Our “Other Normal”

The so-called “new coronavirus—COVID-19” health and humanitarian crisis has been costing many lives and producing an almost unprecedented, in recent, peace-time history, debacle of global GDP (gross domestic product) and subsequent wealth destruction. Its unfolding, almost uncontrolled development and related impacts, in social and economic terms, have been dubbed as of almost biblical proportion—according to noteworthy commentators, including the past Governor of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi. In fact, it has been damaging all major geopolitical areas—developed, developing, and underdeveloped alike. It has been hurting the lives of billions of households and the fortunes of millions of corporates and SME (small medium enterprises). It has brought death and misery—directly (through the illness itself) and indirectly, forcing people to prolonged “lockdowns” and companies to extended “shutdowns” that has put many out of business. In a way, it has shown, in all its subtleties and powerfulness, the extreme frailty of very complex, and otherwise super-efficient, global supply-and-demand value chains that are currently linking rural areas and cosmopolitan cities across countries and extended regions—all working with thin buffers and limited redundancies and with just in time production-to-distribution life cycles. It has shown the weaknesses of interconnected systems working in real time, even if digital-wise and innovation-prone. Finally, it has shown the frivolousness of many of the things we deemed (falsely) essential, and vice versa it has reminded us how many things that we are giving for granted are, in fact, quite essential. It is not an exaggeration to say that a single pandemic has been able, if not to turn upside down our inner beliefs, at least to make us rethink them in a very thorough way.