the virus spread uncontrollably. But for many Americans, the pandemic’s effects are still a prominent part of their daily lives. In interviews, some people said that the changes are subtle but unmistakable: Their world feels a little smaller, with less socializing and fewer crowds. Parents who began to home-school their children never stopped. Many people are continuing to mourn relatives and spouses who died of Covid or of complications from the coronavirus. The World Health Organization dropped its global health emergency designation in May 2023, but millions of people who survived the virus are suffering from long Covid, a mysterious and frequently debilitating condition that causes fatigue, muscle pain and cognitive decline . One common sentiment has emerged. The changes brought on by the pandemic now feel lasting, a shift that may have permanently reshaped American life.

As part of our coverage of the pandemic’s anniversary, The Times asked readers how Covid has changed their attitudes toward life. Here is what they said:

“I’m a much more grateful person. Life is precious, and I see the beauty in all the little miracles that happen all around me. I’m a humbled human being now. I have more empathy and compassion towards everyone.” — Gil Gallegos, 59, Las Vegas, N.M. “The pandemic has completely changed my approach to educating my child. My spouse and I had never seriously considered home-schooling until March 2020. Now, we wouldn’t have it any other way.” — Kim Harper, 47, Clinton, Md. “I had contamination O.C.D. before the pandemic began. The last four years have been a steady string of my worst fears coming true. I never feel safe anymore. I know very well now that my body can betray me at any time.” — Adelia Brown, 23, Madison, Wis. “I don’t take for granted the pleasure of being around people. Going to a show, a road trip, a restaurant, people watching at the opera. I love it.” — Philip Gunnels, 66, Sugar Land, Texas “My remaining years are limited. On the one hand, I feel cheated out of many experiences I was looking forward to; on the other hand, I do not want to live my remaining years with long Covid. It’s hard.” — Sandra Wulach, 77, Edison, N.J.

Students, read one or both of the articles and then tell us:

How did the Covid-19 pandemic affect you, your family and your community? How did it reshape your life and the world? What are your most lasting memories of this difficult period? What do you want to remember most? What do you want to forget?

How did you change during this time? What did you learn about yourself and about life? What do you wish you knew then that you know now?

Ms. Bosman writes that some of the people she interviewed revealed that four years after the global pandemic began, “Their world feels a little smaller, with less socializing and fewer crowds.” However, Gil Gallegos told The Times: “I’m a much more grateful person. Life is precious, and I see the beauty in all the little miracles that happen all around me. I’m a humbled human being now. I have more empathy and compassion towards everyone.” Which of the experiences shared in the two articles reminded you the most of your own during and after the pandemic and why? How did Covid change your overall outlook on life?

“The last normal day of school.” “The nursing home shut its doors.” “The bride wore Lululemon.” These are just a few quotes from “ When the Pandemic Hit Home ,” an article in which The Times asked readers to share their memories of the world shutting down. Read the article and then tell us about a time when the pandemic hit home for you.

In the last four years, scientists have unraveled some of the biggest mysteries about Covid. In another article , The Times explores many remaining questions about the coronavirus: Are superdodgers real? Is Covid seasonal? And what’s behind its strangest symptoms? Read the article and then tell us what questions you still have about the virus and its effects.

How do you think history books will tell the story of the pandemic? If you were to put together a time capsule of artifacts from this era to show people 100 years from now, what would you include and why? What will you tell your grandchildren about what it was like to live during this time?

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

Governments today are facing serious, seemingly intractable public management issues in the aftermath of COVID-19 that go to the core of effective governance and leadership, testing the very form, structure, and capacity required to meet these problems head-on. Leaders have found it necessary to go beyond established parameters and institutional structures, working across organizational boundaries in pursuit of multilayered, networked approaches that better respond to system and societal shocks brought by the pandemic.

In fall 2020, the IBM Center for The Business of Government initiated a Challenge Grant competition soliciting essays from academics and practitioners describing how government can best transform the way it works, operates, and delivers services to the public in light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Edited by Center Leadership Fellow Michael J. Keegan, COVID-19 and its Impact: Seven Essays on Reframing Government Management, features selected commentary on sustaining transformation and increasing resilience. ICMA's Tad McGalliard, director of research and development, and Laura Goddeeris, director of survey research, are among the contributing authors. Their essay draws upon ICMA survey research in exploring which pandemic-driven innovations and operational changes might prevail in a post-pandemic environment.

