We are now entering the second half of the year 2020 and yet the COVID-19 pandemic that started at the end of 2019 hasn’t slowed down. The concerns of people and governments of all around the world are increasing day by day. The number of coronavirus cases saw a dramatic rise by mid March and the R0 of SARS-CoV-2 jumped from 2.2 to 5.7 in the recent months. Lifting up lockdowns in many countries due to the falling economy is to be blamed for these consequences. COVID-19 pandemic is the fastest growing pandemic ever that saw an increase of infections and death in the first four months as compared to the dreadful Spanish Flu that at least took a year to 18 months to really spread over the world. This means that COVID-19 pandemic like other pandemics isn’t behaving in a linear fashion so we need a plan for combating this pandemic . 

There are many lessons to learn from this pandemic that will help in combating future pandemics. But even now we are forgetting one of the most important things to deal with this health crisis – that is a collective and strong mindset and shift in the ideologies of doing things. Through social media we are seeing a range of nationalist and populist values growing among people. While this is good until it pushes the reliance on science out of the way which is the most important belief required during these times. Nationalism and populism are effective at exploiting fear and anger but, as we have seen in some countries, they are fragile and powerless in coping with major crises like COVID.

Another issue that needs our attention and is highlighted by this pandemic is the growing number of infectious diseases brought by animals into humans. The number of pathogens (viruses , bacteria, parasites, or prions) that have transferred from animals to humans over the past 50 years has risen, beginning with AIDS in the early 1980s, the main cause of which was a chimpanzee-derived strain of HIV in Cameroon after earlier but restricted outbreaks. We have had Measles, bird flu, swine flu, mad cow disease, respiratory syndrome in the Middle East ever since.

While the world is busy fussing over COVID-19, it is forgetting the silent global crisis of Climate Change. Climate Change is more complex than COVID. For us it does not seem so near and urgent. By relying on individual responsibility alone, you can not tackle climate change; it’s the corporate and governmental commitment that is required, and political will. None of which was missing.

It is pretty clear that in the future the world will witness more catastrophes much worse than COVID if we keep on harming our precious planet. The world is decaying at a higher and higher level and population growth for the earth is unsustainable. There is a long list of diseases that may benefit from climate change: Aids, malaria, dengue fever , cholera, Lyme disease, the West Nile virus and perhaps some that we don’t even know about. We will all begin to think more about: not just our local societies, or our countries, but the world. Just by recognizing that we belong to a community – society – can we cope with the massive challenges that lie ahead.