# Lessons from a year of Covid

by Yuval Noah Harari

https://www.ft.com/content/f1b30f2c-84aa-4595-84f2-7816796d6841

A very good article by Harrari about what we can learn from dealing with COVID-19 pandemic. It takes a very cold and independent look at what happened and is happening. He identifies mostly _positive_ lessons we can learn from the events of the last year. I think that is an extremely useful view, as newspapers are only full of negative news. These are not just "sunny" observations, he actually goes very deep in identifying what's important and at the same time positive. Similarly, he identifies negative things which are going on, but are highly non-obvious.

As is usual for him, Harrari takes a long-term view on what's happening and impacts of those things. I think this is important reading.

## Lessons

1. scientists of the world were able to come up with bio-tech solutions to this crisis in an unprecedentedly short timeframe. The first time in history, humankind is not helpless against biopathogens.
2. due to vast technological advances since industial revolution, we were able to largely minimise impact of the pandemic: trade is going on well, food supply was effectively not disrupted at all, many sectors of business were able to adapt relatively quickly. 100, or 500 years ago, this pandemic would be devastating, while now it's just "bad".
3. Internet infrastructure is way more resilient than we thought.
4. Internet and cyberspace is becoming the single point of failure for humanity. This will need solving in the future.
5. Science cannot solve everything. The most important decisions finaly need to be taken by politicians. These are failing us. Mostly because, unlike scientists, they do not cooperate on global scale, but rather hold nationalistic turf wars. In a worse case, they fail us by negligence and not taking the right actions, even though scientists tell us.
6. we learned that protection of life is not all. Sometimes, secondary impacts of the pandemic need to be weighed against the loss of life due to illness. These are challenges which we'll need to solve and come to terms with in the future.
7. centralisation and concentration of private information about citizens is becoming a strategic asset of governments. Publics will need to resolve the conundrum of transparency not only top-down, but bottom-up too.
8. globalisation in the face of pathogens is inevitable and global cooperation must be resolved.
9. it's clear we need a global coordination institutions to help with the next pandemic. WHO is there, but needs more money and needs to be improved.

> In the age-old war between humans and pathogens, the frontline passes through the body of each and every human being. If this line is breached anywhere on the planet, it puts all of us in danger. Even the richest people in the most developed countries have a personal interest to protect the poorest people in the least developed countries. If a new virus jumps from a bat to a human in a poor village in some remote jungle, within a few days that virus can take a walk down Wall Street.