COVID-19: The Culprit, the People and Lessons Learned

Description COVID-19 has had a palpable impact on everyone from losing jobs to losing loved ones. It has altered our social dynamics and disturbed the world economy. We should all learn something from this challenging time. This article elaborates on three lessons learned by two brothers who grew up in Rwanda right after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, where more than one million people died in 100 days. One, Dr. Kayihura Manigaba, is currently responding to the COVID-19 pandemic as a clinical pharmacy manager and as an infectious diseases pharmacy specialist at a hospital in Florida, U.S, and the other, Mukundwa Gael, is finishing his pharmacy doctorate training in Tennessee, U.S. Every year, on average, three new human pathogen species are discovered in different geographical locations, and the majority of them are viruses. This implies that we will continue to face crisis secondary to a new microbe, and we have no idea where it will begin and whether the community of origin will be capable of containing it from reaching the rest of the world. In this paper, the authors emphasize the importance of collaboration in identifying, preventing, and treating health threats. In addition to sharing lessons such as the impact of fear on crisis response, and how to rise to the occasion during a crisis, the authors intend to motivate readers to believe in their unique skills that are needed to advance our society as we define our new world during and post COVID-19 pandemic.