The hard truth: coronavirus is a pandemic and a 'polymathes'

Covid-19 is a polymath professor. If we anthropomorphize the virus for the sake of illustration then for her to be a true polymath, Professor Covid-19 must not be just a jack-of-all-trades, with a working knowledge about many subjects but a mastery of none… oh, no. She must be an expert in each field with unparalleled skill and insight.

I propose that Covid-19 is one such polymath and we would do well to heed the lessons she has been trying to teach us. When a disease reaches epidemic status, it is capable of enacting real socio-political and socio-economic changes on humanity. Not only have pandemics like Covid-19 killed many people and left many more households devastated by illness, but they have also pointed out weaknesses in the healthcare systems of every nation and therefore; they have helped those nations improve their systems by showing them what is truly important.

Covid-19 also imposed harsh challenges to the business sector by highlighting weaknesses in the supply chain and exacerbating bottlenecks in distribution causing shoppers to stare in disbelief at the empty shelves of their local department store. Meat, bread, toiletries, soda, and other staples have all been limited due to supply-chain failures, panic buying, and short-sightedness as well as government regulations.

Countries with weaker economies and even some developed countries’ governments have been forced to change to prevent failure. France had about 10% of worker absenteeism within an economic year due to influenza (Santos, May & Haimar, 2013). In a world where Professor Covid-19 has forced some countries to deal with worker absenteeism as such high as percentage, business models and governments cannot help but to evolve or die. Professor COVID-19’s assignments on economics are proving quite challenging.

The problems caused by the current coronavirus outbreak are not drastically different from those posed by other epidemics and pandemics in terms of characteristics, though these problems may seem more catastrophic. There is a general conception about who is affected by the pandemic and who is not; who is the cause of the pandemic and who is not; which country’s economy will be crippled, and which country’s will not. These concepts raise multiple questions such as: How has coronavirus affected different governments differently? What business sectors are most affected? What is the state of the overall business sector? What types of people are most vulnerable? Finally, how can the business and the economic sectors get back on track? Politicians often seem more interested in building tensions to keep their constituents at odds and emphasizing what appeals to the masses instead of speaking to the truth of issues. The above questions seem rhetorical and may need answers in future.

But, the burden of this message is to enumerate, analyze and communicate the lessons, teachings and preaching ushered to mankind by Professor COVID-19 who holds several doctorates in Philosophy, Criminology, Pathology, Planetary Science, Psychology, Sociology, Theology, Human Biology, Ethno-botany, and Obstetrics-Gynecology as well as Business Analytics which would have resulted in an honor of “emeritus”.

An Emeritus Professor of “Polymathes”. Emeritus Professor COVID-19 is one of few professors with such extensive and eclectic expertise and has taught mankind multiple lessons that have shaped the human life now and will continue to shape its future.

Religious Lessons

The impact of Professor COVID-19 on the religious fraternity has been an outrageous and pleasant experience at the same time, and has affected the human will and some basic rights of the human race, Our freedom of movement, of worship, of association, and other freedoms have been challenged.

Professor COVID-19’s religious impacts include the cancellation of worship services, church gatherings, the closing of mosques, synagogues, shrines, children’s services and other religious activities that were intended to teach faith and morals to make human life better within the society, and the postponement of pilgrimages.

It is interesting to note that Professor COVID-19 might have done a huge service to humanity by releasing some people from near-perpetual slavery at the hands of organized religion. Emeritus Polymaths COVID-19 has taught the general public that live-streaming using heaven-sent resources such as Zoom, Skype, Facebook, and other social media platforms to worship and communicate to others of their faith is even more comfortable and peaceful than moving to and from worship centers.

Yes, assembling and worshiping together breeds a sense of belonging and helps encourage other people towards the journey to the Almighty as argued in the Holy Bible (1 Corinthians 14:26) and the other 48 chapters, but feeling obligated to travel to and participate in multiple religious activities each week, no! every time makes some people lazy, unemployed, less skilled and over-aggressive.

Tele-worshiping using an app can help alleviate these symptoms. There have been reports that some have killed their grandparents and parents who are supposed to be their moral encyclopedia just because their pastors have denounced those seniors as witches and wizards in possession of “Luciferian” spirits that countermand the spiritual progress of these young persons. Is this true?

Over the years, religious leaders especially some so-called men of God in Africa have used the name of religion to exploit and extort people using chapters of their religious books. Some church leaders have used tactics based on the book of Malachi 10:30 and other chapters to deceive and steal money and resources from the poor worshipers who frequent their worship centers.

Tithe means the tenth part of your earnings which should be given to God. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that tithe was not money but farm produce. Today not everyone is a farmer and so the tenth part of any earnings qualifies to be a tithe, but the question is, does God demand that we pay tithe even when we are unemployed? Who is this beneficiary of our tenth part?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some so-called minister of God created Facebook, Google bank, “Momo” and other such accounts to collect tithe and offering from their followers. COVID-19 as a professor of theology exposed these men of God who are rather the men of greed. In some parts of Africa, wicked pastors could not hide their greed and involuntarily disengaged the love they pretend to have for their followers from their actual motives. Based on the experiences and lessons provided by Professor COVID-19, it appears that one does not need to go to a church every time to be able to meet God’s requirements.

The greatest lessons to the enslaved followers of unscrupulous religious leaders are that while you go about your businesses, hunt for jobs or run your errands, you can still communicate to God and His pastors (the real men of GOD) via any number of platforms, also, based on Professor COVID-19’s theological perspective, the so-called men of God are not truly our shepherds, neither are we their sheep but rather, we are their horses and they are our masters.

