Global problems require global solutions.
Pandemics come and pandemics go. COVID-19 wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last. It hasn’t even been the world’s deadliest disease, although the swiftness with which it can move throughout communities and across the globe makes speed dating look pedestrian.
Not only does SARS-CoV-2 travel rapidly, it has a complete disregard for the divisions we often like to create and defend. COVID-19 doesn’t care whether you’re young or old or rich or poor. It doesn’t care if you have good table manners, what language you speak, or if you talk with your mouth full. It is true that some people are more at risk than others, but no-one has the luxury of being complacent or smug.
Although there is still no guaranteed solution on the horizon, vast resources and tireless efforts are being dedicated to vaccination programs. At the same time, governments and health systems are doing what they can to contain the virus and provide effective support and treatment. Frustratingly, the unpredictable materializing of SARS-CoV-2 variants makes our efforts seem, at times, like a dangerous and costly game of whac-a-mole.
On its journey across the globe and throughout different countries, SARS-CoV-2 has exposed the fragility of our social relationships. The refusal by some to invest in cooperative and collaborative solutions is far more perilous in the long term than however precarious our health systems or our own individual physical health might be. For comprehensive solutions to problems such as COVID-19, genuine cooperation is required both nationally and internationally, between governments and the private sector, and at all levels of the health system.
Regardless of the size of the group, whether it’s a small rural village, a community within a large town, a metropolitan city, a region, a nation, or groups of nations, when people have found ways to cooperate, results have been much better. Where the approach has been, instead, to blame others, or to stockpile resources so some are oversupplied while others are empty-handed, the results have been much poorer.
In situations like these, it can often be the case that genuine leaders emerge regardless of their actual appointed position. It can also happen that some appointed leaders fail gloriously to step up to the plate. Some leaders, from whom it might be reasonable to expect strong and effective leadership, appear not to have even arrived at the ballpark, let alone know that there’s a plate awaiting their presence.
Some leaders might be aptly described as all tip and no iceberg. The world needs icebergs. More than ever, we need leaders of substance who are clear in their thinking and comfortable with the uncertainty that a situation like a global pandemic necessarily creates.
There is little value in competition during times such as this. By participating in a competitive type of league-ladder politics, there will only be losers. Humanity is at its very best when cooperation is the order of the day.
The great American medical physicist William T. Powers said prophetically almost 20 years ago, “The childhood of the human race is far from over, we have a long way to go before most people will understand that what they do for others is just as important to their wellbeing as what they do for themselves.”
Global calamities can reveal the goals and standards that leaders actually prioritize regardless of what their rhetoric might be. Leaders who highly value the quality of living for all will serve the people they lead much better than leaders who are primarily concerned with matters such as international impression management, global point-scoring, or the balance sheet of loans and foreign debt.
