It is too fragmented, overly dependent on discretionary bilateral aid, and dangerously underfunded. The current system of global health security is not fit for purpose. All that is a very small price to shorten the pandemic everywhere.īut we also need a more fundamental reset to avoid blundering into pandemics again and again with enormous human and economic costs. Rich nations must make good on pledges to donate their projected substantial surplus vaccines, along with grants to bridge the $23 billion shortfall needed to get jabs into arms and provide test kits and other medical supplies. Overcoming today’s pandemic remains the immediate task. The IMF has projected large cumulative losses in global GDP by 2025, with particular impact on the developing world. The world has experienced the deepest economic contraction since World War II and a significant rollback in progress in education, poverty eradication, and inclusive development for a large swath of its population. Many more people have survived serious illness, with long-term consequences for their well-being and nations’ human capital that have yet to be determined. Official data put the number of deaths at over 5 million credible unofficial estimates are a multiple of that number. Our collective failure to heed scientific advice and invest in pandemic prevention and preparedness has inflicted a catastrophic toll. We must organize ourselves on a whole-of-society basis within nations and rethink how we collaborate internationally to mitigate its profound consequences for livelihoods, social cohesion, and global order.ĬOVID-19’s only benefit has been to put the case beyond doubt. Recognizing this new reality of a pandemic era is not fearmongering but rather prudent public policy and responsible politics.

Together with the world’s dwindling biodiversity and climate crisis, to which they are inextricably linked, infectious disease threats represent the primary international challenge of our times. Scientists have repeatedly warned that without greatly strengthened proactive strategies, global health threats will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, and take more lives. Yet COVID-19 is also a forerunner of more, and possibly worse, pandemics to come. Large unvaccinated groups and the unchecked spread of the virus around the world raise the prospect of further mutations, possibly evading today’s vaccines, that will create new waves everywhere. Delta will not be the last highly transmissible variant. We are nowhere near the end of the pandemic. Incremental change within existing mechanisms has failed we need a fundamental reset

King summers