Global preparedness board paints a bleak picture for future crises

It would take 500 years for countries to invest in future preparedness the $11 trillion they have spent on Covid-19 responses as well as the $10 trillion in projected loses from the pandemic, according to a new report from the WHO's and World Bank's Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. Last year's GPMB report presciently warned how "a rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen" could mandate extra preparedness, and this year's report finds that emergency responses are still "dangerously deficient and under-resourced." The report also outlines lessons from the current pandemic, including the importance of leadership and individual citizens' actions to protect each other in the absence of a vaccine or therapy. "Failure to learn the lessons of Covid-19 or to act on them with the necessary resources and commitment will mean that the next pandemic, which is sure to come, will be even more damaging," the report says.