But there is
good news, she finds, devoting much of her new report to analyzing the trends
underlying the Covid-19 crisis.
“The good
news is that social distancing appears to work and governments around the world
have embraced it. In an unprecedented and rapid global response, 100% of the 20
largest economies are now in some form of lockdown, with 19 of those countries
taking action within a 4-week window.
“The riddle for the whole world will be how to walk the fine
line between relaxing the right measures at the right time in the right places,
without fanning the flame of infection transmission and exponential case count
growth. We believe that riddle is a problem that technology can help solve.”
Meeker argues that creative innovators, globally and together,
will rise above the virus.
“It’s easy to be fearful of how COVID-19 could continue to rage when one looks at the devastating outcomes from the epic plagues of past centuries. The difference today, in a world with near 24×7 transparency, is that broad awareness of problems rises faster than ever, thanks to our real-time global connectedness. Scientists and experts begin discussion/debate; citizens, businesses, entrepreneurs and governments move with varying levels of urgency. Action and the quest for solutions to problems can also ramp at record speed.”
Thanks to digital tools, we have seen three unprecedented
trends in medical and public health initiatives:
- Global information sharing – more than 3,000
published Covid-19 papers, which is 20 times the published research of prior infectious
diseases at this stage in the public health response;
- Rapid mobilisation of clinical research – more
than 500 clinical trials for Covid-19 interventions underway or completed across
34 countries;
- Unprecedented scale – 5-million expected
clinical trial participants.
“There’s
comfort that a global healthcare dream team of medical professionals is working
in unprecedented ways around the clock, rapidly sharing and iterating
information, best practices (and) feedback in real-time at scale – in effect, organising
a lot of the world’s relevant information and making it accessible in record
time.
“This type of global collective technology-assisted rapid response to a health-related problem has never happened before, including collaboration and cooperation between the private sector and governments.”
Read more on the next page about how the world will change.
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