What do you think we should do to create a global society that will be less vulnerable for future pandemics to occur?
https://www.observantonline.nl/English/Home/Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/18230/Magic-bullets-
Magic Bullets?
Being right in the middle of the COVID-19 storm, everyone is hoping for a quick fix such as a vaccine. In his blog Martin Paul suggests that finding a magic bullet has the highest priority. We, the Global Health Team at Health Ethics and Society of Maastricht University, don’t want to question the priority of working on acute and effective medical solutions in itself, however, with regards to framing the crisis, some more nuances can be made. Do we really just have to sit and wait, complying to some frustrating public health measures, for the new Nobel Prize candidate, like Paul Ehrlich, or for any outbreak-movie-like-action-hero to valiantly save us from the invisible threat?
Simple solution
We all wish that they would exist, these magic bullets (simple solutions with extreme effectiveness). However, just as Bill Gates already abandoned this idea, we teach our Global Health students that they do not. Sadly, none of the solutions to health problems are in and of themselves magic or heroic. All medical interventions and technologies, whether drugs, vaccines, ventilators or diagnostics need daily human handwork (engaging relationships between healthcare workers, decision makers and patients) to function at all. If there is any magic at play, it is created through this human work and collaboration. This work shapes how these solutions are put to use and how effective they are in the end. Yet, this work is not prioritized or talked about when we search for magic bullets. Instead, the belief in magic bullets and their heroes leads to a single focus on targeted and vertical solutions to global health issues. Such vertical solutions are limited in scope and distributed unequally over populations defined by fuzzy and messy lines of affluence and access.
Magic bullet
Importantly, the belief in magic bullets and its effect on innovation processes is directing funding and attention away from other things that highly matter, such as focusing on the structural and causal issues that helped the virus spillover and spread into the human population at the first place. We have been warned long in advance by epidemiologists and environmentalists that - due to our high global connectivity and the ways in which we are disrupting ecosystems and exploiting wildlife and other animals - it was not a question if a pandemic would strike, but when it would strike. This also means that one imagined magic bullet against COVID-19 will not prevent the next zoonotic virus to spill over into the human world.
Large picture
We should address this crisis with urgent and immediate measures, yes. However, we should also emphasize the importance of not losing sight of addressing the more structural and systemic questions and issues that emerge if we look at the larger picture of this disease. Think for example of the need for the strengthening of health systems, of reducing inequalities that possibly exacerbate the effects of the virus in ways we do not yet understand, and of thoroughly questioning the way we are currently meddling recklessly with our planetary ecological health support system.
Sidekick
We should not just mention prevention and public health measures as if they were just a temporarily and frustrating sidekick of the hero with its bullet-gun. This would be following and promoting the strategy that averts attention from one of the most crucial questions raised by our present situation: what should we do to create a global society that will be less vulnerable for future pandemics to occur?
We need concerted efforts and interdisciplinary approaches, including the social sciences, to understand our current situation and to prepare ourselves for the future.
Carijn Beumer, Nora Engel, Alana Helberg-Proctor, Iris Fraikin, Ricky Janssen, Gonnie Klabbers, Anja Krumeich, Agnes Meershoek, Remco van de Pas, Avanti Wadugodapitiya: The Global Health Team at Health Ethics and Society of Maastricht University
Source: https://www.observantonline.nl/English/Home/Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/18230/Magic-bullets-
Redactie - 01-Apr-2020 12:40
We failed to be united to prevent global warming due to climate change and still we are divided in COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Global unity is urgency to fight against such pandemic crisis.
Carijn Beumer
This is a very relevant topic of discussion under the circumstances.
Let me share something with you that I studied in political science when I was in the college.
There is a theory called the the theory of formation of state. This theory is mostly about how the concept of making countries came to human minds. I remember, I read a book on this topic. The writer wrote that there was a time when man used to lead a sedentary life in the forests. His life was not much different from the lives of the beasts who dominated the earth at that time. Then man united and formed a group. The group expanded to form a community. The community further expanded to form a village. This process went on and on and one by one man formed the district, the provincial units, the region and then the country. The writer wrote in that book that this process is going on till now. Many countries are marching ahead to form a group of countries like SAARC, OPEC, BIMSTEC etc. This way the process can be expected to go on till the world becomes one. That global society will surely (that you are talking about) be created but I don't think that will be created right now. We don't know how many millenniums we will take to built that.
For the time being, we should forget about the results and should go on working towards that global society. We should be ready to sacrifice a little bit of our individuality. We should try to be a little tolerant and teachable.
You never know, I said a few millenniums, may be a few years from now that global society will be here in reality ... after all miracles happen and that is why this word 'miracle' exists.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Anamitra Roy.
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