Like voyagers crossing the ocean 500 years ago and wondering what our destination will look like once we reach it, all of us enduring coronavirus are wondering what the world will be like to live in once the pandemic ends.

Some of us have risked our lives working on the pandemic front lines. Many more of us are staying home, trying to function as best we can. By now, we’ve become coronavirus veterans mourning the loss of loved ones, absorbing the daily death tolls, scrutinizing case lists for signs of a decline and wondering, like our predecessors bobbing on the high seas, where are we going to end up?

A tiny minority of us are busy redefining the business models, rejiggering the technology and reinventing life the way it will be lived here and around the world once it’s safe to go back out and be around people.

Every human tragedy and cataclysm inspires certain people to think out of the box and over the horizon and come up with inventions and new ways of doing things.

Depending on our dispositions or the mood we are in, the rest of us call these people opportunists or entrepreneurs. We celebrate and embrace their accomplishments or we shun them for their crass attempts to turn death and destruction into dollars.

We’re living through fear and uncertainty and history has shown that the most evil among us are eager to profit during times of terror.

But “we’re all in this together” has emerged as an informal coronavirus rallying cry. In a perfect world, business and technology geniuses will embrace this motto and come up with new medicine, new ways for hospitals to help people, new ways to travel, to dine out, to learn, to celebrate the arts and sports once we collectively get a handle on coronavirus.

We are on a voyage and getting off the proverbial boat is no longer an option. We know we won’t all survive the journey. Let us hope the brightest and most ambitious among us are working to ensure that our destination, once we reach it, is a better place to live in than the one we inhabit now.