Lessons learned in the times of COVID-19 
What has the last year taught us and how have these lessons shaped us? We all agree that this has been a trying and challenging time worldwide and we have seen things that we never expected to in our lifetimes.
We have witnessed movies of disasters, diseases and global annihilation and called them fantasy, science fiction and improbable. We have read the history books and were horrified at the depiction of past pandemics and plagues and we thanked God that it happened in another era, to other people and not to us. We thought this because we are the lucky ones, those who lived in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, after the wars, after the epidemics and after the uncertainty, when health and prosperity became the name of the game.
It is clear that we have taken so much for granted and that no amount of research or analysis can predict the future. But the question lies not so much in what took place in the past, but more in how we look at tomorrow, how we protect humankind and nature, and heal the scars that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has hurled at us. This is not something that is going away soon and just as we have learned to work from home, use technology, wear masks — which have become the norm — we must adapt to what will be the new way of living. This will be very different from the one which was forcibly taken away from us.
It is important that we remain positive, and that we reset our priorities starting with being grateful for what we have and not concentrate on what we lack. The world needs to work together to overcome what the history books will eventually write pages and pages on.
We need to help each other on both the individual and global levels and share knowledge, patents and research because only then will there be light at the end of the tunnel.
And this means that a new way of thinking must be exercised, one that goes beyond the moneymaking ideologies of large entities with an insatiable desire for acquisitiveness and profit.
