The Tyee has published my article Our Post-COVID Society: What to Keep, Toss or Do Differently? Excerpt:
We’ve all been living in the moment for six long months or more. Many of us are homesick for 2019. Others dream of a new Utopia. Neither outcome seems likely. We know the post-pandemic world will be very different, but we haven’t thought through what we need to do to make it a better one.
One discouraging thought is that we’ll never see a “post-pandemic” because COVID-19 could morph from pandemic to endemic. Like some of its coronavirus cousins that cause colds, the SARS-CoV-2 virus could become a permanent fixture, sweeping through populations every few months.
Even a vaccine might not stamp it out. It will take years to develop something really effective, and the first vaccines are likely to be only partially effective. That, of course, would give the anti-vaxxers still more reason to refuse it.
Worse yet, some other virus — like an influenza — could turn up tomorrow morning, as suddenly as H1N1 swine flu did in 2009, and make matters even worse.
COVID-19 has also shaken almost every government on the planet, exposing every political failure and social injustice that helped set the stage for this disaster. But however much legitimacy and respect governments may have lost, they’re all we’ve got to work with. The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
The Organization for Economic Coordination and Development evidently understands this. It’s planning a global online event for November, Government After Shock. It will raise three big questions: What do we need to leave behind? What do we want to keep? What should we do differently? The answers it gets could, one hopes, guide governments to a saner, healthier post-pandemic world.
