Pandemic science and politics

Abstract

In 2019, the Global Health Security Alliance assessed worldwide adherence to the International Health Regulations (2005), which supposedly commit nations to measures that prevent or control the spread of infectious diseases and mitigate their effects. The study found that no nation was fully prepared, and many countries—rich or poor—fell woefully short. This finding is only one of the many indications that we could have been ready, nationally and globally, to deal with a crisis like COVID-19, but were not. It’s far from clear that the pandemic, once started in Wuhan, China, could ever have been contained. But there are good reasons to think it need never have been so catastrophic for both lives and economies