Nothing will be the same in the post-covid world

After the First World War came 'the roaring 20s' and after the Second World War, 'the glorious thirties, the three golden decades of capitalism that ended with the oil crisis of 1973. What will happen after the coronavirus pandemic? coronavirus, the world war of the XNUMXst century, without enemies in the trenches, but in the ICUs? Will the world throw itself into excess or will everything change to achieve a more sustainable and less unequal planet? Several thinkers reflect on the post-covid world.

José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec. Historian. Author 'The day after the great epidemics' (Taurus)
«When the major epidemics end, a time of reflection begins in which what has been done well and what has been done poorly is critically analyzed. Societies learn a lot from pandemics, and almost always for the better. For example, they learn the fragility of the human being, the duty to be ready to serve the community and the need to respond to the challenge of nature with recourse to medical and pharmacological science. As a general rule, and in the medium term, what history tells us is that societies improve, although sometimes they tend to slow down that better future with petty resistance to change or with strange loyalties to certain mirages of the past. The 20st century will be defined in the coming years. Now there are signs that after the pandemic we can surrender to 'carpe diem', but that would be a serious mistake for the coexistence of the world. We must keep in mind that behind the screen of the 'roaring XNUMXs' of the last century and its excesses of living from day to day, one of the most atrocious periods in history germinates, with the rise of totalitarianism, the outbreak of atrocious civil wars, like the Spanish, and the impulse of racist nationalisms that led to the Second World War, the Holocaust and the forgetting of moral values.

Manuel Arias Maldonado. Professor of Political Science at the University of Malaga. Author of 'From the ruins of the future' (Taurus)
«No one knows what the society that emerges from the pandemic will be like, but if we have to venture a forecast, I would say that societies will not change in the essential, but only in the accidental: the predisposition to teleworking, the demand for a protective State, the greater awareness of ecological vulnerability. But we will continue to live in the same political regimes and the organization of the economy will continue to be capitalist, globalization will not stop and China will maintain its rise as a power. As for politics, we will continue more or less as before, without major changes in the relationship between political decision, expert knowledge and accountability. We must discard the idea that a pandemic can radically change politics, although it can generate an interesting response in culture that, in turn, could have political resonance. "It's too soon to know."

Daniel Innerarity. Professor of Political Philosophy. Author of 'Pandemocracy' (Galaxia Gutenberg)
«We should emerge from this health crisis not only with more knowledge about vaccines or social data, but also about the possibilities and limits of our human condition. The health crisis was not the result of any conspiracy and its outcome will not be an act of magic or witchcraft. Reason and freedom are the main faculties we have to understand and manage this limiting context in which we operate. Both those who claim that this will finally put us in the right direction and those who are convinced that we will return to our old ways are wrong on a central issue: humans are beings who are continually experimenting, who adapt, who argue about the most appropriate interpretation. adequate understanding of what is happening to us, that we learn, even if it is bad and late, but that we do all this in a context in which there are elements of necessity and freedom. Will we learn from the crisis? That is a question that cannot be answered because these two conditions (necessity and freedom) are very unpredictable and will depend on what our margins of action will be and what new challenges lie in wait for us. That we are truly free beings is proven by the fact that we do not know in advance how we are going to react to the events that are presented to us. Furthermore: in this indeterminacy of the future lies the greatness of our fragile condition. Regarding teleworking or distance education, a debate will open about what is suppressible and what is not. They can be combined according to new possibilities, taking into account the who, what and how in each case.

Martin Rees. Cosmologist. Author of 'In the future' (Criticism)
«From the health emergency we have learned the importance of the saying 'the strange is not the same as the improbable.' The outbreaks of Covid-19 will be with us for years and we must also be prepared for pandemics caused by other viruses, which could be more virulent than Covid. We have realized that in a more populated world the transmission and mutation of viruses from animals to humans will be more frequent. Pandemics will occur again and could cause a breakdown of the social order if deaths exceed 1% of the population. In the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain they are now around 0,3% of the population. Let's hope that our medical knowledge advances and allows for more effective vaccine production to stop these new threats. Although this trailer also represents a real nightmare: engineered viruses created by fans or viruses that escape, intentionally or by mistake, from laboratories. In practical terms, we will probably not return to the routine of office hours because our work, or part of it, will be done from home; there will not be as many business trips as until now; and I hope we learn something important: essential jobs during the pandemic (healthcare, drivers, supermarket cashiers) deserve higher wages and greater security. In addition, we need less narrow houses. Inequality must end, both within countries and internationally, if we want a more stable world.