In conversation with Mitali Mukherjee, Professor Lachenal, History Professor specialized in global health and epidemics, at Sciences Po said people are looking at the wrong examples in time while trying to make sense of the COVID pandemic. While many parallels are being drawn to the Spanish Flu, the bigger lessons to draw were from the more recent “avian flu” and H1N1 epidemics in 2005 and 2009, where the importance of masks and intensive testing came through. So when the epidemic is out of control, lockdowns do help in limited measures, but the bigger focus should have been on contact tracing, surveillance and wearing masks.
Prof Lachenal also said that cities will need to reimagine themselves with a much greater thrust on healthcare and safer living spaces. The concept of trust and governance raised some fascinating binaries, on the one hand, a lack of trust had impacted relations between citizens and state in nations like America. However, there were examples from North and Northeast Africa, where trust in the ruling government was extremely low but community-level initiatives had ensured the pandemic’s spread was kept under control.
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