We trained the world – The silver lining of COVID-19

As we have a moment to catch our breaths from the peak anxiety of the coronavirus, I've been thinking about whether or not we made the right decision to lock down. There's many opinion on that question and, for me, it's still too early to answer, but let's suppose we didn't. Is there a silver lining to this moment in time. 

Let's suppose it turns out the costs of locking down – the economic hardship people experience, the psychological pain, number of suicides, etc. – all point towards being objectively worse off than we had imagined. I believe we can still consider this a positive experience. 

What we've done is trained the entire world for the next pandemic in just a few short months. We've effectively run a fire drill for the whole planet so when the actual fire comes, everyone will know what to do. If we have another pandemic in the next three generations, and if it's more deadly than COVID-19, we'll be able to do the right thing right away. We might look back on today and consider ourselves lucky.