Expert Insight

"The key to transformation is not to lose momentum and fall back on the old ways, when potentially innovative practices and programs are still evolving from the crisis." -- Tad McGalliard, ICMA director of research and development

Key takeaways from this report include:

The pandemic accelerated changes in the way government works and delivers services that were already underway. This change has unlocked opportunities to build a new civic future.
Local leaders will need to address numerous policy issues raised by these changes in work environments and service delivery. Fostering a more flexible and outcome-driven culture will contribute to a new model of success for government.
Expectations of individuals and communities will focus on access to continued online services even after conditions merit reopening of government facilities. Building a hybrid operating model to engage with citizens that adopts consistent standards for customer experience will be necessary for successful government performance.
Cities and counties across the country are leading the way in understanding how to deliver COVID and other services to communities in need, who suffer disproportionately during the pandemic.
Governments must anticipate risks and develop data-driven programs to mitigate risks, respond to events, and be resilient in the aftermath of inevitable threats—physical and cyber—that face agencies at all levels.
Unprecedented demand on public procurement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic reveal significant vulnerabilities in government supply chains and procurement processes. The pandemic offers the opportunity to consider how governments can make contracting more resilient going forward.

Essays featured in this compendium:

Five Ways COVID-19 Changes How Local Governments Do Business, by Richard Feiock
The Future of Work in Local Governments Beyond COVID-19, by Sherri Greenberg
Transforming Local Government Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID-19, by Tad McGalliard and Laura Goddeeris
Community Driven Government—Reimagining Systems in a Pandemic, by Maya McKenzie and Gurdeep Gill
COVID-19 and the Resilience Imperative in Public Procurement: Building Back Better, by Zach Huitink
Achieving Supply Chain Immunity: Planning, Preparation, and Coordination in National Emergency Response, by Rob Handfield
Trust and Resilience: How Public Service Principles Encouraged Compliance with COVID-19 Public Health Guidelines in New Zealand, by Rodney Scott and Eleanor Merton

You may be interested in related resources from ICMA survey research:

COVID-19 Impacts on Local Governments (complete survey summary), July 2020
New ICMA Survey Shows Depth of Economic Downturn for Cities and Counties, July 2020
New Data Estimates Local Governments Will Spend Up to $20 Billion On COVID-19 Actions, March 2020
Government Technology Solutions Survey (complete survey summary), 2017

New, Reduced Membership Dues

A new, reduced dues rate is available for CAOs/ACAOs, along with additional discounts for those in smaller communities, has been implemented. Learn more and be sure to join or renew today!

SUGGESTED TOPICS
The Magazine
Newsletters
Managing Yourself
Managing Teams
Work-life Balance
The Big Idea
Data & Visuals
Reading Lists
Case Selections
HBR Learning
Topic Feeds
Account Settings
Email Preferences

Why Some Companies Grow Amid Uncertainty — and Others Don’t

Simon Freakley
David Garfield

A survey of 3,000 global executives suggests that it’s not strategic thinking that sets them apart. It’s their inclination to move quickly.

When you cannot base strategy on reasonably certain premises — or when those reasonable premises are undone by unforeseeable events — what is a company to do? You still have to make plans, allocate capital, and invest for the future. Some argue that agility is the key to thriving in disruptive times, but if all you do is pivot, you are just going around in circles. The annual AlixPartners Disruption Index surveys 3,000 global executives about what is knocking them sideways. Among other things, it shows that three out of five say that it is increasingly challenging to know which disruptive forces to prioritize. Amid all this, there is a group of companies doing very well: about one in five said their companies lead their industry in revenue growth. In this article, the authors dig into that 2024 data to find out what sets these companies apart, and what other companies can learn from them about setting growth strategy in an uncertain world.

Strategic planning plays a key role in helping companies anticipate and manage business cycles. But forces like emerging digital technologies, climate change, and deglobalization — not to mention “black swan” events like the Covid-19 pandemic and wars — have turned a rolling sea into a choppy one, where companies are beset by currents, crosscurrents, riptides, and squalls. This multiplicity of related, unrelated, and inter-related difficulties have one thing in common: They are unpredictable.

SF Simon Freakley is the Chief Executive Officer of AlixPartners, a post he has held since 2015. He is based in New York.
David Garfield is a Chicago-based partner and managing director of AlixPartners, and the global leader for the firm’s industry practices.

Partner Center

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
Wiley - PMC COVID-19 Collection

The coronavirus ( COVID ‐19) pandemic's impact on mental health

Bilal javed.

