Not ready for prime time
The biggest lesson the present COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is “Be prepared.”
Like a girl scout standing by the campfire with her marshmallows in hand, but no matches, many people, especially in the United States thought they were prepared for a pandemic.
As richest nation, in the world, and the most powerful, the USA being number one in disaster response was taken for granted. We also outspent every other country on Earth for healthcare, so we might be expected to have the best healthcare in the history of the world.
We were not prepared.
Our hubris in hand, useless as marshmallows here, is not what was needed most.
Lessons learned
Will we learn from those lessons? I think we already have. Unfortunately, not everyone has learned the same lessons. For example, even if Trump learned his numbers would look better, and the economy would look up if more people were able to work safely and without fear of income loss, does not mean that he would buy into the wisdom on offer.
There are people who cannot conceive of a non-zero-sum game.
How many people learned that having adequate healthcare should not be tied to income? Some of us, already knew that. Others can’t picture how a society would function unless the winners walk away with more than everybody else. National pride and a collective, communal perspective ensure some measure of protection, just as much as an organized and efficient medical response.
A for profit healthcare system is never going to be consistently reliable for most people. Those countries with a good balance between socialism and capitalism will fare better next time around just as they fared better overall in the present pandemic. The outcome remains uncertain for nations like Sweden, but data collected there will certainly be of great value to economists and many medical workers for years to come.
Failing the first test
The reason why we feel so unprepared this time has to do with not just how contagious COVID-19 is, but also that there is no pre-existing immunity to it.
Different societies react very differently to a crisis. In New Zealand, Iceland, Taiwan and Germany were much better prepared with testing and tracing. The USA, famously botched early testing, and even now does not have a consistent plan in place to allow average citizens to be tested. Testing ability has varied so widely, that most medical experts are calling for a universal test that could provide both a timely, and a consistent, test.
Leaving the states to govern and compete against one another created much of the problem early on with shortages of personal protection equipment and few test kits available.
Most states are reflectively studying their own response and will no doubt have a much wider readiness plan next time. However, that is provided that this time doesn’t bring severe flare-ups, complications, and hospital shortages in the months ahead.
Border crossings
Researchers have known for some time, that the biggest factor in containment is that the response be immediate and thorough. Although widely criticized for their initial foot-dragging, China did manage to prevent thousands of deaths through mandated behavioral requirements such as strict distancing and travel restrictions.
Closing borders has its own difficulties, such as amassing more people on the borders who otherwise may not be so highly concentrated, but when done effectively, it saves lives. The biggest problem with it is that xenophobia, and sometimes racism, conjoin to hurt diplomacy and real human beings. Also, restricting some travelers and not others resulted in fewer infected people coming from China to the USA, for example, but it did not stop thousands from pouring in from Europe and elsewhere. In India, millions of laid off workers have tried to make their way back to villages of origin. Displaced people in a few of India’s 28 states have shelters, and even food rations, but most states have no infrastructure to offer consistent aid for the masses. Despite this, behavioral measures have drastically reduced the death rate in India.
Humanitarian efforts there in states like Kerala, are proving to be an investment the pays huge dividends for the public good. More nations who wish to be prepared are paying attention to such factors as social equity. A disorganized and inequitable social structure puts the whole of a populace at risk.
Travel restrictions of the future need to factor in all the costs and benefits, not just some of them. A group of states as large and diverse as the United States would also need to think about interstate borders, and the best way to reduce travel while remaining welcoming for the big picture.
Food for thought
The next pandemic may already be out there. Whether it comes from an exotic animal host like a bat or a pangolin, or something even more likely, like the ham sandwich you eat for lunch, there will be places unprepared for the next outbreak.
If it were a swine flu, or a bird flu from poultry, or anything similar, we likely won’t be much more prepared than the last time SARS, or MERS, both of which are caused by a coronavirus transmitted through contact with animals.
Certainly, COVID-19 has had a major impact on our global food network, but aside from taking more safety measures in meat-packing plants, no real plans to change our relationship to animal-based food sources are being discussed at the leadership level.
Nevertheless, based on buying habits, more people do seem to be switching from meat to plant based alternatives. This may be due both to a desire to boost the immune system, and the many stories about meat factory workers getting sick.
Due to the present crisis, people are learning too, that plant-based food typically has a longer shelf life than meat products do. Hopefully, the next pandemic will find people with fully stock pantries, and a better sense of how to avoid shopping shortages.
Staying social — at a distance
Globalization and our complete inter-dependency upon international cooperation and collaboration is realized to be the “essential worker” to which we must put more thought and care into protecting. Our world economy and our shared health depend upon it.
At present the climate crisis and the sixth extinction crisis have already been cited as two more mega-problems for the world. Combined with the COVID-19 emergency, these challenges have nudged more people to alertness. We have found that our ability to respond, and also, our agility at changing habits quickly en masse, is not only possible, but required.
All of our future response will be informed by what we did wrong the last time. Having a reliable, consistent, scalable, and widespread response, is after all, a matter of life and death.
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This post was previously published on Greener Together and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Christyl Rivers