European Leaders: The Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge to the global community since 1940 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Talk about what you've seen in the news today.

Moderator: PoFo Today's News Mods

#15163838
European Leaders + wrote:The Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge to the global community since the 1940s.

At that time, following the devastation of two world wars, political leaders came together to forge the multilateral system. The aims were clear – to bring countries together, to dispel the temptations of isolationism and nationalism and to address the challenges that could only be achieved together in the spirit of solidarity and co-operation, namely peace, prosperity, health and security.

Today we hold the same hope that, as we fight to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic together, we can build a more robust international health architecture that will protect future generations.

There will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies. No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone. The question is not if, but when. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly co-ordinated fashion. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.

We are, therefore, committed to ensuring universal and equitable access to safe, efficacious and affordable vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for this and future pandemics.

Immunisation is a global public good and we will need to be able to develop, manufacture and deploy vaccines as quickly as possible.

This is why the Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) was set up in order to promote equal access to tests, treatments and vaccines and support health systems across the globe. ACT-A has delivered on many aspects, but equitable access is not achieved yet. There is more we can do to promote global access.

To that end, we believe that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response. Such a renewed collective commitment would be a milestone in stepping up pandemic preparedness at the highest political level. It would be rooted in the constitution of the World Health Organisation, drawing in other relevant organisations key to this endeavour, in support of the principle of health for all.

Existing global health instruments, especially the International Health Regulations, would underpin such a treaty, ensuring a firm and tested foundation on which we can build and improve.

The main goal of this treaty would be to foster an all of government and all of society approach, strengthening national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics. This includes greatly enhancing international co-operation to improve, for example, alert systems, data-sharing, research and local, regional and global production and distribution of medical and public health counter-measures such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.

It would also include recognition of a "One Health" approach that connects the health of humans, animals and our planet. And such a treaty should lead to more mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and co-operation within the international system and with its rules and norms.

To achieve this, we will work with heads of state and governments globally, and all stakeholders including civil society and the private sector. We are convinced that it is our responsibility, as leaders of nations and international institutions, to ensure that the world learns the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic.

At a time when Covid-19 has exploited our weaknesses and divisions, we must seize this opportunity and come together as a global community for peaceful co-operation that extends beyond this crisis. Building our capacities and systems to do this will take time and require a sustained political, financial and societal commitment over many years.

Our solidarity in ensuring that the world is better prepared will be our legacy that protects our children and grandchildren and minimises the impact of future pandemics on our economies and our societies.

Pandemic preparedness needs global leadership for a global health system fit for this millennium. To make this commitment a reality, we must be guided by solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness and equity.

J. V. Bainimarama, prime minister of Fiji; António Luís Santos da Costa, prime minister of Portugal; Klaus Iohannis, president of Romania; Boris Johnson, prime minister of the United Kingdom; Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda; Uhuru Kenyatta, president of Kenya; Emmanuel Macron, president of France; Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; Charles Michel, president of the European Council; Kyriakos Mitsotakis, prime minister of Greece; Moon Jae-in, president of the Republic of Korea; Sebastián Piñera, president of Chile; Carlos Alvarado Quesada, president of Costa Rica; Edi Rama, prime minister of Albania; Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa; Keith Rowley, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago; Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands; Kais Saied, president of Tunisia; Macky Sall, president of Senegal; Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain; Erna Solberg, prime minister of Norway; Aleksandar Vučić, president of Serbia; Joko Widodo, president of Indonesia; Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine; Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation


This article published today in the papers of the ruling governments of Europe marks the turning point in the vaccine spat between the EU and the UK.

It signals the start of a new era with less acrimony and less vaccine nationalism.
#15164963
The word "challenge" is used here, once again, instead of "problem."

This pandemic is just a challenge. Not a problem for our super-leaders.

This inability to frankly state that humanity has PROBLEMS is a symptom of the lack of seriousness of our leadership.

This inability to face reality and to admit the limits of our technologies... is the meta-problem behind all the others.
#15165034
QatzelOk wrote:The word "challenge" is used here, once again, instead of "problem."

Or "threat", for example. Problems should be solved, while challenges should be overcome, and they're also different in the sense of emergency, challenge (as well as Covid-19) is rather supposed to be a medium-term thing. Challenge is also positive, it's the word you'd most likely use in a coffee-driven Monday morning meeting to kick off the week.

However, climate change would rather be described as a problem, I guess.
#15165044
Beren wrote:Challenge is also positive, it's the word you'd most likely use in a coffee-driven Monday morning meeting to kick off the week.

However, climate change would rather be described as a problem, I guess.

Like with Covid, why in the world would you make "climate change" sound more depressing than it is by calling it "a problem"?

And by doing this - by calling it a "problem" - you make it sound like humanity has made a major blunder. Why do this? We are trying to sell shoes, and you do that with honey not with vinaigre.

Likewise, human extinction? It's just another exciting challenge.

We need to sound "positive" about these things, because customers are "turned off" by negativity. You will sell more shoes at your shop if you put a positive spin on these things.

And we are nothing if not shoe salesmen.
#15165047
noemon wrote:This article published today in the papers of the ruling governments of Europe marks the turning point in the vaccine spat between the EU and the UK.

It signals the start of a new era with less acrimony and less vaccine nationalism.





The vaccine nationalism was gonna last only as long as supplies was short. My worries is that this crisis not avail one world government proponents an opportunity to shackle us tighter to that concept
#15165066
QatzelOk wrote:Like with Covid, why in the world would you make "climate change" sound more depressing than it is by calling it "a problem"?

