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By Jared Diamond *
Today, Covid-19 is changing the world. It infects many, it kills some, it has broken normal social relations, it has stopped
international travel and affects our economies and trade. What will our world be like in a few years?
from now on, when will this acute crisis have subsided?
There is a widespread belief that the vaccines that are being developed will protect us against disease. But this remains doubtful. Diseases differ in how they can be treated with vaccines.
Some vaccines, for smallpox and yellow fever, for example, actually protect for decades or a lifetime. But for the flu, protecting them takes less than a year. And there are still no vaccines for malaria and AIDS, despite the enormous efforts that have been made to develop them.
Mutation
The flu often mutates or its different strains spread further in one year or another, so a new vaccine is created each year. While the polio and smallpox vaccines protect everyone, the flu and cholera vaccines protect about half of those who receive them. Therefore, the efficacy of vaccines against Covid-19 is impossible to predict.
But suppose we will soon have effective vaccines for Covid-19. How will the world change? Scientists in many countries (China, the United States, Russia, Great Britain and others) are fighting for its development. So there is a bad scenario, a good scenario and all the middle ground.
There are already several signs that a bad scenario is starting to develop. The 7.7 billion doses for the world’s population of 7.7 billion cannot be produced and distributed around the world overnight. At first the doses will be few. Who will get them first? Common sense dictates that the first doses go to medical personnel, because we need all the rest to care for patients and give us vaccinations. For those of us who are not medical personnel, rich and powerful people will find ways to get vaccinated before poor and powerless people.
It is about the distribution of doses within a country that will be the first to develop an effective vaccine. There is likely to be selfishness at the international level as well: a country that develops a vaccine will certainly put its citizens first. This priority has already been given when it comes to masks: a few months ago, when these masks were in short supply and some shipments from China were reaching Europe, several countries were competing by whatever means to secure them on their own. Worse still, a country that develops a vaccine can preserve it, depriving it of political or economic opponents.
To return to
But if we think about it, selfish national policies would be suicidal. Even in the short term, no country can be safe from Covid-19 on its own, eliminating the disease within its borders. In today’s globalized environment, Covid-19 will return to that country from others that have not eradicated the virus.
This has already happened in New Zealand and Vietnam, where strict measures to stop local transmission were stopped, but citizens who returned from abroad continued to carry the virus. This leads us to a crucial conclusion: no country will be safe from Covid-19 until everyone is safe. It is a global problem that requires a global solution.
I consider this positive. We are faced with global problems that require global solutions: particularly climate change, the decline in natural resources around the world, and the destabilizing effects of inequality in all countries. Just as no country can eliminate Covid-19 on its own by permanently curbing the virus within its borders, no country can protect itself against climate change simply by reducing its dependence on fossil fuels and reducing gas emissions. that tax the environment. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, like Covid-19, does not respect political boundaries.
What about climate change?
But climate change, resource depletion and inequality are far more serious threats to our survival and quality of life than the current pandemic. Even in the worst case, if all people on Earth are infected with Covid-19 and 2% die as a result, that is “only” 154 million deaths. Which means that 7,546,000,000 people will survive: far more than is necessary to ensure the survival of humanity. Covid-19 is negligible, compared to the effects that climate change, the depletion of natural resources and inequality can have on us.
Why, then, do we not seem determined to take action against climate change and all other global threats, when we seem determined to act on the mildest threat of Covid-19? The answer is obvious: Covid-19 caught our attention, as it made people around the world sick or died in a short time. On the contrary, climate change is slowly but surely destroying us through indirect consequences such as limited food production, hunger, extreme weather and the spread of tropical diseases in temperate zones. Therefore, we are slow to understand climate change as a global threat that requires a global response.
That is why the Covid-19 pandemic gives me hope, even as I mourn the loss of the loved ones it killed. For the first time in world history, people around the world are forced to accept that we all face a common threat that no country can face alone. If all the people come together to defeat Covid-19, they could learn a lesson. Perhaps then they are motivated to come together, necessarily and to confront climate change, depletion of natural resources and inequality. In such a case, Covid-19 will have brought not only tragedy but also salvation, putting the peoples of our world on a sustainable path.
* Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at the University of California and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. His book “Nations in overthrow” – Dioptra Publications – 2020 has just been published in Greek
Project Syndicate article published by NEA Weekend
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