For generations, and also in the immediate future, the COVID-19 pandemic will be remembered for this: how the world lived up to a global crisis?
Representational illustration from iStock The COVID-19 pandemic enters its fifth year. On May 5 this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID-19 was no more a public health emergency of global concern. This, however, does not mean the pandemic is over; the virus continues to infect people in at least 70 countries regularly and new variants are being identified. Since China first informed of the novel coronavirus in December 2019, the world has recorded some 772 million cases, with a death toll of nearly 7 million (as of November 16, 2023). After the US and China, India has the most number of confirmed cases, with over half-a-million people succumbing to the disease. Will there be an end to it?
In May 2020, the then chief scientist of WHO Soumya Swaminathan told a newspaper, “I would say in a four to five-year time frame, we could be looking at controlling this.” The pandemic is certainly under control. It has become endemic in most of the countries. It is no more a health emergency, as we see the world returning to normalcy from the never-before-experienced self-imposed physical isolation. For the generation that endured the widest pandemic ever, it is fading into the memory landscape. Does this mean we are entering into a post-pandemic time where it just remains a nightmarish episode?
Pandemics do not usually end. They may cease to be an immediate health concern, but their ripple effects are felt for generations. Chor Pharn Lee, Principal Foresight Analyst of the Centre for Strategic Futures, Prime Minister’s Office of Singapore, said in 2021, “Science gives us vaccines, but pandemics are social.”
What are the “socials” that the current pandemic is associated with? Unlike in the past, this pandemic hit a globalised world. From medicine to interaction to businesses, the world is much more interconnected and interdependent. There are common challenges that bind the world together to fight — whether it is the Sustainable Development Goals or the many conventions to address pressing environmental crises that countries have signed. It is in this context that one has to define the COVID-19 pandemic: it is the most globalised health emergency that a globalised society faces. It is also in this context that the pandemic's future effects would keep impacting us.
When the pandemic hit the world, our perceived global community fell apart. Countries withdrew from this framework to resort to predatory actions—from vaccine apartheid to punishing trade restrictions.
Notwithstanding the global subscription to a unified response in case of a health emergency, there was nothing that actually showed a united front while the virus wreaked havoc. That is the reason even before the pandemic receded, the world was already negotiating a pandemic treaty to bind countries to respond in a united way in case of similar future health emergencies.
The pandemic would continue to impact us on other socials: the state of development, poverty and global commitment in investment to catch up with the loss of development in the last four years. The world will not meet the Sustainable Development Goals due to the pandemic. Poverty levels have increased. Most of the developing countries have been left with little resources to invest on development. This means the world has to come together for a new deal to start the de-velopment process again. The pandemic impacted all the countries, and nearly all of them suffered economic losses. This reduces the budget for global assistance, particularly from the wealthy economies. This situation also tests whether the globalised world is equally global in its commitment to offer support. For generations, and also in the immediate future, the pandemic will be remembered for this: how the world lived up to a global crisis?
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