COVID-19/Collaborative Efforts

The COVID-19 epidemic is a global challenge. People perceive that health is a common good and all societal groups are affected.

• A virus does not respect borders and
• does care if someone has much money or not.

SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities - Learning Resource supports the SDGs - UN-Guidelines

Identify positive global change that can be triggered by collaborative work and mutual support against COVID-19.

Learning Tasks

Moving from national focus of health service benefits (e.g. access to vaccination solely to a single country) towards a collaborative effort to fight COVID-19 as a global challenge.

• (Comparison of Collaborative Efforts) What is similar to the global challenge climate change according to collaborative risk mitigation and what are differences between climate change threads and epidemiological threats (e.g. available time for appropriate response)?
• (Psychological Support during Epidemics) Look at the collaborative efforts in Psychology to cope with the Coronavirus, the constraints of a lockdown, .... What is the contribution of Psychology and what can be learnt from the collaborative efforts in Wikiversity to support citizens also in others areas of our daily life, that are also affected by epidemics?
• (Economical Impact on Supply Chain) Identify the needs of the health system for resources (self-protection of staff in the heath care system) and discuss the impact of rising prices and availability of medical equipment and the supply chain management for the health care system:
  • rare goods are expensive and so large quantities are bought early to sell them later for a higher price,
  • people that panic and see the shortage buy those more goods than require and put additional stress of the supply chain management.

Explain, why collaborative problem solving for COVID-19 becomes more difficult if economical optimization and panic responses of population come together in this crises.

• • What are options to prevent society and health systems from negative impacts on the supply chain management? (raise awareness and improve Risk Literacy)
• (Open Community Approach) Not everything will be for free in this global challenge. In which areas can we apply the Open Community Approach to support the Risk Management for COVID-19 (i.e. Open Data, Open Source, Open Educational Resources e.g. map the disease spread and response activities for the collaborative work)?
• (Swarm Intelligence) Analyze the concept of Swarm Intelligence. What are lessons learnt from swarm intelligence, that can be applied to COVID-19 outbreak.
• (Global Players) Do and how do global players pick responsibility for global challenges? Who carries the burdon of health service delivery system and crisis management that affects nearly all economical, social, cultural, ... domains? Do you see a mutual support and collaborative effort for supporting people working in health system and the supply chain management for drugs, foods and other products to keep society operational?
• (COVID-19/Positive Change) How can you support and appreciate collaborative efforts? That could be simple - a small chocolate for people working for you in the health system, supermarket, pharmacy, ... . Share collaborative ideas for mutual social support in COVID-19/Positive Change!
• (Collaborative Mapping) Analyze the concept of collaborative mapping and apply this to geospatial response for risk mitigation?
• (Systems Thinking) Apply Systems Thinking to the COVID-19 epidemics. Why is Systems Thinking required for analysis of the impact in all economical, social, cultural, ...

See also

• Systems Thinking
• COVID-19/Positive Change
• Psychological Support during Epidemics