Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria. We are certainly living through a transformational period of human history. So, is the pandemic’s aftermath within American control? Regrettably this is unquestionably not a pressing American issue. Yet Fareed offers simple plain advice via a global historical lens.
Firstly, this is not another book about the pandemic. Fareed is focusing on how the global economy is shifting. COVID-19 is unquestionably light years from the 1918 flu pandemic’s impact on our economy.
Indeed America found itself confronting a truly horrific event in an analog world. Today’s impact is certainly global on a digital internet.
Secondly, he is addressing a post-pandemic world. Fareed sees common sense lessons from the 1916 flu pandemic. Can one even imagine responding to COVID during a world war?
America was just entering Europe’s battlefields as the great flu pandemic was also ravaging our country. On the contrary, today’s digital wars with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are aggressively playing out on internet-based battlefields. Yet, America’s initial response to COVID began presenting new challenges:
Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” the Irish commentator Fintan O’Toole wrote in April 2020. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.
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COVID-19 is accelerating our responses to contain the spread. Fareed identifies key issues that are changing the fate of humanity as we learn of incredible infection rates across both emerging and third world countries.
Lessons
The ten challenges outlining via each chapter are also leaving us with less time to fix:
- Buckle Up
- What Matters Is Not the Quantity of Government but the Quality
- Markets Are Not Enough
- People Should Listen to the Experts–and Experts Should Listen to the People
- Life is Digital
- Aristotle Was Right–We Are Social Animals
- Inequality Will Get Worse
- Globalization Is Not Dead
- The World Is Becoming Bipolar
- Sometimes the Greatest Realists Are the Idealists.
Many common sense approaches from the global point of view are certainly on display across these chapters.
Globalization v.5?
On the other hand, as Fareed accurately states, most countries including America were lacking a pandemic response. As a result we are feeling that impact upon the global economy. Above all, this separates how America will rebound versus 1918.
In fact, in his 2008 book The Post American World, Fareed is initially addressing globalization. He certainly acknowledges Tom Friedman efforts. Indeed, I must admit, insights from Tom can better address globalization to the pandemic. Tom certainly has a proven track record: The World is Flat (versions 1, 2, and 3), The Lexus and the Oil Tree, Hot, Flat and Crowded, and the remix Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0. The latter addressing environmental impacts of globalization. Unquestionably I would prefer to see Tom’s globalization-focused pandemic view.
In conclusion Fareed’s Ten Lessons will prove insightful as we continue understanding the pandemic’s domino effect upon the global economy. as I am just scratching the surface. This is certainly an interesting read.
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Real Time with Bill Maher | Fareed Zakaria: Ten Lessons for the Post-Pandemic World
Washington Week PBS | Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World
Commonwealth Club of California | Ten Lessons For A Post-Pandemic World
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