1 Faculty of Sciences, PMAS Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi Pakistan

2 Roy & Diana Vagelos Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA

Abdullah Sarwer

3 Nawaz Sharif Medical College, University of Gujrat, Gujrat Pakistan

4 Department of General Medicine, Allama Iqbal Memorial Teaching Hospital, Sialkot Pakistan

Erik B. Soto

5 Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, USA

Zia‐ur‐Rehman Mashwani

Throughout the world, the public is being informed about the physical effects of SARS‐CoV‐2 infection and steps to take to prevent exposure to the coronavirus and manage symptoms of COVID‐19 if they appear. However, the effects of this pandemic on one's mental health have not been studied at length and are still not known. As all efforts are focused on understanding the epidemiology, clinical features, transmission patterns, and management of the COVID‐19 outbreak, there has been very little concern expressed over the effects on one's mental health and on strategies to prevent stigmatization. People's behavior may greatly affect the pandemic's dynamic by altering the severity, transmission, disease flow, and repercussions. The present situation requires raising awareness in public, which can be helpful to deal with this calamity. This perspective article provides a detailed overview of the effects of the COVID‐19 outbreak on the mental health of people.

1. INTRODUCTION

A pandemic is not just a medical phenomenon; it affects individuals and society and causes disruption, anxiety, stress, stigma, and xenophobia. The behavior of an individual as a unit of society or a community has marked effects on the dynamics of a pandemic that involves the level of severity, degree of flow, and aftereffects. 1 Rapid human‐to‐human transmission of the SARS‐CoV‐2 resulted in the enforcement of regional lockdowns to stem the further spread of the disease. Isolation, social distancing, and closure of educational institutes, workplaces, and entertainment venues consigned people to stay in their homes to help break the chain of transmission. 2 However, the restrictive measures undoubtedly have affected the social and mental health of individuals from across the board. 3

As more and more people are forced to stay at home in self‐isolation to prevent the further flow of the pathogen at the societal level, governments must take the necessary measures to provide mental health support as prescribed by the experts. Professor Tiago Correia highlighted in his editorial as the health systems worldwide are assembling exclusively to fight the COVID‐19 outbreak, which can drastically affect the management of other diseases including mental health, which usually exacerbates during the pandemic. 4 The psychological state of an individual that contributes toward the community health varies from person‐to‐person and depends on his background and professional and social standings. 5

Quarantine and self‐isolation can most likely cause a negative impact on one's mental health. A review published in The Lancet said that the separation from loved ones, loss of freedom, boredom, and uncertainty can cause a deterioration in an individual's mental health status. 6 To overcome this, measures at the individual and societal levels are required. Under the current global situation, both children and adults are experiencing a mix of emotions. They can be placed in a situation or an environment that may be new and can be potentially damaging to their health. 7

2. CHILDREN AND TEENS AT RISK

Children, away from their school, friends, and colleagues, staying at home can have many questions about the outbreak and they look toward their parents or caregivers to get the answer. Not all children and parents respond to stress in the same way. Kids can experience anxiety, distress, social isolation, and an abusive environment that can have short‐ or long‐term effects on their mental health. Some common changes in children's behavior can be 8 :

Excessive crying and annoying behavior
Increased sadness, depression, or worry
Difficulties with concentration and attention
Changes in, or avoiding, activities that they enjoyed in the past
Unexpected headaches and pain throughout their bodies
Changes in eating habits

To help offset negative behaviors, requires parents to remain calm, deal with the situation wisely, and answer all of the child's questions to the best of their abilities. Parents can take some time to talk to their children about the COVID‐19 outbreak and share some positive facts, figures, and information. Parents can help to reassure them that they are safe at home and encourage them to engage in some healthy activities including indoor sports and some physical and mental exercises. Parents can also develop a home schedule that can help their children to keep up with their studies. Parents should show less stress or anxiety at their home as children perceive and feel negative energy from their parents. The involvement of parents in healthy activities with their children can help to reduce stress and anxiety and bring relief to the overall situation. 9

3. ELDERS AND PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES AT RISK

Elderly people are more prone to the COVID‐19 outbreak due to both clinical and social reasons such as having a weaker immune system or other underlying health conditions and distancing from their families and friends due to their busy schedules. According to medical experts, people aged 60 or above are more likely to get the SARS‐CoV‐2 and can develop a serious and life‐threatening condition even if they are in good health. 10

Physical distancing due to the COVID‐19 outbreak can have drastic negative effects on the mental health of the elderly and disabled individuals. Physical isolation at home among family members can put the elderly and disabled person at serious mental health risk. It can cause anxiety, distress, and induce a traumatic situation for them. Elderly people depend on young ones for their daily needs, and self‐isolation can critically damage a family system. The elderly and disabled people living in nursing homes can face extreme mental health issues. However, something as simple as a phone call during the pandemic outbreak can help to console elderly people. COVID‐19 can also result in increased stress, anxiety, and depression among elderly people already dealing with mental health issues.

