World News: The Virus and The World's Agenda

Confronted with the appearance of a new variant, a source of concern for the World Health Organization (WHO), humanity, divided between the need to fight against the pandemic and its vital economic obligations, remains hostage to a variant that dictates its agenda.

 

It must be admitted: the list of variants of coronavirus seems to never know an end. And the world, with each appearance of a new mutated virus, like the Omicron, to tremble at the idea of still having to confine itself as was the case in the spring of 2020.


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However, if the threat remains intact in front of the Omicron variant, of which we finally know little, the situation is not necessarily identical to that which prevailed eighteen months ago when the planet, flabbergasted and stunned, confined itself to give the impression of a land deserted by men. Armed with effective vaccines, produced in industrial quantities, the various countries of the planet encourage their respective populations to take the step of vaccination, even transforming for some the necessity into an intolerable obligation considered liberticidal. There are several reasons why the countries concerned, all of them in fact, are keen to strongly advise vaccination.

New Viruses

Health reasons at first. The planet, already facing an ecological crisis of increasing and exponential gravity, which could also generate the appearance of new viruses(especially by the melting of permafrost in circumpolar regions such as Russian Siberia) has no intention of fighting the virus for many years to come. The main idea is to eradicate it through mass vaccination which, with supporting results, works.


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The second reason, linked to the first, refers to a form of pragmatism tinged with cynicism that wants humanity to learn to live with the virus for reasons above all of an economic nature.

Driven by growth almost unprecedented for decades, growth itself the result of the effects that could be described as positive of the pandemic, the world and the major economies that compose it do not want to see the virtuous circle of almost unexpected growth broken.


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However, this economic dynamic has a cost and the recent COP26 organized in Glasgow in summer the witness and the victim. But letting this new variant spread could effectively stop the global economic cycle that has begun and that many are anxious to exploit for years to come.

Solidarity

The question that now arises is whether, however equipped with vaccines it may be, humanity will be able to overcome its fears and show global solidarity? Some of the most optimistic will argue this without debate, arguing that it is in man's nature to domesticate his environment and that global action will be the only answer to the pandemic, which is objectively right. Others, more pessimistic, will take refuge behind past experiences, where defeated by epidemics of plague or cholera, Humanity has seen the populations that compose it drastically reduce, putting the question of solidarity in the background.


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For the time being, anxious to contain the Omicron variant without altering economic activity, the various countries of the planet are opting for reasonable and prudent restrictions, far from those that had presided over in the spring of 2020, but on which we do not know what other measures they could lead to. Because it is only the evolution of the variant that will decide it, as often for almost two years, it that dictates the agenda of the world.

 

Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist, recognized blogger, editor, and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, a press and publishing consultant, and a communications consultant.

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