Is hindsight 2020? Or 2019?
Or maybe it dates back to the turn of the century/millennium or way before that?
What prompts my question today is two reports from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland. The second of these reports, A World in Disorder, was issued yesterday:
https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_AR_2020_EN.pdf
The first one, A World at Risk, appeared in 2019:
https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_annualreport_2019.pdf
An overriding theme of both reports is that we've basically been fiddling while Rome has been burning and now we're paying the price. We (or at least our political leaders) could have and should have listened and acted on the warnings of epidemiologists, scientists and other experts that a pandemic was inevitable in the very near future. We should have been applying lessons learned from previous epidemics. We should be doing more to green our future.
I haven't really digested them yet but I will say that this latest report does not appear to limit itself to blaming, shaming and finger-pointing. It does point to ways we can mitigate the damage and improve outcomes.
I may have more to say at a later date. It will be interesting to read some of the experts' reactions to these reports.
What prompts my question today is two reports from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland. The second of these reports, A World in Disorder, was issued yesterday:
https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_AR_2020_EN.pdf
The first one, A World at Risk, appeared in 2019:
https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_annualreport_2019.pdf
An overriding theme of both reports is that we've basically been fiddling while Rome has been burning and now we're paying the price. We (or at least our political leaders) could have and should have listened and acted on the warnings of epidemiologists, scientists and other experts that a pandemic was inevitable in the very near future. We should have been applying lessons learned from previous epidemics. We should be doing more to green our future.
I haven't really digested them yet but I will say that this latest report does not appear to limit itself to blaming, shaming and finger-pointing. It does point to ways we can mitigate the damage and improve outcomes.
I may have more to say at a later date. It will be interesting to read some of the experts' reactions to these reports.