Family members may witness any of the following changes to the behavior of older relatives 11 ;

Irritating and shouting behavior
Change in their sleeping and eating habits
Emotional outbursts

The World Health Organization suggests that family members should regularly check on older people living within their homes and at nursing facilities. Younger family members should take some time to talk to older members of the family and become involved in some of their daily routines if possible. 12

4. HEALTH WORKERS AT RISK

Doctors, nurses, and paramedics working as a front‐line force to fight the COVID‐19 outbreak may be more susceptible to develop mental health symptoms. Fear of catching a disease, long working hours, unavailability of protective gear and supplies, patient load, unavailability of effective COVID‐19 medication, death of their colleagues after exposure to COVID‐19, social distancing and isolation from their family and friends, and the dire situation of their patients may take a negative toll of the mental health of health workers. The working efficiency of health professionals may decrease gradually as the pandemic prevails. Health workers should take short breaks between their working hours and deal with the situation calmly and in a relaxed manner. 5

5. STIGMATIZATION

Generally, people recently released from quarantine can experience stigmatization and develop a mix of emotions. Everyone may feel differently and have a different welcome by society when they come out of quarantine. People who recently recovered may have to exercise social distancing from their family members, friends, and relatives to ensure their family's safety because of unprecedented viral nature. Different age groups respond to this social behavior differently, which can have both short‐ and long‐term effects. 1

Health workers trying to save lives and protect society may also experience social distancing, changes in the behavior of family members, and stigmatization for being suspected of carrying COVID‐19. 6 Previously infected individuals and health professionals (dealing pandemic) may develop sadness, anger, or frustration because friends or loved ones may have unfounded fears of contracting the disease from contact with them, even though they have been determined not to be contagious. 5

However, the current situation requires a clear understanding of the effects of the recent outbreak on the mental health of people of different age groups to prevent and avoid the COVID‐19 pandemic.

6. TAKE HOME MESSAGE

Understanding the effects of the COVID‐19 outbreak on the mental health of various populations are as important as understanding its clinical features, transmission patterns, and management.
Spending time with family members including children and elderly people, involvement in different healthy exercises and sports activities, following a schedule/routine, and taking a break from traditional and social media can all help to overcome mental health issues.
Public awareness campaigns focusing on the maintenance of mental health in the prevailing situation are urgently needed.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare no potential conflict of interest.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

B.J. and A.S. devised the study. B.J. collected and analyzed the data and wrote the first draft. E.B.S. edited and revised the manuscript. A.S. and Z.M. provided useful information. All the authors contributed to the subsequent drafts. The authors reviewed and endorsed the final submission.

Javed B, Sarwer A, Soto EB, Mashwani Z‐R. The coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic's impact on mental health . Int J Health Plann Mgmt . 2020; 35 :993–996. 10.1002/hpm.3008 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

MSU Extension 4-H Animal Science

Two 4-h animal science events made their return in 2024.

Autumn Converse <[email protected]> , Michigan State University Extension - March 28, 2024

4-H Animal Science Career Quest returned after a year off and the 4-H Spring Livestock Workshop returned for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic in a new format.

Youth wrapping bandage around a stuffed animal.

For many 4-H youth, participation in statewide programs is an influential part of their learning experience. Two of Michigan’s impactful statewide 4-H animal science events made their return in the early months of 2024. 4-H Animal Science Career Quest occurred on Saturday, February 17, and the 4-H Spring Livestock Workshop was held on Saturday, March 2, both on the campus of Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing.

4-H Animal Science Career Quest is a career exploration event for middle and high school-aged youth who are interested in working in various animal-related fields. Throughout the day, youth attend breakout sessions in areas that interest them. In 2024, the topics of these breakout sessions included:

Species sessions: beef, small ruminants, swine, dairy, equine, companion animals and poultry.
Learning labs: building skills for your future, Leader Dogs for the Blind, livestock judging, horse judging, dairy judging, dairy nutrition, veterinary medicine and nursing, horse management and more.
Discipline sessions: behavior and welfare, health, reproduction, nutrition, and education and outreach.

