Five Years Later, Covid’s Worst Casualty Comes into
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Siddhartha Mukherjee:
It has been five years since the world was blown into the tumult of a lethal pandemic. Back then, deserted streets and distant coughs, to say nothing of ambulances docking into hospitals, would have carried a very different meaning. But as Proust wrote, the moments of the past do not remain still. We have metabolized a global trauma — millions of deaths, nations brought to their knees, a generation scarred by grief, isolation and loss — so rapidly that it seems, at times, not to have happened at all….
Covid was a privatized pandemic. It is this technocratic, privatized model that is its lasting legacy and that will define our approach to the next pandemic. It solves some problems, but on balance it’s a recipe for disaster. There are some public goods that should never be sold.
It has been five years since the world was blown into the tumult of a lethal pandemic. Back then, deserted streets and distant coughs, to say nothing of ambulances docking into hospitals, would have carried a very different meaning. But as Proust wrote, the moments of the past do not remain still. We have metabolized a global trauma — millions of deaths, nations brought to their knees, a generation scarred by grief, isolation and loss — so rapidly that it seems, at times, not to have happened at all….
Covid was a privatized pandemic. It is this technocratic, privatized model that is its lasting legacy and that will define our approach to the next pandemic. It solves some problems, but on balance it’s a recipe for disaster. There are some public goods that should never be sold.