Unexpected developments from the pandemic

Before I get into this topic, I want to comment on something I was told during my public health engineering lectures at uni in the late 1970s:

mosquitoes are infected by malaria as well as humans, so if we could keep every infected mosquito separated from every infected human for 28 days, malaria would die out.

Obviously, that is impossible, but isolation for a period of time is a long standing medical practice - in fact, the word quarantine comes from the 40 day isolation of ships from plague-infected nations introduced by Venice in 1377, which became generalised to any compulsory isolation in the1670s. The current use of isolation to address the COVID pandemic is an important step, but vaccination is also a must have to learn how to live with this, just as we have learned to live - with varying degrees of success - with other zoonotic diseases such as rabies, malaria, and Ebola. 

The problem we have had, of course, is that: 

• short-sighted self-interest and xenophobic dismissiveness of too many governments has led to a situation where poorer nations have been unable to deal effectively with COVID,
  
• economic and political interests in richer nations have impeded effective medical management, and 
• global interconnectedness has recycled infection, reinfection, and rapid transmission of new (and old) variants, 

and we've all suffered as a result. (This is something that is well described and assessed in Simon  Dalby's book "Anthropocene  Geopolitics", although that is in the context of the climate crisis - another situations where the response has been crippled by the same fatal flaws).

We have, as a result of the pandemic and attempts to manage it, become aware of: 

• the problem of excessive focus on economics and self-interest; 
• the fundamental flaws of patriarchal valuations of jobs, which has undervalued and thus under-invested in what are now being termed frontline workers - health care workers, supermarkets workers, etc - and associated issues such as adequate supplies of resources for transport; 
• the downside of international interconnectedness (although THAT one has been warned of for decades - see, for instance here [1995 film], here [2011], here [2002], here [1971], here [1964], this 2016 film about a 2014 real world outbreak of Ebola, - and these real life warnings here [2014], here [2019 - who wrote a book on this in 1995], and here, here, here, and this far-sighted 2013 bill from the Philippines [not adopted] ); 
• the importance of community and support; and 
• the stupidity of some of our decisions around work.
  

On that last one, probably the most noticeable effects here is the growth and likely permanence of work from home (see here and here), but there have also been a few "tree/sea changes" and, perhaps overseas more than here, what is being referred to (and possibly over-emphasised) as "the Great Resignation" (see here, here, here, and here - and note this). 

It is terrible that it has taken millions of deaths and the devastation to billions of lives of a pandemic for people to make such fundamental realisations. 

I sincerely hope we remember these lessons, and stop being so short-sighted, ultra-competitive / macho, and economics- & growth-addicted, and continue to put people first and foremost in our thinking, decision-making, planning, and governance.