Introduction to the special issue ‘Reflections on the post COVID-19 World’

Abstract

OnDecember 31, 2019, theWuhanMunicipal Health Commission of China reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in the Hubei province. It was then on January 12, 2020 when the Chinese government publicly shared the genetic sequence of COVID-19 that we first made acquaintance of the microscopic villain of the horror movie that 2020was to become.And just like it usually is in thosemovies, notmany paid attention to this first stage appearance of the villain, which only made things worse, somuch so that onMarch 11, 2020, deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity, theWorld Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic. It has been almost six months since then, half a year in which the coronavirus cost more than 800 thousand people their lives and hundreds of millions their livelihoods. We are now mourning the loss of our loved ones as well as the loss of that certainty that we used to have about the ways of our lives. The pandemic has made it painfully clear that those institutions that we had designated to protect and maintain that certainty were unprepared for the task. Oscillating between too lax or too harsh measures whose footing in scientific information is disputable, and undecided or vague about their priorities, governments and state institutions of even the richest and themost powerful countries have failed to effectivelymanage and curb the pandemic and protect the wellbeing and social welfare of their citizens. Consequently, the pandemic still remains largely unpredictable in terms of spread, life cycle and consequences. Even though it is the one thing that everyone has been talking about in the past six months, we still have a myriad of unanswered questions, and most importantly, we are still very uncertain and apprehensive of the shape of things to come. This special issue has beenmotivated exactly by this state of things which can only be resolved by scientific information that can help us understand and learn fromwhat we have experienced and guide us in developing informed expectations