Halting the pandemic that is ravaging much of the world should be everyone’s top priority, but delaying an independent review of national and international responses won’t slow the spread of the disease. Waiting to initiate such an inquiry will only deprive the WHO and its member states of valuable feedback that could help them improve their responses and save lives.
Few nations are truly prepared for a pandemic of this nature and scale. India does possess some advantages in terms of the state’s decades of experience when it comes to fighting communicable diseases and natural disasters. But it also has the challenge of responding to this pandemic while continuing to battle legacy health challenges. Its health systems are likely to be overwhelmed unless it is able to moderate the surge of COVID19 and this has motivated the stringent lockdown.
In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, national responses are vital, but in the medium term, international cooperation will be our best weapon. And reforming and reinforcing the institutions and mechanisms that underpin such cooperation will be our best defense against future global threats.
Is coronavirus on track to play out like the movie Contagion? Scott Z. Burns, the writer of the film, and W. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, join Nick Bilton to explain how much of the research that went into the film is playing out in real time; how the states and countries that ignore social distancing will pay the ultimate price; why this particularly insidious virus is unlike anything we’ve seen in recent history; and how an FDA-approved vaccine could take a lot less time than we’ve been told.
The sum of known coronavirus U.S. cases soared well past 100,000, with more than 1,600 dead, as weary doctors and nurses protested at shortages of scarce medical supplies that some have to keep under lock and key or even buy on the black market.
Rich-country governments have announced large fiscal packages to expand health-care provision and mitigate the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But what can poorer countries do to flatten the contagion curve and soften the economic shock?
Even a perfect response won’t end the pandemic. As long as the virus persists somewhere, there’s a chance that one infected traveler will reignite fresh sparks in countries that have already extinguished their fires…Under these conditions, there are three possible endgames: one that’s very unlikely, one that’s very dangerous, and one that’s very long.
Read Here – The Atlantic
Although the global coronavirus epidemic has only recently made international headlines, some in China have known about it since the beginning of December. Thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-tech dictatorship, that information was not made public, and the virus was allowed to take off.