4-H Animal Science Career Quest gives youth an opportunity to see the breadth of opportunities available to them that involve working with animals. They can also learn more about the post-secondary education options that MSU offers and connect with faculty and staff from the MSU Department of Animal Science and College of Veterinary Medicine . This was the second time that Michigan 4-H offered this program. This year, the program saw over 80 participants from across the state.

The 4-H Spring Livestock Workshop also returned in 2024 after a long pause. This program is designed for 4-H youth and volunteers in beef, sheep, swine and goat projects. It gives participants an opportunity to take a deep dive into their projects and other topics like livestock judging, marketing their livestock project, animal nutrition, animal reproduction and more.

Prior to 2024, the last time this program occurred was February 2020, right before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Statewide Livestock Programming Committee planned a workshop for 2023 and registration filled to capacity, but ultimately it was canceled due to a major snowstorm. This year it finally returned, and the program saw more than 80 participants from across Michigan.

These are just two of the many programs offered by the Michigan 4-H animal science team. If you are interested in learning more about statewide 4-H learning experiences like these that are offered throughout the year, check out the Michigan State University Extension 4-H events calendar .

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension . For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu . To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters . To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts , or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

Did you find this article useful?

Find your spark with image of 4-H clover.

Ready to grow with 4-H? Sign up today!

new - method size: 3 - Random key: 2, method: personalized - key: 2

You Might Also Be Interested In

MSU researcher awarded five-year, $2.5 million grant to develop risk assessment training program

Published on October 13, 2020

MSU Product Center helps Michigan food entrepreneurs survive and thrive throughout pandemic

Published on August 31, 2021

Protecting Michigan’s environment and wildlife through the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program

Published on September 1, 2021

MSU Extension to undertake three-year, $7 million vaccination education effort

Published on August 17, 2021

MSU to study precision livestock farming adoption trends in U.S. swine industry

Published on March 15, 2021

MSU research team receives USDA grant to evaluate effectiveness, cost of new blueberry pest management strategies

Published on February 19, 2021

4-h animal evaluation
4-h animal science
4-h beef production & management
4-h companion animals
4-h horses & ponies
4-h sheep production & management
4-h swine production & management
4-h veterinary science
msu extension
4-h animal evaluation,
4-h animal science,
4-h beef production & management,
4-h companion animals,
4-h horses & ponies,
4-h sheep production & management,
4-h swine production & management,
4-h veterinary science,

IMAGES

Essay on Time Management for Students
Tips on How to Write an Effective Time Management Essay
Our Pandemic Year—A COVID-19 Timeline > News > Yale Medicine
"My Experience During COVID-19" by Robert Goldsberry
≫ Nationalism and Covid-19 Pandemic Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com
⇉The Importance of Time Management for Students Essay Example

