Bangladesh along with the world needs massive vaccination –around 70-80%- to be safe to carry on with other activities including economic ones. Whether that is a realistic objective one isn’t sure but that fact remains. The world is actually going through a massive human ecological change as the vulnerable are becoming more so and in the evolutionary equation of the less able are threatened with extinction. It’s not necessarily a matter of choice.
The global demand for vaccine can’t be met at this point of time with all the existing resource capacity in the world. It means that the world wasn’t equipped to deal with sudden emergencies despite all the scientific and economic development. It also means that the world’s vulnerabilities are beyond the capacity of the known world to effectively deal with. It sends a scary message about the capacity of human fragility which we may not like or agree with.
The term global really has no meaning when the world is so widely variant, as variant as the various strains of the virus. The world is evolutionarily speaking not uniformly fit so the people living there is not uniformly fit to survive either. It’s a grim and deadly signal of human state of affairs.
What could have changed the scenario as many wish is a rational global governance system based on justice and fairness. The only problem is there is no evidence that such qualities exist in nature and by extension in the world. Hence the imagination of that value based world is basically an artificial one. The only element that has some distinct evidence of existence is efficiency. Only that can make a difference and reduce vulnerability thereby making the system less prone to extinction.
The world is not equally efficient and nor is the state of Bangladesh which has many sterling qualities but large scale efficiency is not one of them. In that case, how is Bangladesh to survive in the era of Covid? The answer is the same, efficiency.
The fact that 100 crores allocation for health research was also there last year and 1000 crore for Covid management is a good sign. What is not good is that neither was Covid managed well and nor was any research that would help manage it. In terms of efficiency, some think that the focus is more on corruption as a result of which it has become efficient but not the work for which money is allocated. Hence, budget allocations by themselves carry no extra meaning but it’s how that money is spent that matters.
Two realities haunt Bangladesh. That it’s vulnerable and that it’s inefficient. Rest of the issues including corruption is not factors unless they impact on both. The world is also not very efficient and that is why the Covid crisis is hurting so much. But the lesson should be clear to all. That only the efficient will survive, as individuals, societies, state and ultimately the rest. And not all will survive.
