COVID-19 and Global Problems

COVID-19 and Global Problems

By: Mariam Kapanadze

       Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies 

     

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, which caused a severe epidemiological shock and caught all countries of the world by surprise, will go down in history as one of the most important events of the first quarter of the 21st century. The crisis revealed the unpreparedness of the international community for such tests. It has caused unprecedented consequences in the political and socio-economic spheres in the member states, as well as in the work of structures and structures caused by the UN system.

With Corona Virus infections now evident in 221 countries, the pandemic is the most significant threat to humanity since the second world war. Even in the modern world with all the inventions and the medical devices and machines the world wasn’t ready to face such a vicious virus as COVID-19. However, no one can say that we weren’t warned, the outbreaks of infectious diseases have been happening for a while now: Dengue, Ebola, SARS, H1N1, etc. were just the begging of something bigger. 

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic we all hear and see the news, started to shut down countries across the world, causing a significant decline in air pollution in major cities as countries to implement stricter quarantines and travel restrictions. We all heard how the canal water in Venice has cleared up without boat traffic. In Thailand and Japan, mobs of monkeys and deer were roaming streets devoid of tourists. However, the bad news followed, and with the evidence of infection and death cases rising fast, no one could give real answers to the questions like:” What is going to be next? When this will end? , etc.” With climate change issue raising together with pandemic issue researchers warn that the world is ill-prepared. It’s been 2nd year that we’re dealing with a pandemic, however, no clear answers are being given even now.

Discussing COVID-19 last year made it clear that the pandemic would damage countries in many ways, however, the most damage would be focused on poorer countries with more vulnerable communities, by this damage the issue of inequality would rise accordingly. The challenges are going to be resolved harder in countries like Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, where the governments are less responsive and the health systems are worse.  

The economic fallout from COVID-19 is another unavoidable issue that governments will face, however, the severity of the impacts remains dependent on how long the pandemic will last. With people being locked at home and many companies, factories being closed it is not so clear how long we are going to last like this, with no trade and poorer countries not getting any export of food, the world may face another global pandemic, where people will start to die from hunger. A global Marshall plan, with massive injections of funding, is urgently needed to sustain governments and societies.

Eventually, we will of course get over this crisis. But too many people will have died, the economy will be severely scarred, and the threat of pandemics will remain. The priority then must be not only recovery but also establishing a robust multilateral mechanism for ensuring that a similar or even worse pandemic never again arises. One thing remains clear that the world before and after the Corona Virus will not be the same.

As it was already mentioned above COVID-19 has a disproportionate impact on most of the countries, depending on how vulnerable and marginalized they are. Countries reacted to the pandemic not collectively, but separately, but it is possible to cope with infectious diseases on a global scale only if all countries fight them. An easily spreading infectious disease cannot be kept within national boundaries. Fighting it requires joint efforts from countries, sharing information on detected cases of infection, the genome of the virus, the spread of the disease, and new methods of treatment. From this point of view, we have seen brilliant examples of such international cooperation - in particular, the unprecedented open exchange of genetic information, which resulted in the first publication of the complete genome of the virus on January 10, 2020. At the same time, there is a noticeable inclination of states to fight the coronavirus on their own, which spurs competition between countries to the detriment of joint efforts. These dynamics are not simply an exacerbation of pre-existing geopolitical tensions, for example, between the US and China or Russia and the West; new borders also divided traditional political allies: for example, the EU member states fenced themselves off from each other both literally (Germany and Belgium) and in a broader sense - Italy accused the EU partners of a lack of solidarity.

First of all, we need to understand and take into account the fact that we live in conditions of multidimensional globalization, which we can neither cancel nor redirect to any rationally given channel. And the fact that the forms of manifestation and the nature of the course of global processes in society, for example in health care or environmental protection, to a certain extent depend on the appropriate policy and behavior of people, in no way negates the fact that in the future humanity will no longer face such tests. Moreover, it is a matter of time. And the point is not limited to the fact that the next epidemic will certainly arise naturally. Even now, there are many reasons to talk about the artificial nature of the modern coronavirus. So, laboratories operate far not only in Wuhan but also in many other similar centers of the world, where medical, biological, chemical, etc. experiments are carried out. Moreover, one can only guess about the level of their secrecy. It is quite obvious that the closure of national borders and the almost complete cessation of international transport communications for such a long period, as well as the shutdown of many industries, an increase in unemployment, a significant decrease in the living standards of the absolute majority. An example of such quite noticeable changes caused by the coronavirus is the disagreements, grievances, and claims of individual countries regarding interaction and mutual assistance in overcoming. China was the first to be hit by the new coronavirus and has indeed been seriously affected. But now it starts to recover until all the rest of the world is gripped by disease. 

 It is necessary to look for the point of "new normal". There have already been calls to "restore everything better than it was", however, perhaps more valuable is the slogan voiced at a recent conference of the World Conservation Society: "Make the world not what it was, but what it could be." This optimism about the future is encouraging, but there is still a lack of a road map to achieve this goal. And perhaps most importantly, to incorporate the lessons learned from the pandemic when tackling climate change and other global challenges, as they expose the same pain points: lack of international cooperation, the inability to manage activities within national borders, and the need to work together for the common good. The coronavirus pandemic is not a security problem, but a general social problem, which should be solved by using the mechanisms of not state, but public security and civil protection of the population.