Reflecting on the pandemic - Are we all in it together? January 2020

[Boyd Roberts]

Reflecting on the pandemic

 

In the UK and other countries, politicians claimed in the earlier stages of the pandemic that “We’re all in this together.”

But is this true?

There is considerable evidence emerging that the impact of Covid on different groups of people within a country is very different, and reflects existing inequalities. Those who are poorer, live in lower quality housing, are unable to work at home and do not have savings to enable them to give up work when they are ill are much more likely to contract and suffer severe consequences from Covid-19.

On a global scale, as richer countries rush to buy up vaccine supplies for their citizens, there are concerns about vaccine supplies for developing countries unable to afford to buy them.

Talking about the Covid 19 pandemic, writer Damian Barr recently tweeted “We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm. Some of us are on super-yachts. Some have just the one oar.’

There is talk about building back differently after the pandemic – about using the pandemic as a stimulus so that the world afterwards is a better one that that before.

 

Katarina Popovic comments “We are in the same storm (corona-storm), but we are hit in a very different way and the consequences make a huge difference. Therefore, Global Citizenship Education that helps us to think about ‘new normal’ must also re-think and critically address the problems of ‘old normal’ - uneven global development, power structures, and socio-economic disparities that lead to increased gaps, widen inequalities and injustice, with every new crises.”

https://www.bridge47.org/blog/06/2020/global-citizenship-education-...