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The Compass: The Pandemic that Changed the World: Reasons: The pandemic that changed the world

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Reasons

08/07/2020 GMT

Reasons: The pandemic that changed the world

The Pandemic that Changed the World

BBC World Service - The Compass, The Pandemic that Changed the World, Reasons: The pandemic that changed the world

Why did world leaders fail to work together to prevent the spread of Covid-19?

Why did world leaders fail to work together to prevent the spread of Covid-19? Ian Goldin, professor of globalisation and development at Oxford University, examines the impact.

Why did coronavirus strike so fast and so hard? There was plenty of warning that a pandemic was inevitable, but when a new virus emerged in a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the world proved powerless to prevent it spreading. The finger has been pointed in various directions: a failure by the Chinese authorities to communicate, a sluggish response from the World Health Organisation, an ignorance of history, and what Ian Goldin, professor of globalisation and development at Oxford University, has termed the ‘Butterfly Defect’ of globalisation. In this episode, Professor Goldin explores what he sees as the complacency of governments and a declining commitment to multilateralism as reasons for the new pandemic and its unprecedented economic consequences. He hears from, among others, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva; the man who identified the Ebola virus, Peter Piot; and the historian Margaret MacMillan.
Producer: Tim Mansel

The Compass: The Pandemic that Changed the World

Ian Goldin analyses the Covid pandemic, economic disaster and the future of globalisation

Ian Goldin analyses the Covid pandemic, economic disaster and the future of globalisation.

We had often been warned that a pandemic was inevitable, yet we were unable to prevent it occurring. Covid-19 has already killed hundreds of thousands of people all over the world and led to an unprecedented global economic meltdown. “The worst crisis since The Great Depression,” Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, tells this series of The Compass.
 
Ian Goldin, professor of globalisation and development at Oxford University, predicted the crisis. In this series, he traces its origins, explores its unprecedented economic effects and asks whether all the pain and suffering might lead to a better world. Much-needed perspectives are provided by the writer and activist Arundhati Roy, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the historian Margaret MacMillan, the medic who discovered the Ebola virus Peter Piot, and the renowned pandemic expert Larry Brilliant.

Image: Employees wear face shields at a shopping mall in Jakarta (Credit: Bagus Indahono/EPA)

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