Scent of Covid-19 expose the fragility of our societies

Western governments and their scientific advisors made assumptions about Covid-19 and its lethality that turned out to be mistaken as valuable time was lost while the virus spread unchecked, leaving health systems overwhelmed for the avalanche of infections that followed. Covid-19 revealed the fragility of our societies and the speed with which our systems can come crashing down.

Covid-19 continues to rage around the world even after seven months as the global death toll crosses 600, 000, calls for investigations and inquiries into the causes of the catastrophe are getting louder.

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet Medical Journal for 25 years, attempts to inform the global debate humanity’s response to coronavirus and highlights the failure of many western governments to follow the emerging scientific evidence about the pandemic potential of the novel coronavirus.

 Horton criticises UK government as well as Trump administration for not only failing to protect American citizens but also undermining the global solidarity that is essential when fighting a pandemic. He is unforgiving in his assessment of President Trump’s decision to cut US funding of the World Health Organisation. “By attacking and weakening WHO while the agency was doing all it could to protect peoples in some of the most vulnerable countries in the world, President Trump has in my view met the criteria for the act of violence the international community calls a crime against humanity,” he writes.

Many mysteries remain including the strength and duration of the human immune response to Covid-19 and the long-term medical effects of the disease, “ the global scientific community made an unrivalled contribution to establishing a reliable foundation of knowledge to guide the response to the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic. Yet the management of Covid-19 represented in many countries the greatest science policy failure for a generation. What went wrong?” Horton writes.

Chinese officials were more open about Covid-19 than they were 17 years ago about Sars, but still they “ delayed reporting the illness, the virus and especially the all-important person-to-person spread.

 

The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again  by Richard Horton, Polity £12.99, 133 pages.