This book is not about the particulars of the coronavirus pandemic. This is a book about how the world has handled the pandemic and the changes that occurred within the economies. Countries and cities had different preparedness ability to handle pandemics, but it seems all were unprepared for the scale of the pandemic and economic consequences. A pandemic which is shaped and is shaping a deeply interconnected world. The pandemic has changed the social and economic life of individuals and companies. Zakaria focuses on the political factors which influenced how the pandemic was handled, and the social and economic changes in the structure of world economies.

Pandemics are not new and there are those who kept claiming that they are inevitable and should be prepared against. In terms of biology, a virus does not actually want to kill its host as that would kill the virus as well. It is not possible to stop nature from producing outbreaks of new diseases, but a pandemic to those diseases is optional. Preparation and efficient responses can limit the spread of the diseases. The risk of pandemics is high not only because of nature, but because they are able to be manufactured. Although bioweapons are more practical, protecting against these weapons has very few employees and a lack of budget, unlike other forms of national defense which are more easily detectible.

Experts operate by obtaining, questioning, and testing hypotheses. Data influence the conclusions.
As different data is obtained, the conclusions change. In the initial stages of any pandemic, Covid included, have a dearth of information and contain erroneous information which needs to be used for decisions. Making claims before the appropriate evidence creates backlash of disbelieve in the future when listening to the claims would be appropriate. Given the chance, the public can understand nuance, but elites usually patronize the public.

How well a country handled the virus depended not on its size, but on the quality of government. What Zakaria sees as a competent, well-functioning, and trusted state. Quality governments are able to generate wealth and direct it to where it is needed. The US has a long history for being anti-statist, with the recent decades having many officials which wanted to heavily reduce the government. An anticommons has occurred with the US government as the system of checks and balances made easy to block any action.

This pandemic and many other issues require international support to ameliorate. International relations have been improving after WW2 with many international treaties and institutions. Recently, the US has been removing itself from the international stage. The lack of international support reduces the ability of the world to reduce or ameliorate many problems, and increases the threat of conflict.

The world has been moving to the digital economy but many did not see that as relevant to their decisions. Many seeming taboos of online have been broken as companies and people connect via digital space. Working from home maintains productivity with flexible hours and less office-space. The problem with going digital is that size matters, whereas small business have more difficulty gaining users.

The author uses many claims which seem true and seem to be platitudes, but are not actually true. Provided confirmation biased claims while in a different context explaining them in more detail. These pretentious claims seem to try to soothe fears by adding a bit of certainty and glorification which cajoles the reader to feel some safety in the words, but they contradict many themes which Zakaria continuously frames. The pretentious claims are a minority in this book, but they create problems as by referencing myths, sustains them, and prevents accepting the history and circumstance that led to the situations. A big convoluted claim is about government and markets. In some instances, the author references that markets were not enough and that government is needed, while in others that government was preventing private solutions. The story of the interaction between government and private sector needs to be ameliorated.

The pandemic has shifted many economic and social facets. Weaknesses became pronounced as the strengths could not compensate for their troubles. Going digital seems like progress, but it has become very difficult to tell genuine information from fake news. While some governments do an effective job at mitigating woes, other governments blame others rather than deal with the issues. Economic and social circumstances are shifting, but hopefully many lessons are learned to facilitate appropriate action in the future. ( )

Interesting stats about economic progress in the world & the US and relative economic improvements over time. Definite liberal viewpoint -- we're all better with cooperation. ( )

Interesantes lecciones y reflexiones ( )

Fareed Zakaria writes well. He is often persuasive and sometimes very informative. He is not always right.

He rushed this book to publication and makes many good points, some fair criticisms, a number of excellent observations, some wise judgements and some conclusions that he may come to regard as embarrassing in the near future.

He makes the statement that "The United States and Great Britain are the first major countries to open up and begin entering a post-pandemic world." This is respectfully, palpable nonsense. He is unapologetically partisan in his views and I share a lot of them but his lauding of the current administration's handling of the pandemic is rose-tinted at best.

Of his ten lessons some of them are obvious. Globalisation, how do we approach future events, how to rebuild, listening to the science and the inevitable bipolarity of superpower-dom.

He equates an opposition to globalisation to selfishness but I think that that is flawed and simplistic. I agree with him that globalisation cannot be reversed but it can be sent sideways. We have allowed globalisation to be moved to manufacturing monopoly in favour of the distinctly repressive Chinese administration and that is the most urgent thing for the West to address TOGETHER. He correctly, if grudgingly credits Trump with looking to challenge this and just as correctly, but less grudgingly, criticises him for trying to address it alone and with an excess of hubris.

I am a glass-half-full man and I don't hold with the doom-sayers who think Western renewal is beyond us all but a concerted effort is needed to work together on a multi-national level to ensure that the world's supply chains are not ever as dependent on a single state again. Localised Globalisation is the oxymoron that must prevail if we are to thrive more than survive and it makes ecological sense too.

The main lesson that I have taken from this pandemic is that governments and its servants are not to be trusted - whether it is with our freedoms and certainly not with the truth. Politicians and scientists have never been trusted by the populace less than today and rightly so. That trust will take a generation perhaps to recover.

He also makes no mention of the rampant inflation that the world will need to face down as it looks at ways to rebuild and, of course, which he avoids as it may appear critical to his constituency. Personally I don't blame Johnson, Biden or other leaders entirely for the inflation that the pandemic has brought upon us - it is a result of 35 years of failed policies that imbalanced the world economy and an inevitable outcome of such a pandemic when economies are locked down in an unprecedented manner.

Given the present John Hopkins and other studies on the failures of lockdowns, Zakaria, makes a very prescient point:

Was it worth it? These are difficult decisions, but one cannot but think that in many developing countries, not enough thought was given to the calamities that would follow a lockdown.

Is this limited to the developing world? (whatever that is these days - and I believe that the populations of many countries such as the one I reside in have more faith in their government's decision making and are more apt to follow their directives without civil unrest). Statistics can be used to tell us anything if we are biased enough to interpret them in keeping with our prejudices and not every country reported hospitalisations and deaths with the same parameters as others, but studies do need to be made objectively as to whether the approach of Florida was more effective than that of, say New York or Illinois, without politics intruding into the discussion too profusely. I don't know the answer to the question but it is one we need to ask ourselves.

Finally he does not give any thought in a meaningful way of the real origins of the virus, accepting the rather increasingly suspicious dismissal that it evolved naturally in Wuhan. One lesson that should be learned from the pandemic is that the scientists should be watched and we shouldn't be throwing money at experimenting with our existence is such a cavalier manner. ( )

So, what's next? The pandemic will accelerate all the problems facing humanity: climate change, digital revolution, bipolar power struggle, retreat from liberal democracy, etc, etc Ths is a very thoughtful and useful overview with some encouragement for what's coming. ( )