2 Years with Covid
เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 years ago
2 Years With COVID: How it altered our lives
Looking back on the past 2 years, we all were faced with life-restricting conditions. That we find ourselves adjusting to many aspects of life, looking for ways to survive the Covid-19 pandemic. As the pandemic unfolds and the numbers of the population are fully vaccinated, the sneaky virus then manages to mutate once again and present us with the newest Omicron variant. Just to put us, earthlings, back on our toes with another wave of panic. In the bigger picture though, there are no clear answers when this whole pandemic thing will end. All we can do for now is to learn to become resilient and overcome the challenge of this new way of life ahead of us.
Today, we will hop on a time machine through the world’s 2-year ongoing battle with Covid from 2020 until now, nearing the end of 2021. Let’s see what interesting trends and new ways of life are up and coming.
A Home-centred Life
One huge change that happened is the unavoidable amount of time we have to spend at home. Many of us started to pay more attention to the environment at home. Looking to create a more fitting atmosphere for our new ways of life. The household products that serve this need like indoor plants, scented candles, or decorative furniture have hit record high sales. According to bangkokbiznews.com, during the 2-month strict Covid lockdown in 2020 the sales of the product of IKEA Thailand has grown 320%.
It also gave birth to interesting online communities about home decorating and home caring. Facebook pages like ‘Organise the Desktops’ (‘จัดโต๊ะคอม’) and ‘Beloved Housework’ (‘งานบ้านที่รัก’) reflects this change. As many started to re-organise and design their use of space at home and utilise the ‘home’ that meets their needs and is suitable in the Covid situation.
Mental Health is as Important as Physical Health
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in August 2021, where the number of infections reached 10,000 per day, the Department of Mental Health’s survey showed signs of increasing suicidal risks 10 times more in comparison to the earlier survey during the start of the pandemic. DMH’s shared survey showed that 45.5% of Thailand’s population are stressed, 51.5% risk being in a depression, 30.6% have suicidal risks, and 17.6% are in a burnout state which indicates serious mental health issues in all ages that cannot be overlooked.
Moreover, surveys conducted in many countries find that office workers have accumulated stress resulting from Work From Home workstyle-setting and jam-packed online meeting schedules. The office workers have to find suitable solutions and joy to tackle their new ways of online working. An interesting campaign created by TBWA London, a fun and brilliantly coloured website called ‘soundtheexcuse.com’. Where it provides various sound disruptions such as fire alarm, crying baby, bursting water pipe etc. for those who are stressing out in the meeting, to sound the excuse to temporarily flake away from the meeting. But this campaign was not just for humour’s sake, in all seriousness this campaign is a collaboration between TBWA and The Book of Man, a men’s media brand that wants you to express your stress and that when work stresses you out, it is necessary to take a break. It should not be left until the negative impact becomes apparent and affects you and your company. Just “take a breather and carry on whenever you are ready”.
New Ways of Life, More of Waste
Food delivery services have grown tremendously during Covid-19, due to its convenience the amount of plastic waste has also grown. The stats collected by the Institute of Environmental Research, Chulalongkorn University found that from January to April 2020 the amount of Thailand’s plastic waste has increased 60%. There are efforts in tackling this issue by turning to use the more earth-friendly packaging alternative, we probably came across.
Looking over to another big industry like the world’s fashion has been raising the Fast Fashion issue. As a majority of the world’s waste is from the Fast Fashion production industry. Reducing fashion produced waste by avoiding the unnecessarily fast turnover of fashion trends and turning to second-hand clothing creates a more sustainable clothing cycle. For a while, people in Thailand have been aware of this issue, entities like moreloop, a social enterprise that aims to create a sustainable circular economy through adding value to deadstock fabric or Fashion Revolution Thailand, a Facebook page where people are invited to ‘Swap!’ their clothes with others, discovering their new fashion favourites without producing more waste in the world.
Culture is the New Export
When we talk about the most popular streaming platform, Netflix would be right up there. The ‘Squid Game’ global phenomenon during Covid-19 has re-ignited another wave of the K-fever, underlining Soft Power’s huge ability in generating enormous economic value to the country. Captured by the global interest in Korean culture, an old traditional Korean dish became well-known around the world, fashion items in a Korean movie became the IT item everyone searched for and children’s play songs became the song that everyone knows about.
With the re-ignited display of culture through popular media and the fast growth of streaming platforms, accelerated by the Covid lockdown (newbies platforms like Disney+ Hotstar’s growth was 210% in only 2 years!) We can foresee that in the near future there will definitely be a fierce and competitive production of this so-called ‘cultural export’ from many more countries.
Virtuality vs Reality
Physical distancing causes many new forms of technology. Virtual worlds creation now plays more parts in people’s life. For example, the most used application during Covid, Zoom’s sales value has grown 326% in 2020 alone and Gather Town, an online meeting application where the office meeting environment is recreated online with our Avatars performing activities together. Also, many schools have adopted the use of Gather Town for online virtual classes. These can be seen as innovative designs that adapted to the changes of the ages which also supported people’s digital lives.
If you still remember, Animal Crossing, a social simulation video game, became very popular earlier in the pandemic. The game allows us to interact with other players online, relieving some of our loneliness, because at the very least we still get to meet our friends online. For more fun, how about meeting at a concert like a Virtual Concert that a hip hop artist, Travis Scott, had in an online game Fortnite during a lockdown. Such interesting things we should keep our eyes on. Wait and see where else we can go in the world without even leaving our house at all.
From these trends above, you can see the difficult situations we faced and how we all tried to adjust and learned about these new ways of life that have brought about new visions and useful designs and innovations. In the coming year 2022, Covid-19 will probably stay a while longer, it sure will bring about more challenges that dare us to creatively find more ways and innovations and trends that are waiting to be discovered.
For anyone, who is interested in the exploration of these interesting trends and the never before seen new designs. Get ready for Bangkok Design Week 2022 where we collated all designs under the theme “Co With Creation” only during 5-13 February 2022. Don’t miss it!
Reference
https://www.bangkokbiznews.com/business/949194
https://www.dmh.go.th/news-dmh/view.asp?id=31154
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/19/1-in-4-workers-is-considering-quitting-their-job-after-the-pandemic.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56247489
https://www.soundtheexcuse.com