Is the world due for another pandemic in the foreseeable future? A few days ago, during the UN General Assembly meeting on pandemic prevention, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus stated firmly that the question is no longer whether it will happen, but when.
Those remarks reverberated around the world as fears mounted, particularly since the man's credibility has been subject to suspicion since 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic emerged.
The panic that has gripped millions, and perhaps billions, around the globe can be attributed to more than one reason.
First, although the state of emergency that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic was declared over in May 2023, its psychological effects remain deeply rooted in humanity's collective memory across the inhabited world.
Second, there is the state of geopolitical turmoil and anxiety around the world, where trust has all but disappeared and certainty is absent. This opens the door wide to believing in conspiracy theories on the one hand, and perhaps to favoring predictions that seek to fulfill themselves on the other, with each acting according to the extent of his influence, the growth of his power, and his ability to control humanity's destiny.
Yet, without minimizing or exaggerating the matter, Tedros did not say that a pandemic had broken out, nor that one was on its way. His warning, which is not the first of its kind, centered on the possibility of a new respiratory disease emerging that could cause a pandemic with effects similar to those of COVID-19.
The world's top health official cited the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a reminder that infectious diseases can emerge anywhere and spread across borders. Tedros's remarks sparked a wide-ranging debate around a fundamental question: "Is the world better prepared, six years after COVID-19, to face a new pandemic?"
The answer most likely has two sides: yes and no.
Yes, because in many respects the world has become more informed and experienced after paying a high price in the last pandemic, and everyone has begun developing concrete and meaningful steps to strengthen preparedness.
But at the same time, no, because the progress made is fragile and uneven, and much remains to be done to protect humanity.
Indeed, the member states of the World Health Organization have adopted decisions that have strengthened the world's capacity not only to respond more quickly to future outbreaks and mitigate their effects, but also to prevent them in the first place.
In this context, the recent responses to outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg clearly demonstrate this progress at the national level, with support from the World Health Organization. Yet some observers insist that these are fragile and marginal gains. The past six years have seen profound disruptions in global health, with funding continuing to shift away from health toward defense and national security. This puts at risk the systems that were strengthened during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect countries from future epidemics.
Another troubling and provocative question arises: Could an ongoing pandemic strengthen nationalism and entrench populism, at the expense of the spirit of international cooperation needed to fend off the threat posed by such pandemics?
There is no doubt that when COVID-19 struck humanity, it became a global phenomenon that caused countries to isolate themselves from one another. The pain and suffering, economic hardships, and social unrest led world leaders to abandon international cooperation and turn inward, closing borders and drawing up their own pragmatic plans.
What effect could a new pandemic have on a world in which populism has risen alarmingly and everyone is waiting for the spark of a global military confrontation?
Talk of a coming pandemic cannot be separated from the current state of global chaos, with wars raging and perhaps even more devastating ones on the way, quite apart from climate change, which turns the days of millions into anxiety and their nights into sleeplessness, distancing them from any sense of reassurance about the future.
The world once again appears to be confronting the failures of globalization and the rhetoric of removing barriers, especially as many countries, amid talk of an approaching pandemic, have come to favor the Indian model adopted during the COVID-19 era. New Delhi restricted exports of key medical supplies and invested more than $1 billion in the sector to reduce its dependence on China for medical components.
This means that the isolationist model of scattered islands appears to be prevailing once again. But there remains hope that artificial intelligence systems may serve as a lifeline, sparing the world from the abyss of pandemic alarm at its current stage as a strategic warning. More on this later.