Because climate change really is a problem, while Covid is mostly virtual and appears to be a means of control camouflaged as a problem rather than a real problem to solve, actually. Positivity is supposed to be a part of the "Covidian" consciousness, Covid is meant to be inspiring as well, it's meant to inspire us to "evolve" it seems, hence it's "the biggest challenge to the global community."

On the other hand, though, climate change is real and a problem to solve within a definite time frame, hence depressing by definition.
#15165166
Beren wrote:Because climate change really is a problem...Positivity is supposed to be a part of the "Covidian" consciousness...

No. In the late capitalist worldview, positivity is imposed and negativity is a punishable offense.

...

POSITIVITY is an integral part of late capitalism, and we are supposed to translate all our thoughts into "positive thoughts" in order to "believe in" things. Our cities collapsing just opens up a market for survival vehicles and ammunition. Arab bad-guys blowing stuff up translates into trillion-dollar military contracts. Cancerous products fill the coffers of private medicine. Racism's side effects leads to prisons full of slave labor.

Win-win because we are suckers all. And the idiotic, propaganda-confused conclusion is...

***Believing in things makes you rich***

This is the logic of Santa Claus, and it is what the 99% are constantly forced to regurgitate in order to please or to reassure their masters. "I believe in what you are doing to me."

...

Image "I was able to quit my job as a doctor and make more money than I could ever imagine...
just by believing in things!"


...

So if a pandemic that veils the collapse of Western capitalism is "a challenge," so are extinction events and black holes. Challenges. Like the Challenger.

Image
Challenger disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shu ... r_disaster
#15165168
Beren wrote:Because climate change really is a problem, while Covid is mostly virtual and appears to be a means of control camouflaged as a problem rather than a real problem to solve, actually. Positivity is supposed to be a part of the "Covidian" consciousness, Covid is meant to be inspiring as well, it's meant to inspire us to "evolve" it seems, hence it's "the biggest challenge to the global community."

On the other hand, though, climate change is real and a problem to solve within a definite time frame, hence depressing by definition.

Let us not get bogged down by semantics. Problem or challenge, it is an international curse and world leaders seem to understand, some better than others, that we ought to do our best to meet this emergency with all the resources at our command.
#15165245
Beren wrote:Sure, the point is that Covid-19 is a scheme, and semantics is just a part of it.

Forgive me but I do not understand what you mean by saying Covid-19 is a scheme. It is a virus that has spread all over the world which means it is a pandemic. Vaccines can afford us a great deal of protection. We are short of them.
#15165250
I have had one house mate who has test positive for Covid. He had something equivalent to a mild flu, note I say mild flu, not a bad flu. I have one house mate who took the vaccine, he had to be rushed to hospital 2 days later and nearly died due to the blood clots. Even by the (blindingly low) standards of the British pharmaceutical-sickness industrial complex he probably shouldn't have taken the vaccine, but was brow beaten into it by demented vaccine-lover fanatics within his own family.

You've average Liberal is pretty thick and ignorant, some of them wouldn't actually know science if it smashed them in the face. I even had one on this forum, who said "You are a flat-earther then", when I said I believed the earth was an oblate spheroid. Hence they always screaming conspiracy theory. Just because we call this a plandemic, doesn't mean we all believe that that everyone we disagree with is part of some overarching giant secret conspiracy. Its just the recognition that a whole number of groups, some powerful and influential, pre planned to take advantage of a "crisis" something like this, to push their pre existing agendas. Some of these agendas will be conflicting. Some might even be benign. Whatever there is not something inherently evil in trying to take advantage of a "crisis" to expand a pre existing business or push a pre existing ideological agenda.

However we should definitely not place blind faith in:

1 The pharmaceutical-sickness industrial complex.
2 The Cultural Marxist-Education industrial complex.
3 The Big Tech- surveillance industrial complex.

Again let me emphasise none of the 3 phenomena I have highlighted above are monolithic, centrally directed conspiracies. They are organic emergent phenomena growing out of advanced industrialised societies. And to highlight them as problematic is not to wish to return to some imagined, innocent, idyllic conservative past.
#15165251
My wife took the AZ jab as she is in the higher risk group. I took her to the hospital 2 days after she took the jab because she was having heart-complications and a mild clot was discovered and treated with medicine.

I have not been offered the vaccine yet as I am 37 and not in the high-risk group.
#15165546
Well it is only a challenge to the global community because rich nations have signed up early to large quantity contracts and we have a national race to have a greater supply then is needed taking place right now. I would just state the bleeding obvious that if you let market forces gree to be unregulated and without control what you will have is rich nations control who/what/where the vaccination program takes place. Perhaps a lesson to learn from this in the future, but won't happen due to Western hegemony, is that the WHO controls vaccine logistics so we see vaccines sent to the right places that need it the most. In other words, to make us all work together we need to have no control in self interest because otherwise we have a race to the bottom again like we saw this time round. Those who have complete control of resources and production hold the cards and control and as such vaccination is taking place in the West and not anywhere else right now. :hmm:
#15165872
Scamp wrote:Yea the Soviet Union sure saved Germany by raping 2 million women.

You may not have read that far in your copy of the The Idiot's Guide to the Second World War, but Germany wasn't on our side, @Scamp. :)

No, it's not that he "may" have partici[…]

Commercial foreclosures increase 97% from last ye[…]

People tend to forget that the French now have a […]

It is easy to tell the tunnel was made of pre fab[…]