ICYMI: Fred and I look into our crystal ball and tease out some of the changes we will see in our world that will stay with us post the COVVID19 pandemic
😷Are masks here to stay?
🤧What about Sick Leave policy
♻️Surveillance and Wastewater Monitoring
🏙Building Re-Design
🧠Brain Health Challenges especially for Children
“Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human—however imperfectly—and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.”
Marcus Aurelius
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Lets not be the short term attention span society we have been for other things
Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
Hi, this is Dr. Nick, I’m the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business better health.
Fred Goldstein
And I’m Fred Goldstein with accountable health here helping employers with employee benefit programs and employee health improvement programs. So Nick, what, what does the future look like? This is the prediction episode, where What do you see? Well,
Nick van Terheyden
first of all, it’s bright and airy and delightful. My glass is always full, it’s half full of whiskey, half full of that. And that’s how I like to see the world, I’ve continued to talk about the silver linings of this terrible pandemic that has wrought, you know, just devastation to many people, countries and live. So not to diminish that, but what do we learn? What do we get from it? I think, you know, one of the things that I get repeatedly asked and is worth talking about directly is, am I going to be wearing a mask for the rest of my life? And I think the answer to that is no. And if I was to look at any model to say, where do we see this going? Well, first of all, we’ve got to suppress the virus in sufficient quantity so that it sort of dissipates, and then you just have hotspots so that it no longer becomes this prevalent thing that we have to worry about all the time, which is where we are at the moment. But just look across to our Asian friends. You know, I noticed this when I visited Japan, you see people wearing face coverings. And you know, it’s widely varied, but not everybody. And interestingly, the principle there that I think folks don’t necessarily understand is that they wear them to prevent transmitting to others. So they’re worried about transmitting, and therefore they, you know, so it’s a protection of others. Now, if you’re feeling unwell, you should stay at home. So one of the areas that we might see some positive changes, or change to the sick policy,
which, quite frankly, you know, for the full time that I’ve lived in this country, I have felt compelled to go to work, even if I felt sick, which is a terrible thing to do, because you’re essentially spreading disease. But why do you do that? Well, what happens if you take sick time they take away your vacation time, that doesn’t seem like a really good incentive, because people need that vacation as much as they need their sick time. So hopefully, we’re gonna see some changes. What about you? What do you think
Fred Goldstein
one of the areas that has me concerned over the longer run is, what is the impact that this virus the lockdown to schools remote has had on children? Is this going to be another one of those aces that they now talk about adverse childhood events that the children have gone through, that then come out later in life, and you’re seeing mental health professionals spend a lot more time thinking about that issue. And it’s been really tough on children. So I think the mental health field obviously has gotten a lot more attention now, which is a good thing, we need to talk about brain health as you talk about it and provide those services. And at the same time, this issue of aces, I think, may come up, it’s been a pretty traumatic experience for children not being able to interact with other kids, go to their school, be be doing certain things, clubs, camping, whatever. So I’m a little worried about that. But it’ll be something I think we’re going to have to deal with over the next couple of decades, potentially, I
Nick van Terheyden
am certain that that’s true, just based on the signals that we see the massive increase the demand for those supportive services to really try and address that, and especially in that younger population that I think are much more vulnerable to those kinds of challenges. What about some of the science, the learning? So first off, I would say, wastewater, I think is, you know, we haven’t paid as much attention in this pandemic. But I think there’s been certainly spots where we’ve seen it. We’ve seen some studies. I covered this a long time back. You know, I thought, what a brilliant strategy to look at the drug overdose usage in a city was to go and analyze wastewater for the effluent to see where is taking place not to go punish, but to say we need to focus services on that same thing for disease, we’ve got sort of early warning. And I think we could invest in that. And what we need is an early warning system that allows us to sort of knock these things on their head. And that’s not just, you know, wastewater, but you know, potentially sensors, I’ve seen some sensors that are starting to look at the potential for looking for viruses in the air. I know, that’s just extraordinary to me. So monitoring and surveillance, in a good way, not big brother, but you know, for our benefit.
Fred Goldstein
Absolutely. In your eyes, your discussion of technology fits right in with an area that you’re an expert in. And I’ve dabbled in a bit, which is, this is changing healthcare and the healthcare delivery system. And we saw this incredible surge in the use of telehealth because you couldn’t have these visits, and it’s now dropped off, but it has not returned to where it was before. And people like it now. So I think we’re gonna see these health care transitions as well, in the systems that you and I work in,
Nick van Terheyden
read my lips are not putting that genie back in the boss.
Fred Goldstein
Great point.
Nick van Terheyden
Great point, you know, and then the other thing that I think I hopefully will see is maybe a change to the hermetically sealed buildings that we used to walk in and out of this. I just felt awful to me, and I understand it from an efficiency standpoint, but I always, you know, anytime I pulled a door into a big building, in a way, is like Star Trek, I’m gonna wait a second, what am I getting into here? And I think this pandemic has shown us that, yeah, there was some sense to some of that, but we have to get fresh air. And because guess what fresh air is the magic ingredient in all of this in terms of dissipating this virus?
Fred Goldstein
Absolutely. So we’ll probably see changes in construction in H HVAC systems. And maybe we’ll see more open doors and windows in facilities as well.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah. So I would sort of finish with a Marcus Aurelius quote, you know, not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent, because your days are packed with sort of wise and moral actions. But get back to when you fail, celebrate behaving as a human being, however, in perfectly and fully embrace the pursuit of life, we have learned to really enjoy life, you know, and I’m a big Marcus Aurelius fan. It’s interesting, he wrote this diary that I’m pretty sure he was certain nobody was ever going to read. And it’s loud, like, this important textbook, and, you know, full of wisdom that says, you know, life is,
Fred Goldstein
it’s full of bumps, but that’s part of life. And if there’s one thing that humans have shown is this incredible ability to be resilient. And I think it’ll also allow us to focus more broadly on not just our family or our community or our country, but the world. And take that resilience and make sure that everybody has that opportunity that you talked about, which is to live life fully and enjoy life. So thanks so much. Once again, Nick, this is Fred Goldstein with accountable health. Thank you so much for listening. If you’d like more information, please go to accountable health. llc.com
Nick van Terheyden
and this is Dr. Nick, I’m the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business, better health.
