Learn From The Lessons The Pandemic Taught Us

The Global Scientific And Public Health Community Must Work Together, Taking A Holistic View Of Health. For, The Question Is Not If, But When, Another Pandemic Will Occur

- Soumya Swaminathan

The COVID pandemic posed an unexpected and unprecedented challenge for humanity and forcefully brought home the point that good health is central to economic well-being—for countries and for the world as a whole. Not only is it the biggest economic shock of the past two centuries, with the global economy losing over $8 trillion, but poorer countries and people have borne the brunt, leading to an even more sharply unequal world. Further, it is expected that this generation of students impacted by large-scale school closures could lose $17 trillion in lifetime earnings. COVID also showed us that the returns on investments in science and technology are huge, with the knowledge and tools to conquer the effects of the virus coming from science. It underlined the need for countries to invest in public health and primary healthcare, especially in the workforce and essential commodities, like oxygen. It unfortunately also exposed the lack of global solidarity and the role of geopolitics in responding to a global threat, with nationalism and shortsighted policies leading to vast inequities in access to countermeasures across populations. Further, because it is the first pandemic in the social media age, the resulting ‘infodemic’ meant that people were exposed to huge amounts of information, which included a lot of misinformation and disinformation, which, in turn, served to confuse and mislead them on the various measures of protection like masking and vaccination.