Since reading his brilliant Sapiens, I’ve followed anything emanating from the gifted mind of Israeli historian and author Yuval Harari (above). So I was delighted to read a lengthy treatise in the Weekend FT where he shared some ideas about Covid-19 – and what the world has learnt from the pandemic.
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He admires the way scientists have pulled together. Says they’ve collaborated across borders to accelerate mankind’s understanding of the threat and how to deal with it. In stark contrast, he reckons, to politicians who “tended to fued” and “failed to form an international alliance” that could have prevented many deaths.
Harari refers to three big lessons: 1) The digital infrastructure which has been the world’s salvation must be safeguarded. 2) Each country needs to invest in its public health system; and 3) Mankind must recognise the age-old war between human and pathogens and establish a global system to monitor and prevent pandemics.
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Put another way, Yuval Harari urges the world NOT to waste this crisis. Applying these lessons, he says, will enable sapiens to respond better when (not if) a more deadly pandemic hits the world. Not doing so would be “a human failure and – more precisely – a political failure.”
And for your listening pleasure…
Today’s fresh audio on BizNews Radio.…..(click on the link to access)
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