NYT - critically important article "What if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run?"

[NewHendoLib]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/opinion/covid-pandemic-global-economy-politics.html

Almost two years since the novel coronavirus began to circulate through the human population, what lessons have we learned? And what do those lessons portend for future crises?

The most obvious is the hardest to digest: The world’s decision makers have given us a staggering demonstration of their collective inability to grasp what it would actually mean to govern the deeply globalized and interconnected world they have created. There is only one limited realm in which something like a concerted response has been managed: money and finance. But governments’ and central banks’ success in holding the world’s financial system together is contributing in the long run to inequality and social polarization. If 2020 was a trial run, we should be worried.

How did we get here? In a way, the failure was predictable. As instruments of coordination and cooperation, global institutions like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organization had proved fragile and toothless long before the pandemic. The explanation for this failure used to be geopolitical antagonism: Power blocs couldn’t come together when they had competing priorities and agendas. It was thus tempting to imagine that some common threat — perhaps an alien invasion — might make a reality of the United Nations.

snip

The challenges won’t go away, and they won’t get smaller. The coronavirus was a shock, but a pandemic was long predicted. There is every reason to think that this one will not be a one-off. Whether the disease originated in zoonotic mutation or in a lab, there is more and worse where it came from. And it is not just viruses that we have to worry about, but also the mounting destabilization of the climate, collapsing biodiversity, large-scale desertification and pollution across the globe.

snip

long, worthwhile - and as the many comments show, people both get it, and are not optimistic.

[genxlib]

1. At the beginning of all this

I felt like this was a fast-forward test run for climate change. It had many of the same hallmarks but would play out over a fraction of the time.

I had vague hopes that we would stumble through it and realize collectively in real-time that science was the answer. We had to listen to the scientists and behave as a community in order to get through it with the least suffering.

Boy was I naïve.

I no longer think we have the capacity to deal with climate change. We will just continue to suffer worse and worse outcomes while the worst among us fight us till the bitter end.

[soldierant]

16. I surely wish I didn't have to agree with you .

Especially not so thoroughly. I fear you have nailed it.

[brewens]

2. On the bright side, we're getting rid of a few that will be a problem if we get hit

harder next time.

In a wealthy country where we have the resources to feed everyone and keep the lights on, it's criminal how things have gone. Millions will lose everything, more millions will never make up what they lost. They should have a big problem with the people taking their property over this. They should have been demanding this be handled without that happening. Figure out a way the right won't call at least socialism. I didn't have much luck.

[GusBob]

3. Even George W Bush of all people knew it might happen

After reading about the Spanish Flu of 1917.,GWB of all people felt this was a concern and established an agency with which to help

( source: Premonition by Michael Lewis)

[niyad]

4. The pandemic hit in 1918.

[Mr.Bill]

5. Now that is some collosal

conspiracy thinking.

[dpibel]

9. I don't see it

I honestly cannot locate the conspiracy thinking in this piece. Help me out.

[NewHendoLib]

11. huh?????

[paleotn]

12. Not really.

In some ways, we lucked out that Covid wasn't as deadly as it could have been. And still it has a whole lot of room to play with before lethality becomes a limiting factor as it is with Ebola.

Virologist, epidemiologists, etc. have been predicting this for years. It was never a question of if, but when and how lethal. After all, we've been battling deadly pathogens of one kind or another for our entire evolutionary history.

[kimbutgar]

6. I remember in March 2020 realizing this was going to change all our lives

And I would do anything I could to stay masked and responsible. Sadly a large portion of my fellow Americans are too stupid to respect science.

[Tadpole Raisin]

7. Yes let's melt the ice cap and expose viruses not seen in millennia.

[paleotn]

13. Exactly. What could possibly go wrong?

[Tadpole Raisin]

15. Besides viruses we have antibiotic resistant bacteria. Every hospital

is well aware of the risks if a pathogen gets loose in their hospital.

It is not hype or fear mongering, it just IS!

I remember going into people’s homes and seeing old pictures of their parents or grandparents. “Oh what a nice picture, who is that?” The woman says oh that’s my father but he died when I was very young (say ~ 1928). He went fishing with his brother and got a cut that got infected. Before antibiotics. Alexander Fleming warned of antibiotic overuse even back then.

Could we be heading in that direction? Yes but I don’t dwell on it. I’d make myself crazy if I did.

Good book:

The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316418110/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_JR86E02VHV6MZ0TKP7J7

[Beetwasher.]

8. It's Excruciatingly Painful for me To Read

These necessary and inconvenient truths.

[Moebym]

14. I wondered out loud to my friend last night

about when COVID-19 will no longer be a topic of conversation during our phone calls.

We both know it will be a while yet before that day comes.

[LymphocyteLover]

17. On the bright side, having real US global leadership will help

It was sorely missing from 2017-2020 and I'm convinced that the pandemic would never have spun so badly out of control if Trump wasn't in charge and politicized it and fought all the scientists. HE FUCKING KILLED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS.

[NullTuples]

18. My tl;dr - unregulated capitalism as a rule is bad for humans

If you think about it, so many governments are run or structured to be intertwined with corporatism, capitalism and what may as well be called consumerist religion.

These are terrible, terrible frameworks upon which to help humanity in times of crisis.

I don't hold out much hope for the global warming emergency.

[Boomerproud]

19. I wish this article wasn't true. The UN and the WHO

have been failures that's just a fact.

[live love laugh]

20. At some point the what ifs are just fear mongering.

This is one of those points.

We have enough to deal with here and now.