What now? Pandemic. Social unrest. And war

The list goes on and on: The pandemic. George Floyd’s murder and the growing call for racial justice. Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and, at the same time, an orchestrated attempt to overturn a democratic election. Global protests over vaccines and masks. And now war. How does this make any sense?

“Could there be a symbiotic relationship between COVID-19 and conflict?” ask scholars Alexi Gugushvilil and Martin McKee. In a paper written in October 2020 for the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appealed for an immediate global ceasefire to enable the world to confront ‘a common enemy’ but his plea went largely unheeded,” the scholars wrote. “We argue that there is a bidirectional relationship between COVID-19 and conflicts: on the one hand, circumstances associated with wars may facilitate pandemic spread; on the other hand, COVID-19 has already heightened xenophobia and nationalism, which in turn can encourage armed confrontations.”

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/what-now-pandemic-social-unrest-and-war