Tackling COVID-19: A Problem So Big, You Can See It From Space

Article originally published by CFR

Originating in China in late 2019 and spreading rapidly around the globe, COVID-19 has infected almost 400,000 people around the world and taken the lives of approximately 17,000. Its consequences are starting to be felt on all continents. In addition to lives lost and affected, the global economic and social toll of this pandemic are poised to be more dramatic than anything we have seen in our lifetimes.

The breathtaking speed and reach of the novel coronavirus are showing in new ways both just how connected we all are as well as how our systems of response and action are fragile or act as exacerbators. Indeed, as economic activity slows to a crawl in most corners of the world, satellite images are capturing the impacts of the virus from space as it snakes around the globe.

The pandemic has already laid bare a number of important truths. Chief among these is that today’s problems do not respect national borders but quickly crisscross nations in our connected world. The crisis has demonstrated not only the vulnerability of global public health but also the fragility of an integrated world economy to shocks, as just-in-time supply chains begin to crack and the world edges toward recession, or even depression. By accentuating deep connections across multiple global challenges, the COVID-19 emergency should serve as a clarion call for heightened multilateral cooperation across multiple shared dilemmas, not simply in the public health domain . . .