They sit on us to make miles of journeys; they exploit us in broad daylight to enrich themselves and their families, leaving us in perpetual poverty and hardship. Generosity is one of the traits most valued by God and must be respected and obeyed. We believe that generosity tangibly expresses the heart of the Almighty God and has been recognized as an important practice to all believers of Jesus Christ as well as Mohammed. But, are those so-called men of God generous, or are they thieves? Professor COVID 19 has exposed the clenched motives of the greedy leaders in God’s ministry.

This raises the question: Is organized religion serving its purpose at all? Some charismatic men and women who claim to be of God servants have adopted Machievelian tactics, more cunning even than politicians. They fill the brains of their followers with fear and panic, and then steal, extort, rape, and harass them as if they were nothing more than slaves. Some even take the lives of those who begin to question the “God” that they claim to serve.

These so-called servants of God thrive in failed political authorities who are their bedfellows. They compromise the rights of their people for parochial interest; the fear of losing a vote or the aim of getting their friends to crusade their political agenda. Ridiculously, children who cannot decide for themselves are used as tools of exploitation.

Future mothers are whipped in church auditoriums in the presence of the world future fathers for allegedly having early sex, while the “whippers” engage in different types of immoral sex including anal and oral with even married women regardless of their ages. The lessons from Professor COVID-19 are not just to expose these self-proclaimed God servants but also to help smarter states, especially within Africa, to make laws and regulations to protect their citizens from similar deviousness.

It is a lesson that exposes thieves who spit into followers’ mouths and touch their faces like their own property given to them by their “God”. Unfortunately, these thieves are very powerful because they play in teams and make good use of their ill-gotten authority.

The fact that an honorable member of parliament in Ghana, Hon. Kennedy O. Agyapong was challenged and criticized for exposing such thieves of God in the latter part of 2019 through to the COVID part of 2020 and advocated for change and sanity in the religious setup exhibited not just brainwashing, but also dogmatism, sycophantism, and damnation of these followers. Is change really coming in the religious setting? A strict questions to strict and discipline leaders of Africa.

Businesses Lessons

No business analyst can refuse the notion that the impacts of coronavirus on business have been catastrophic, yet no experienced and well-grounded business analyst can argue that the impacts of the lessons from Professor COVID-19 have drastically changed the business arena and have had very significant and lasting positive effects on the business community.

The impact of the pandemic has been felt by almost every business on earth. Most of the concerns of businesses relate to resurrecting their cash flow and customer volume after the virus outbreak is finally contained and how to hold on to their trained and skilled employees to achieve production efficiencies when business volumes do return to normal. They are also concerned about reorganizing operations to obey government requirements in this post-pandemic world.

These are all legitimate concerns as we observe many businesses filing for bankruptcy amidst the pandemic and even more soliciting for government support. The lessons given to business owners and their stakeholders were beyond any analytical perspective making Professor COVID-19 the best business analyst ever.

KPMG, a renowned business analysis and research company and some others have argued that the smartest organizations and businesses did not only manage the risks associated with the pandemic but have also augmented their growth and market needs by using the available resources judiciously.

Professor COVID-19 ushered in a new era of business analysis; the combination of faculty, information technology, and technological tools to achieve production, operational effectiveness, and customer service improvements for a competitive advantage.

Smarter businesses backed by principles such as having the ability to respond to an immediate and ongoing challenge without spending much time to deliberating, also, adopting the flexibility of managing a business through insecure and pessimistic rhetoric, further, having the ability to identify each opportunity that the new normal highlights and finding a way to take advantage of it.

Finally, having the nature of a chameleon; with the ability to adapt to the new environment and every situation, and manipulate those situations into a competitive business advantage. This is underscored as Sophie Heading of KPMG International in April 2020, advises smarter companies not to only evaluate and understand the challenges posed by COVID 19, but also to adapt the circumstances and the environment as quickly as possible.

It must be noted without a doubt that, those that were quick to respect Professor COVID-19 as an ace business analyst will recover from the new reality into the post reality far better than the hard-headed and sluggish businesses.

Personifying COVID 19 is not to discredit any human effort or to blaspheme any supreme being, but to make it clear that the pandemic has brought a lot of lessons to mankind in this technological world. Food and other service deliveries are now quicker and smarter. The current innovations that Uber has instituted, accepting orders, tracking locations, picking orders, and delivering to doors effectively without needing to interact with the customer or the restaurant in advanced countries have all streamlined the service, making it more user-friendly and dependable than ever before.

The lessons from Professor COVID-19 have provided a rough but fertile ground for innovation and strategic development. Another important lesson is how tech hub in most affected cities has been forced to change. Arguably, Tim Zanni, the leader of KPMG Global and U.S. Technology believes that New York City is not only one of the cities with the highest recorded pandemic cases in the world, but also the 5th global innovation hub including developing remedies and providing constructive measures to mitigate the coronavirus during this pandemic period. Working from home or working remotely was a perk that previously was reserved for some very specific jobs.

Today, however, Professor COVID 19 has made it clear that almost every job to some extent can be done remotely as we see doctor’s appointments, job interviews, boards of directors, technical and strategic planning sessions, counseling services, Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Court proceedings and many other businesses are now being done online or from home.

The strong computing power for research developed spearheading the COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium, that is capable of helping researchers to understand the pandemic better to get immediate cure and treatments, as well as the development of Artificial Intelligence to facilitate work remotely, are all the result of lessons from this current pandemic. These innovations will be used today, and forever even in the absence of pandemics or epidemics according to Tim Zanni.

Finally and above all, Professor COVID-19 has critically analyzed whether or not every business needs a physical footprint, an office space, customer lobbies, restaurant dining areas, or bigger parking lots to better operate and achieve their profit and customer retention goals. And the final answer is no, most businesses do not need the mentioned space or facilities, even if they do, it is not a priority.