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COVID-19: Positive points

3 April 2020

Pandemics are bad, as a rule. But there are silver linings, too. In this episode, I will look at some of the positive things that are coming out of coronavirus so that we can fight that negative bias that anxiety brings to our lives.

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Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Hey, it's Chris. In this series, we're looking at the psychology surrounding COVID-19 and how to manage our mental health. And in today's episode I wanted to look at some of the positive things that are coming out of a pandemic because obviously we think of it as a really bad thing. We think of it as killing people and ruining our lives and disrupting our plans and damaging society and ruining the economy. But actually there's some really great stuff coming out. Anxiety is a bias. It makes it look all the negative stuff. We forget the positive stuff and that is positive stuff. And so I just want to covert some of that. And one of my first things, which controversial but I'm going for it is I think altruism is prevailing. A lot of people on Facebook angry about people being selfish and panic by, I explained in a previous video why I don't think that's going on.

Speaker 1 (00:57):

I think that's a social problem the way supermarkets operate, but actually I think people are being genuinely nice. Like you hear the stories about all these people putting notes up, them getting food in for that neighbor, seen friends in Facebook that are self isolating, 10 over friends below them saying, do you need anything? Can I drop anything round? Can I help you? Lots of good stuff coming out there of people helping each other and similarly the media putting out these scare stories about loads of people going to the beach or having barbecues or whatever. Actually if you go, I've been out exercising as he should be doing and the roads are really quiet. People are not going out. Occasionally I see a couple of groups, most people going out solo as they should be and people are staying at home and isolating themselves and taking that inconvenience in their own lives to keep vulnerable and elderly people safe.

Speaker 1 (02:00):

Loads of people being known basically like the media don't tend to report in that they tend to report on the people causing problems that people spreading the virus but not on the fact that most people are following their social distancing wills and being nice and keeping people safe. People are coming together as a community. I hear there's so many like virtual pub quizzes going on and people having Pope nights where they all get on like a Facebook live or a WhatsApp chat or whatever the young people use and they've all got a bottle of beer or a soft drink at home and I want just chatting away and having a a night from their own home. Similarly, like I do a lot of triathlon, my triathlon club has moved all its group workouts onto virtual platforms, so we all put our headsets on, we all get our indoor turbo trainers on and we go for a cycle together chatting away.

Speaker 1 (02:55):

All in our own homes. People are finding ways to socialize without compromising the social distancing rules and it would benefit certainly in the UK, I don't know if right on around the world, but there's literally tens of thousands of jobs being created by supermarkets. Even though there's all these companies putting people on furlough, they're all getting snapped up. You can go to a supermarket now and within 12 hours you'll be hired, you'll be booked in to do your training and you'll start stacking shelves, helping take deliveries to people, loads of jobs being created to help strengthen the food supply given all the issues that we're having around there. Um, it turns out that we can work from home and the, all those meetings we had to sat through weren't necessary and could have been emails. And that was great because the genie's back in the box and the next time that employers say, no, you have to come into the office.

Speaker 1 (03:52):

No, you have to come into this mandatory meeting. We don't know that they're lying and they can't go back on that. We now know that it's not the case. We now know that if you have some kind of disability, which means you can't leave the house, you actually can work from home because we're all working from home and we'll get a better fair and more understanding society out of it. Because if you can prove it in a crisis, you can do it all the time. The same thing where governments are stepping in across the world and paying people's wages and a lot of, especially right wing governments for years have said, there's no money. There isn't a magic money tree. We can't just pay everyone's wages. If someone's poor that's around fault and they deserve to go hungry, well we now know that's not true and that our government can step in and make sure that all of its citizens can eat and can drink and can be fine, and again, it can't put that genie back in the box.

Speaker 1 (04:52):

We'll have a better world going forward because we now know that all of that's possible. We're seeing a massive reduction in pollution. Again, we've don't seem to be able to hit these climate change CO2 reduction targets that we need to literally save the world, but actually now there's a pandemic going on. All flights are canceled, people aren't driving anymore. There's a massive reduction in pollution of industries of shit down and we're saving the planet and it's literally, it's been a couple of weeks and the planets all bring, there'd been some really nice news reports, but all the wildlife returning, there were dolphins in the canals of Venice. Again, that's my favourite example so far is that now all the boats and stuff has stopped and people aren't moving around. The dolphins have come back. How cool is that? And uh, one final thing is Corona beer, which is obviously nothing in no way related to coronavirus.

Speaker 1 (05:49):

Everyone stopped buying it, uh, because it's got the same name and that's I, it sounds like people being stupid. Think as a psychologist there is a, there is a bit of more basic association going there. But the important thing is you can buy Corona BIA at a massive discount. It's on sale everywhere because Corona are desperate to keep selling their products. So if you like, if you like their lager, now's a great time to buy it in bulk. So there's a couple of positives among all of the constantly media report, negatives that good things will come with this. I think that we will get through this and we will end up with a better world because of it. So I'm making plenty of these episode shows and I hope to see you soon. Hit subscribe, stay safe, and yeah, I hope you're having a great day given the circumstances.