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Ten Lessons the Corona Pandemic Teaches Us
We need to act before it is late.
In 2016, in an interview with the BBC, Bill Gates said, “we are a bit vulnerable right now” and that he crossed his fingers all the time that “a deadly flu epidemic does not strike in the next ten years.” Only three years later, they detected some pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan, China, later on, named COVID-19.
1. It happened like a simple flu
At the onset, nobody perceived it as a threat to the world as it was only confined to Wuhan. Not only the people but also governments initially thought of it as a simple flu-like virus. But the virus spread throughout the world in a matter of weeks. Countries such as the US, Nepal, France, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan confirmed cases over the following days. Since then, governments have tried to contain its spread or at least its severity.
2. We were not ready
So far, one thing has become clear from COVID-19 and its predecessors such as AIDS, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, and it is that we are not ready for any emergency.
