COVID-19 and the ‘New Conventional World’

by Jeremy Haddad

If you have recently dreamt of Superman flying through the sky sprinkling syringes of vaccines, you are probably not the only one. Although, as we all know, life’s no comic despite how much we sometimes want it to be. A cure to uncertainty or a solution to save the world from economic distress and unconventional human behaviour is what we all want; it’s what we need. The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t shown us the mere fragility of business and society, but rather exposed the innovative ways in which we respond to uncertainty.

We once lived a structured lifestyle revolving around time; now, our lives are dictated by the hobbies we have learned or the obscure talents we never knew we had. Whether we’ve noticed or not, how we learn and entertain ourselves, amongst other facets of our lives, has changed. We no longer travel to work as frequently nor dine out with family and friends ever since the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Like everything, this change has forced businesses to innovate, with 38% having already altered their business models.

COVID-19 has forced businesses to rebel through contingency to gain an upper hand on a seemingly uncontrollable outbreak. Whether it be through embracing automation or reallocating resources, businesses have had to adapt their operations whilst experiencing some of the worst from this pandemic, with 73% of Australian businesses accessing support measures.

For now, we remain diligent as we continue to live our lives while what first seemed like ‘filler news’ has gone on to challenge what we once thought was normal. In fact, our dreams of Superman may be what gets us through this, for Superman himself said: “so many of our dreams seem impossible, they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will they soon seem inevitable”.