After just 2 months of receiving reports about mysterious and unknown virus-infected people in Wuhan, The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a new COVID-19 (a coronavirus infection) infection as a global pandemic. Today, it is a known fact that humans spread SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus traveled the world quickly and infected more than 450 million people. COVID-19 pandemic has so far cost more than 6 million people’s lives. It’s one of the deadliest pandemics in history and it’s not the first time that humanity has to face the disease. A pandemic is a disease, which occurs in several parts of the world or regions. According to various sources on the Internet, about half of the world’s population was under lockdown during the pandemic period and approximately 3.9 billion people were ordered to stay at home by governments. We know historically that all pandemics are coming to an end. Today, in 2022, the lockdown is over and restrictions are canceled. The lockdown had its advantages but also disadvantages. Some people say that now they are much busier after the lockdown. In this article, we will look closer at the negative and positive pandemic period’s impact on people’s lives and how our lives are coming back to normal.
Entrepreneurship and job searches
In the field of employment, the COVID-19 pandemic affected young people more than older people. Eurostat compared unemployed and employed people statistics in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The youth employment rate in the EU in 2020 decreased by 2.8 percentage points compared to the pre-pandemic year’s (2019) employment level. Luckily, in 2021 recovery was observed in the market and recorded – compared to 2019, the employment rate decreased by only 0.1 percentage points. Today, in 2022, we can see an increased number of people who want to create their businesses or work management jobs. In other words, more than 30 percent of unemployed people want to be managers in comparison to the number of unemployed people two years ago. In general (employed and unemployed people), the number of those wishing to become directors or heads of institutions is now twice as high as before the pandemic. Today, more and more people are looking for specialist jobs instead of unqualified jobs in comparison to the pre-pandemic period.
Mental health
It is estimated that almost a third of Europeans had emotional and psychological hardship before the COVID-19 pandemic, but mental health professionals say that today, more and more people are complaining about their mental state and suffering mental health problems even they have not complained about it before the lockdown. According to various statistics, the COVID-19 pandemic has a major negative impact on the social status and health of young people in Europe, and active action is needed to secure and improve the future and well-being of young people. For this reason, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen has declared that 2022 is the European Year of Youth, a year of progress for the economic, employment, and social recovery of young Europeans. Also, on important fact – people start speaking more about mental health problems. According to professor Danutė Gailienė that the situation related to mental health and the number of suicides is improved and, for instance, Lithuanian rates of suicides have dropped by about 50 percent in a short period of time. Prof. Gailienė is a researcher at the Vilnius University and the author of various books. She has been researching suicides, their causes, and tendencies for many years. The professor says that knowledge about mental health and prevention is unquestionable and necessary, and everyone who is familiar with the subject helps reduce the number of suicides in Lithuania.So, it is a known fact that more and more people are talking about mental health, well-being, and visiting psychiatrists or psychologists, or starting psychotherapy.
Music festivals
Music is an impulse that is extremely important to us to be who we are. Unfortunately, living for a long time the way we live now, i. y. in modern and post-pandemic times, we are endlessly exhausted and unbalanced. It is recommended to actively immerse ourselves in music every day. There is growing scientific evidence that regular so-called self-care music sessions can be of great benefit to our mental health and well-being. Music is necessary everywhere: music for learning or music for work; music to help your newborn calm down faster, or music to help you fall asleep on your own; music that would impress the parents or a spouse, music for sports, or music for recreation; music that might sound while working in the garden or driving a car; music to suit the dinner table. During the lockdown, the government banned music festivals. But today, we have an opportunity to participate in various music festivals 2022 and feel the power of music.
Healthy habits
It’s a known fact that the pandemic period has changed people’s routines and lives over the past 2 years. Though we have all had to make sacrifices during the lockdown, not everything was bad and we can say that the pandemic period had a lot of advantages. Many people have implemented new, healthy habits in their daily routines that benefit their bodies and minds, including getting more outside, getting more sleep, cooking more at home, drinking recommended supplements, connecting with their family and friends intentionally, and prioritizing their physical, mental and emotional health. One more thing we can notice in our society is that more and more people are purchasing food from local farmers. In some countries, such as the United States, the shelves of some grocery stores were empty in the first weeks of the pandemic. This is one of the reasons why people have started to buy the food provided by local farmers. In addition, this was done because of the desire to support them during a difficult period.
The bottom line
All in all, the pandemic period had a lot of positive things and let people think more about their physical and mental health and well-being in general. We can make sure that people are much busier today. Physical activity, working and creating desired work positions, taking care of mental health, getting more outside, and implementing healthy habits in daily life – all of these things are advantages of the pandemic period.
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