What we do and why we do it

Post-pandemic economic, social, political, and health ramifications are still being felt in society; however, it is unclear if leaders have learned lessons regarding government preparedness and eco-sustainable practices, which might reduce the probability of humans contracting another zoonotic disease of planetary effect. Chances of going through another pandemic remain high if humans continue destroying the habitats of animals which are reservoirs of viruses, or if we continue interacting near them. As part and parcel of the pandemic effects, there are the economic effects from the disruption in the GSC due to prolonged lockdowns and the failed Zero-Covid policy in China, which have not contributed to repairing the geopolitical tensions brought up by the Sino-American rivalry under the Trump administration and its continued de-coupling under the Biden administration. This peer competition between China and the USA has intensified, especially in technological advances and their uses; this de-coupling is occurring due to two competing visions over tech innovations and their different uses and values attached: whether technology is for high espionage, surveillance, or sensitive data theft remain key core issues dividing leaders. America has devised a new strategy of off-shoring, on-shoring, and/or friend-shoring (enticing American or Western companies to prefer like-minded states' soil to produce at a large scale). Biden has also launched the "Buy American" initiative to create rules to boost local product sales.

Post Pandemic politics and planetary interconnection: have we learned any lessons?

If the Covid-19 pandemic  - which began to ravage the world in early 2020 -  has taught us anything, it is the need to take stock of the way we are living and interacting with the world of Nature. We need to critically engage and overcome the cognitive challenge in understanding the interconnection between the health of the planet on the one hand, and the limits imposed by Nature in extracting its fruits on the other, to guarantee our own survival on Earth.  The human security dimension should be reformulated not only in terms of better infrastructure to deal with pandemics, more hospitals to assist the patients, or more medicines to cope with the disease, but rather, the new definitions will necessarily include an intellectual shift from business as usual to changes in our buy-discard lifestyles.  Trends in deforestation, urbanization, and the destruction of habitats have disrupted the equilibrium between humans and non-human organisms on our "home", Earth.  What had started as a sanitary crisis going global, has mutated into a capital crisis of high proportions. Restrictions on liberties, lockdowns and state aid to alleviate the needy and the jobless have meant a financial recession at a global level.  Covid-19 has laid bare the precarity of health provision in wealthy nations, it has exacerbated competition rather than cooperation in the acquisition of vaccines, and it has provoked trends of de-globalization which might stay with us for a while, or for a longer period than previously anticipated. Tacit to this line of thinking is the nearshoring or reshoring, or "Buy America" Act, whereby the new Biden administration promotes buying and manufacturing internally.  This Biden doctrine can only revive in the wake of the disruption of the Global Supply Chain affected by pandemics and lockdown restrictions.