New world order: How will COVID-19 affect our future?
In-depth: Right before the new year, it is time to try to envisage what a future alongside coronavirus might have in store for humankind; sadly, it will stay around for a while, but futurists believe we will all come out of it stronger.
https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/s1nvpe5ik
"It is clear that the coronavirus pandemic will transform the coming decades for human society," says Israeli futurist Prof. David Passig. And while Pfizer has pointed to 2024 as a possible exit date for the pandemic, Passig is highly sceptical it will be over before the end of 2025.
"There are two or three more waves at the very least, when I said at the beginning of the pandemic that there will be between six to eight waves, everyone thought I was crazy. But I kept saying that at the current rate this virus spreads, it will take time until the coronavirus crisis disappears completely."
Passig says that he bases his predictions off of simulations he and his colleagues ran in the early days of the pandemic, taking into account a whole host of biological, economic and political variables.
"Back in March 2020, I argued that the variables that would affect COVID's decay rate were global collaboration, a change of attitude among vaccine opponents and ensuring the whole world got the vaccine,"
"As long as the pandemic is still spreading somewhere around the globe, it won't end completely. It will continue to evolve, resurface, and create new variants. Mankind must do whatever it can to make sure everyone receives the vaccine."
However, he reserves that the world's current vaccination situation won't suffice in order to eradicate the pandemic and that a change of conduct is also needed.
The world can't continue to act like atomized units, and countries can't make selfish decisions as they see fit. Only by joining forces will we be able to end this pandemic."
Passig also believes a key element in dealing with the pandemic is to shift the way we perceive democracy.
"The most important thing to do in dealing with the current epidemic is to bring about a serious reform to the question 'what is democracy', and to improve its definition. Because right now democracy is freedom of the individual, and people act as they see fit. Some get vaccinated, while others won't, and that's childish. This way of action is life-threatening, which can't exist during a pandemic. We must have complete responsibility to one another."
"If Africa were our brother or a poor elderly man, how would we treat it? Would we leave them weak, or would we try to help them? Because there's an entire continent suffering from extreme poverty, and in the context of COVID, a whole continent struggles to get the required amounts of vaccines.........(read on if you wish?)