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Showing posts with the label quarantine

The COVID-Restaurant Paradox

 The restaurant paradox on COVID.  You are quarantined or sequestered. Restaurants are closed. You crave social contact from the outside or with friends. You invite people to your home. No masks, close contact, loud voices, belching and sputtering all night - like for three-four hours.  COVID is in the air. Elsewhere else you go to a restaurant. Masks are worn to the table and from. You are separated from other guests. The conversation is subdued. In one-two hours, your social need is satisfied. You go home mostly safe, happy. ----------------------------------------------- On knowledge .  An investment in knowledge sits idly by until just that moment it's needed. Then, big interest is paid – sometimes in money and satisfaction but better in tickets to ride. If your plan is to learn it when you need it, you’re running late. For one thing, if you don’t know it, you will not know you need to know it.

Post COVID

  Everyone seems to think this pandemic will make big changes, especially in education. Not so. In education, most students need in person teaching*, partly because they can't read, and can't think, and can't focus, and can't evaluate. In business, those dreaming of an at-home career will be passed over for advancement. In social life, those dreaming of chat rooms will be chatting with themselves. A life of hiding will distort humanity in no good way I can think of. People want to get back to their lives, the lives they liked. People are outrageously social. * I can speak with authority as I've taught 20 years online courses.

Keywords Today

A few weeks ago the keywords in society were well known.   Among them were, organic, green, carbon footprint, worker, shareholder value, new capitalism, social justice, healthcare, impeachment, big data, electric cars, and global.  The new keywords have changed to healthcare, quarantine, sequester, infection, risk, pandemic, survival, vulnerability, lock down, separation, work-at-home, coronavirus, school closures, work-place closures, isolation, and more. In just a month, the axis of the world has tilted from the direction of selective prosperity to a direction of possible depression and decline. Adjustment is difficult. Reconciliation is difficult. Acceptance is nearly impossible.