We were caught with our proverbial pants down or our lavalava untied.
In just five months, more than 1.8 million people worldwide have tested positive and about 113,191 have died.
The global economy is on a recession. Trade is expected to fall by between 13% and 32% in 2020 as normal life and economic activities are disrupted.
Even the U.S., the self-proclaimed “world power”, has been brought to its knees. It is now the epicenter of the infection with over 550,000 positive cases and 21,649 fatalities. This is anticipated to increase.
Some Pacific Island countries are yet to register a positive case. We pray they will stay uninfected and we support their efforts to keep the virus off island.
But given our global interconnections, even they have been affected. The economic, social and psychological effects of the virus have preceded the actual infections.
In Solomon Islands, the government declared a state of emergency in late March and urged people to return to their villages, triggering mass migrations from Honiara to villages as people attempt to escape the virus.
But in early April, 27 people died when an inter-island boat carrying over 700 passengers was caught in a cyclone between Honiara and Malaita. The country has suffered the worse fatality even before a positive case of COVID-19 was detected.
Interestingly, villages have been portrayed as “safe zones” because of their relative isolation.
It is ironic that after decades of entertaining globalization, we are now seeking refuge in places as isolated as possible from the rest of the world. These are also places where health services are at best inadequate and at worse non-existent.
At the global level, COVID-19 exposes the flaws and vulnerabilities of human civilization.
Central to this are the ideas and approaches to economic development, especially our insatiable addiction to economic growth built on the unbridled extraction and destruction of natural resources. In the quest for economic growth, we are destroying our environment and planet.
Human beings have arrogantly asserted ourselves as the masters of the planet, rather than belonging to and being part of it. We have been terrible citizens of earth.
Despite our claims of being the most intelligent residents of this planet, it is obvious that we do not fully understand nature’s powers and when and how it can be unleashed.
The virus also reveals the failure of government policies that focus on building the might of militaries, rather than the wellbeing of peoples. Some may dismiss this view as naïve because they believe nation-states must have strong militaries.
But it took a virus, not military might, to render the most powerful militaries in the world useless. This illustrates the need for us to rethink the focus and trajectory of human civilization.
In Solomon Islands, this pandemic highlights the need for investments in health, education and other social services that will improve people’s wellbeing. These can no longer take second place in our development agendas.
There is also a need to broaden and diversify our economic base and ensure that our people, not only participate in it, but benefit from it.
Arrangements such as the Constituency Development Funds (CDF) have failed to do this. Instead, they build political capital for members of parliament and their cronies.
Perhaps this is also an opportunity to put an end to, or better manage the logging industry, which has been environmentally, socially and economically destructive.
At the global level, one of the positive impacts of COVID-19 has been the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions because factories have closed and transportations have decreased. This has given the planet an opportunity to breath.
The question is whether this will continue after the virus leaves, or will we see a surge in greenhouse gas emissions as states and corporations rush to rebuild their profit margin.
This pandemic has given us the opportunity to learn. Apart from the lessons in medical science, there are also socio-economic and political lessons. If we don’t learn from this and change things, the future will bring more and greater tragedies.
This is the time to pause and learn from the virus.
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