These sorts of threads often devolve into character assassinations, so let me apologize right up front if anyone gets offended.
I'm 58YO, and my parents got married at the start of the Great Depression, so I'm coming at this with quite a bit of history. The Great Depression altered the people who lived through it, and they imbued a sense of what they lived through into their children. I cannot remember a time in my life when I didn't emphasize being self-sufficient and avoided debt like a disease. This while growing up and living in a small house in a large city in California, so it's not like we were farming hundreds of acres somewhere.
The subject of this thread is "What is good about COVID-19?"
1) What I'd LIKE to be good about this incident (but have no illusions it will last for any length of time) is that it snaps humanity back to the understanding that each of us, with our families, cannot rely on "someone else" (read: government) to be our safety net. First of all, that attitude engenders recklessness - if you know you can rely on someone else's deep pockets, you're far more likely to do stupid things that MAKE you reliant on those deep pockets.
One thing that will soon become evident is that, while government "safety nets" might work to help the occasional person/family, no government can save everyone at the same time. The $2T(!) "stimulus" package just passed by the US government is about 10% of the national GDP. Think about that for a moment... the government cavalierly trying to replace 10% of the entire country's GDP. Not to make light of the situation, but from the money's point of view this isn't much different from everyone in the country taking a multi-week vacation and expecting the government to pay for it. Guess what... that money isn't "free". We are literally stealing it from the future. And many inside and outside of the government are screaming that $2T wasn't enough!!! More will be required!
Insurance companies stay solvent only when a small portion of their policies make claims. The fact that the insurance company, in this case, is a government doesn't change that fiscal reality. We can afford to bail out the occasional individual or family, but no government can afford to bail out significant portions of their entire population. We can't tax our way to success, the numbers just aren't there. And governments don't have bottomless "rainy day funds" either. Many have been saying "I've been paying taxes/Social Security/whatever for all these years, now it's time for the government to take care of ME." Sorry, but the taxes you paid got spent (and then some!) in real time. There's no retirement account with your name on it or your money in it.
In times of plenty it is far too easy for the population to demand too much, and even easier for politicians to buy their votes by promising even more. Politicians are smart - they know they will be long out of office and comfortably retired before any of their empty promises are revealed for the scams that they are. The next sucker in office will be left holding the bag.
Hence why I say that I'm hopeful COVID-19 will teach people to be less dependent upon external safety nets, and more self-reliant. They will do not only themselves a favor, but also their fellow humans who are foolish enough to NOT follow that advice - because if there are fewer who truly NEED a government bailout, it's more likely the government will actually have the resources to help them.
2) The other important thing we (as a species) can learn from this is to take steps to reduce the rate of future repeats. By that I specifically mean that if a country (China, we're looking at you) wishes to act like a first-world nation with all of the associated trade and travel and tourism benefits, they must reject certain third-world aspects of their former culture because continuing them risks literally everyone on the planet. This is not a one-time fluke: COVID-19 is the *second* such virus to emerge from China in less than 20 years. Having open food markets where live animals are kept next to freshly slaughtered carcasses might be OK if there's little trade beyond your immediate village, but that's third-world thinking which is incompatible with the first-world.
Some of those cultural traditions go back centuries, and I'm respectful of history, but they have to choose between culture and being a first-world player. I've personally been to China twice in the past 18 months and spent multiple weeks in multiple cities there. I've met wonderful people who are incredibly gracious hosts, who love their families and work hard and seek to improve themselves. I have incredible love and respect for the Chinese people. And they can choose to live as they wish - but one of those options comes with the price of rejecting certain cultural norms because to continue practicing them literally kills people worldwide.
Nobody is saying this out loud because it's "politically incorrect". But it's true no matter how embarrassed some people are to admit it. And if China doesn't accept and act on it, what REALLY scares me is that the world may have to impose it upon them, effectively quarantining China by force. The word for such an action is "war" and if we think COVID-19 is bad, it will pale in comparison to a war involving a nuclear state with 1.3 billion people.
Somehow, some way, the world at large must (probably privately) convince China that certain cultural behaviors must be eradicated permanently. I hope those conversations are already occurring because the downside of them not occurring is worldwide death whether slow (disease) or fast (war).