COMMENTS

PDF Time Management: In the Time of COVID
Remember, Time Management IS Stress Management! Make a To-do list every day, prioritizing the most important tasks at the top. Create a daily schedule—include time to exercise, study, sleep, eat—even if you do not have any synchronous classes to atend virtually. Creating structure to your day can help you stay on track and be productive.
Effective Time Management While Working Remotely During The COVID-19
Be sure to lay out clear office hours with your manager. Work to have the focus be on results vs. visible time on the computer. Prioritize energy management. Being sensitive to one another's ...
Time Management During Covid-19 Pandemic
Time Management During Covid-19 Pandemic. M. Sari, Ilhamdaniah, T. Megayanti. Published 2021. Education. Students' time management was one of the factors contributing to students' learning outcomes. Time management during a forced-distance-learning was particularly interesting to be studied, since students were practicing it independently ...
Research Roundup: How the Pandemic Changed Management
To understand such changes, we recently reviewed 69 articles focused on the management implications of the Covid-19 pandemic. These papers were published between March 2020 and July 2023 in top ...
PDF COVID-19 and the Workplace: Implications, Issues, and Insights for
Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. ... Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management . SC Johnson College of Business . Cornell University . email: [email protected] . COVID-19 and the Workplace 2 : 1 : ... COVID-19 is both a global health crisis and an ...
PDF Time Management Behaviour During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Focus on
The research objectives of this study are: 1. To examine the time management behaviour in terms of time planning, time attitudes and time wasters among undergraduate students owing to the shift in the learning process and environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2.
How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay
Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form. To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App ...
PDF Adapting workplace learning in the time of coronavirus
March 2020. As businesses around the world postpone and cancel in-person meetings in response to the novel coronavirus (or SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19 disease, workplace learning is emerging as one of the earliest and hardest-hit business activities. Based on our observations as of early March, roughly one-half of in-person programs ...
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): A literature review
In early December 2019, an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), occurred in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. On January 30, 2020 the World Health Organization declared the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
12 moving essays about life during coronavirus
The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good ...
Crisis Management in the COVID-19 Era
Crisis Management in the COVID-19 Era. An Audio Interview with Professor Mary Waller. featuring Mary Waller and Mark Rennella. June 24, 2020. Justin Case / Getty Images. Share this article. N o business is immune from crises—whether facing external forces such as the current health pandemic or situations of an organization's own making.
COVID-19 Was a Turning Point for Health
This final section looks to the future from the perspective of the COVID-19 moment, with an eye toward using the lessons of that time to create a healthier world, as in Chapter 50, which addresses ...
COVID-19 outbreak: How do human resource management practices affect
Abstract. The study examines the effect of human resource practices (HRPs), including ability, motivation, and opportunity practices, on employee well-being (EWB) in the Malaysian environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research surveyed 154 service sector employees at Klang Valley, Malaysia. The data were analysed using structural ...
Editor in Chief's Introduction to Essays on the Impact of COVID-19 on
I issued an invitation to the Associate Editors to submit a brief (3000 word) essay on the implications of COVID-19 on work and/or workers with an emphasis on research in the area. At the same time, a group of international scholars was coming together to consider the effects of COVID-19 on unemployment in several countries, and I invited that ...
9 Ways to Manage Your Time During a Pandemic
Here are nine ways to manage your time during a pandemic. Thankfully, you can get back on track. It's not going to happen overnight. But, with a little trial and error, as well as patience, you can once again master the art of time management. And, here are nine ways to help you get there. 1. Prioritize your health and well-being with mico ...
The complexity of managing COVID-19: How important is good ...
This essay is part of "Reimagining the global economy: Building back better in a post-COVID-19 world," a collection of 12 essays presenting new ideas to guide policies and shape debates in a ...
Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic
Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic. Published: 2021/11/08. Number of words: 1220. As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the ...
Covid 19 Essay in English
COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time.
An Introduction to COVID-19
By the time of 2nd week of April 2020, this COVID-19 cases exceeded 18,738,58, although more than 1,160,45 deaths were recorded worldwide and United States of America became the global epicentre of coronavirus. More than one-third of the COVID-19 instances are outside of China. Past pandemics that have existed in the past decade or so, like ...
Assessing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Project Management
This research paper explores the impact of COVID-19 and the shift to remote work. on project management practices across multiple industries. Through interviews. with project managers, the study finds that companies with pre-existing remote. work policies were better equipped to handle the transition to remote work.
How Did the Covid-19 Pandemic Affect You, Your Family and Your
It has been four years since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. The New York Times writes of the anniversary:. Four years ago today, society began ...
COVID-19 and Its Impact: Seven Essays on Reframing Government ...
A special report, COVID19 and its Impact: Seven Essays on Reframing Government Management and Operations with essays from academic and government experts around the country. Governments today are facing serious, seemingly intractable public management issues in the aftermath of COVID-19 that go to the core of effective governance and leadership ...
Why Some Companies Grow Amid Uncertainty
But forces like emerging digital technologies, climate change, and deglobalization — not to mention "black swan" events like the Covid-19 pandemic and wars — have turned a rolling sea into ...
Management of the COVID-19 pandemic: challenges, practices, and
This study was conducted after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in September 2020 and was completed in November 2020, (total time frame for data collection of about 5 weeks). The researchers used open-ended questions to encourage discussion with the interviewees and obtain more in-depth information.
Investing Lessons From The Covid-19 Pandemic
The WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The very next day, the S&P 500 fell by 9.5%, making it the sixth worst trading day in the index's history on a percentage basis.
The coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic's impact on mental health
Physical distancing due to the COVID‐19 outbreak can have drastic negative effects on the mental health of the elderly and disabled individuals. Physical isolation at home among family members can put the elderly and disabled person at serious mental health risk. It can cause anxiety, distress, and induce a traumatic situation for them.
Two 4-H animal science events made their return in 2024
4-H Animal Science Career Quest returned after a year off and the 4-H Spring Livestock Workshop returned for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic in a new format. During the veterinary medicine and nursing session at 4-H Animal Science Career Quest, youth practiced their bandaging skills on a stuffed turtle. Photo by Autumn Converse