Watch: The COVID wake-up call

The coronavirus pandemic was expected. Since 1980 more than 12,000 documented infectious disease outbreaks have occurred all over the world and disrupted the lives of billions of people. The human costs of Covid-19 will be severe with an expected 20 to 60 per cent of the global human population eventually being infected and 14 to 42 million expected to die as a result. The economic fallout will be no less dramatic with $trillions wiped off global GDP and the strong possibility of a full-blown economic depression a reality by this time next year. Inevitably, it will have serious political and economic outcomes for social stability.

The COVID-19 pandemic was not just predictable but inevitable, which makes the skyrocketing economic and human costs of the crisis all the more unacceptable. If the international community does not respond by creating new global structures to deal with such outbreaks in the future, it will be guilty of criminal neglect.

 

 

 

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