What the world of Micronesia looks like: POST COVID-19 pandemic

What will this world look like after suffering the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic?  What will Micronesia look like once we open our doors? When the viral "dust" has settled, what will Micronesia look like?

What lessons will be learned?

I hope lessons will be learned and perspectives changed for the better.  One thing we have been inundated with, which should already be commonplace, is hand-washing.  This is a good lesson learned.  Our hands touch so many things over the course of twenty-four hours (even on our own bodies) that it's a wonder we don't all live in constant states of sniffles and coughs.  All hail our immune systems!

What else? Here in Micronesia, despite living in a COVID-19 free country, our people continue to leave to enter the ring of infections outside.  This is something that is most interesting.  One would think, with the deaths and lock-downs in the USA (where most if not all Micronesians go), and the advice to stay home, one would stay home? I guess the lesson learned here is that you can't keep a Micronesian down.  When they want to go, they will go.  Come hell or global pandemic, they are off! 

Another lesson learned is that the layers of Government in the (FSM) Federated States of Micronesia, sometimes... not all the time! Don't necessarily serve the people they are meant to serve.  There has always been a miscommunication, lack of coordination and even overstepping of jurisdictions in the FSM between the National, State, and Municipal Governments.  During this pandemic era, there seemed to have been a deliberate attempt at all of these! Not pointing any fingers because no one has ever encountered this sort of issue in recent memory, so I'm sure it was just being caught in an unknown situation.  Still, these issues were magnified and put on the front burner.  A good lesson to learn, for every organization that has similar or even remotely similar duties and responsibilities would be to communicate, communicate and communicate.  

After a pandemic 100 years ago

How did the work look after the Spanish Influenza Pandemic hit in the early part of the 20th century?  Almost 100 years before the COVID-19 pandemic?  Some historians have said, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic never really ended.  We just sort of got used to it.  It became a seasonal or annual event. This may very well be the case for us in the 21st century.  A reminder that what is unseen can be just as dangerous as those things visible.  A lesson learned on hygiene, crowds, and keeping that immune system strong against those unseen invaders.  

Hope and Change

I hope and believe we can learn many good lessons.  To live a cleaner, healthier life.  To be grateful for many things we take for granted like visiting family, going to the store, and even walking down the street.  To work together, in the government and at all levels, with people face to face, with sincerity and unity.  To understand that, sometimes we have to adjust to the world around us and that change is always going to come.  It may be painful, scary, but change soon becomes the norm.  Until change comes again.  

Image by Don Stelmaszek from Pixabay

Image by Harish Sharma from Pixabay