It usually takes an unexpected shift in life to start appreciating what you have considered to be yours and for granted. Being able to move around freely and visit whomever you wanted used to be a freedom that we used to consider a given.

Then Coronavirus came to our lives and demonstrated that everything can change in a number of days or even hours. Our reality is much more limited these days, we are staying at home and we have limited access to the outside world in a desperate effort to slow down the infection curve of a deadly virus. This virus overwhelms our local health systems, which are found to be totally unprepared for such a situation. The measures taken to prevent the outbreak in Cyprus are taken in a desperate approach to saving us from the mass spread of the virus to the general population. An uncontrolled spread of the virus will crush our healthcare system which has a capacity of around 120 intensive care beds. This means that when we eventually hit around 3000 simultaneous active coronavirus cases and with a potential of 4% of the infected in need of respirators, we will reach the full healthcare system’s capacity. And I am excluding doctors, nurses & hospitals from the equation.

Now, I’m not an expert to judge whether this is satisfactory especially considering that most of our hospitals are already closed down because the coronavirus already infected health care professionals but, I believe that anyone could easily argue that the picture painted is not very positive. What’s clear however is that the current restrictive measures are not going to be lifted anytime soon and a return to “normalcy” is likely to be several months away.

Therefore, I wanted to focus on something else that is equally taken for granted in our lives and that is the internet technology. Can anyone imagine how life would be these days if we did not have access to the world through the use of the internet? Did we consider that the only reason why we could keep most of the jobs is that we can work from home during this period? (Remember that after this outbreak is over and your child gets sick and needs to stay at home). Have we considered that all the platforms we use to stream content from like Netflix and YouTube are all in need of an internet connection? Have we taken the time to think that all social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and all messaging platform like Messenger, WhatsApp and Viber all require an internet connection? Imagine a reality where we would be limited in our homes with no internet availability.

Can you think of a day with no way to video call your loved ones, to browse online news and social media, to stream your favorite series and movies, to be unable to enhance your reality and feed your brain with stimulation?

Coronavirus is giving us the opportunity to appreciate more the advances and luxuries that we take for granted, first being the basic needs of a shelter (a home), clean running water, a bed to sleep in, and food to eat and then electrical and electronic appliances which transform our reality into something more than what we could imagine having in a place made of concrete and walls. Let’s all take the time to reflect and appreciate how lucky we are to be in this situation because as we have all experienced, everything can change in a matter of seconds!

P.S. I’m also including a picture of Google’s global trends right now and to confirm that Coronavirus has united the search world and is the most searched global virus term of the year so far and possibly the decade!