Читать книгу The New Normal in IT - Gregory S. Smith - Страница 12

As I start writing this text, there have been 144,108,248 Covid-19 cases globally with 31,873,253 in the United States and 3,062,945 deaths globally and 569,530 in the United States, respectively (see Exhibit 1.1).² I am relatively sure, as many public health professionals have discussed in the past several months, that there are far more cases and deaths globally as a result of various factors including improper counting, deaths occurring outside of hospitals, fatalities due to untreated fatal diseases such as cancer going undertreated during the height of the pandemic, and suicides. The global pandemic of 2020–2021 will go down in history as the most devastating impact on human life in our generation. The pandemic will have lasting effects on trade, commerce, travel, human behavior in business operations, and how employees work around the globe going forward.

Combine the likelihood that a fair percentage of the United States and global population will not opt to receive a Covid-19 vaccine with likely future variants that develop that make current vaccines less effective, this pandemic is long from over. CNN recently reported that 40 percent of U.S. Marines have opted to not receive the Covid-19 vaccine.³ The pharmaceutical maker Pfizer, which makes one of the Covid-19 vaccines, recently announced that for people to stay protected, they will likely need another dose within 12 months of their first pair of doses.⁴

Exhibit 1.1 The Johns Hopkins University of Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center

Source: The Johns Hopkins University of Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center.

From a historical perspective, smallpox remains the only human disease to be globally eradicated after killing 300 million people alone in the twentieth century.⁵ It took 184 years from the first-ever vaccine in 1796 to its eradication in 1980.⁶ Polio was almost previously eradicated except in Pakistan and Afghanistan until Covid-19 hit globally, which set back progress in 2020.⁷ However, cases are now on the rise and expected to climb even further in the coming months.⁸ “So far this year officials have tallied more than 200 cases of wild polio and nearly 600 cases of the vaccine-derived form of the disease.”⁹ Most of the vaccine-derived strains of polio are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but now these rogue strains of polio are also turning up across much of sub-Saharan Africa, Yemen, Malaysia, and the Philippines.¹⁰

The combination of individuals opting out of the initial vaccine and those who don't take or have access to recurring booster shots with likely variants of the virus make for a longer-term cyclical Covid-19 transmissible virus. Combine this with the anticipated return of the annual flu virus in the fall and we have all the makings for cyclical resurgence and fear. Thus, the world will be dealing with a Covid-strained virus for years to come and, simply put, businesses, organizations, and universities need to adjust their operating environments including technology strategy to properly adapt and prepare for waves of reoccurrences. From a technology perspective, that includes more cloud-based solutions accessible via mobile devices. The traditional desktop computer will die a slow death as a result of Covid-19 as more organizations' employees leverage all mobile solutions including laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

India experienced a really bad second wave of Covid-19 in April 2021. According to CNN.com, “healthcare and other essential services across India are close to collapse as a second coronavirus wave that started in mid-March tears through the country.”¹¹ The article goes on to report that hospitals are running out of oxygen, beds are running low, and testing is nearly impossible to get.¹²