Listening to the Pandemic: Time to Get Real

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This trend seemed to consolidate by the day, with very few voices trying to argue for a cooperative international approach, multilateralism, win-win solutions and a search for common ground, and community-based policies rather than a purely individualistic vision of society.

Today, as the coronavirus pandemic spreads across the entire world, putting at risk so many of our lives and shaking the foundations of our everyday way of life, we need to ask if this paradigm is likely to remain the predominant one. Is the pandemic going to strengthen, or are there lessons we will learn? 

Can a virus challenge some of the assumptions on which the current global political landscape is based? Is it going to make us focus on what really counts, on what unites us as humanity, or is it going to fuel the sense of fear and suspicion among and within communities, dividing us even more, increasing the level of toxic rhetoric and behaviours that has already poisoned our societies, and partially paralysed our collective capacity to act efficiently?

Are we going to use this crisis as an opportunity to call some of the mistakes of recent years by their name, and adjust our trajectory at last to the compass of reality?

A woman wearing a protective mask and gloves sits alone in a cafe in Belgrade, Serbia, 17 March 2020. The Serbian authorities declared the state of emergency on 15 March. Several European countries have closed borders, schools and public facilities, and have cancelled major sports and entertainment events in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes the Covid-19 disease. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

This pandemic is telling us a number of things loud...