As U.S. death toll exceeds 80,000 and worldwide there are at least 300,000 deaths, Covid has exposed a World lacking a united front, leadership and strategy in the face of a global threat.
In the movies, an asteroid hurtling toward Earth would prompt governments to abandon animosities and conflicts and mobilize their best scientists, engineers and military forces in a global effort coordinated by empathetic, rational leaders who would put the common good above international quarrels and partisan and ideological feuds. Inevitably, there would be a happy ending, the asteroid would be deflected, the planet saved, and human ingenuity and spirit would triumph over nature.
Covid-19 has some similarities to an asteroid. Its impact, though not as lethal, is global not only in terms of deaths but in terms of economic consequences. But the World's response is nothing like the movies.
In the movies, the response would have included international transparency and information from the moment the disease was identified, with nations sounding a global alarm and setting up an international response task force to design a coordinated, scientifically and economically vetted strategy to contain the spread and minimize the consequences to global supply and demand and global industries. There would have been an internationally coordinated scientific effort employing the World’s best experts and technology to develop and evaluate tests and vaccines without waste, delay and duplication. Supplies of personal protective equipment would have been located and sourced globally, manufactured and distributed to where they were needed most. Health care resources would be shared inter- and intranationally, with patients transported by government-funded passenger airline flights across nations and borders for treatment where there was capacity and capability. The international task force would have provided reliable information to world governments and populations about the current situation and next steps, and world governments would have operated in accordance with the task force’s recommendations.
Instead, on global, national, and local levels the real world resembles an elementary school without teachers or a principal, with excited kids throwing things and shouting insults at each other, bullies pounding their chests, little cliques in the corners, and a loud cacophony of voices with no one listening or hearing the others.
How can tourism, flights, events, and supply chains resume when every nation, state, region, county, and city has different rules, strategies and timeframe, unpredictable and unknown to anyone else? Examples abound. Today, I had to cancel a flight from Florida to Ohio, a nonrefundable ticket and partially refundable accommodations because I was told that Ohio, a state with a rate of infections and deaths equal to Florida imposes a 14-day quarantine on all out-of-state travelers. Today, the tennis courts in my town are still closed, while those two miles away are not and never were. Today, restaurant waiters at Ozona Blue in Dunedin wore masks, while those at Dimitri's on the Water in Tarpon, a few miles to the North did not. Gov. Cuomo of New York delayed reopening his state again because of continued concerns about the number of available hospital beds in case of a resurgence, when there is plenty of idle hospital capacity and idle doctors and nurses within a couple of hours of driving or flying time and hundreds of passenger aircraft idle on the ground with pilots in furlough and airlines bleeding cash. Today, Boris Johnson of the UK was debating whether to impose a 14-day quarantine on international arrivals in June (?).
Worldwide, trillions of dollars and euros are thrown by wealthy nations governments at their constituencies, mitigating the symptoms while neglecting the problem. Meanwhile, countries that cannot print money and depend on trade, tourism, oil and global industry suffer most.
Despite the ineptitude of the response, Covid-19 will pass. But the lessons being “learned” by world governments are the wrong ones. Isolationism and tribalism are the problem, not the solution.
So for the sake of my children and their children, I can only hope that global warming is actually a hoax, that there will be no more pandemics and that Earth will never cross the path of an asteroid, because the real world is nothing like the movies.
Comments