This is a really short piece but it highlights some of the point I was trying to make:
DEFINE_ME
WWW.THELANCET.COM
"...This is most troubling given the time of year—the Spring Festival celebration, which sees a lot of movement to and around China, with people rushing home to celebrate and subsequently returning to their usual place or country of residence..."
Whether it be MERS, SARS COVID, Ebola, and a whole host of 'lesser' infectious diseases (and grotesque ideological fantasies such as FGM) the discussion has to be had, or at least it should be had, by global leaders responsible for setting grand strategic policies.
Either we carry on with this physical, emotional, economic, societal 'lock-down' - with all its consequential implications - or we stop trade, movement, collaboration etc with areas that are likely to infect us in the future.
I know it's a big shift change but surely, this is an either / or situation based upon the guaranteed recurrence of something like, or worse, than we currently have. The so-called incentives for cheap manufacturing and migration from alien (we have not evolved in unison) cultures can be wiped out in an instant as soon as something like this occurs. Are we to live forever in fear and preparedness for the new norm of routine lock-down and isolation as the price we pay for global trade / movement and the threat of intercontinental transportation of future virus?
I can't help but make the comparison with EU expansionism. Had the EU stayed as the original (+) small group of like minded, culturally, economically, geographically, politically similar cohort, I would probably have been in favour of the institution. It got too big, it got too diverse and it is/will continue to destroy itself as a consequence.
Why have we been so keen to forge ever greater integration with other nations? Cheap labour which supports growth in GDP - in its very simplest from.
I guess there are comparisons with the time of Empires.
Maybe it's time to take a proper look at why we use GDP as the key measure of national economic 'success' and start to place greater value upon the more holistic human needs.
Maybe it's time to recognise the unintended benefits that have come from this situation and build them into the vision for the future.