(Photo by iStock/Daniel Balakov)

Outbreaks of coronavirus continue to emerge, yet people around the United States are beginning to abandon the restrictions that have been in place for weeks. With no vaccine and no widespread immunity, a second wave of infection may strike. Would the world be able to handle it?

Eric Nee (@ericnee), editor in chief: The only way life will get back to some form of normal is if we can develop and inoculate a substantial portion of the world’s population with a coronavirus vaccine. And for better or for worse, the development of a vaccine has taken the form of an all-out race between research teams, pharmaceutical companies, and nations. While friendlier competition would be preferable, a race may not be all bad because it could speed the development and manufacturing of a vaccine.

Rethinking Social Change in the Face of Coronavirus
Rethinking Social Change in the Face of Coronavirus
    In this series, SSIR will present insight from social change leaders around the globe to help organizations face the systemic, operational, and strategic challenges related to COVID-19 that will test the limits of their capabilities.

    The race between nations, in particular between China and the United States, has gotten ugly, with both sides accusing the other of deceit and withholding information. The reason is that the stakes are high. The country that wins the race will be able to inoculate its own citizens first and will be seen by the rest of the world as a technological wizard (consider the prestige the United States got from landing the first man on the moon). In addition, the country that is first will also have the opportunity to “share” the vaccine with other countries and garner global goodwill. And it’s not just the nation that is the winner, it’s also that nation’s big pharma companies who are developing and producing the vaccine that also stand to gain.

    One should, however, be cautious about all of the hype surrounding these efforts. Vaccines usually take years, not months, to develop and produce. New technologies like genetic engineering have speeded up the development of vaccines, but any vaccine must still go through a series of trials to prove its efficacy and safety. And most trials end in failure. But there has never been an instance before where so much scientific, financial, and development resources have been thrown at a virus. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci (director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) is cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by January. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

    Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu), editor: When I’m not listening to this delightfully corny Guthrie-esque appeal to save the Postal Service, I’ve been getting un-stuck from the present with science fiction, re-reading old favorites that I’d almost forgotten. Time is getting strange. Have you noticed that March seemed to last about a year and April was over almost before it got started? Kim Stanley Robinson’s New Yorker essay is about how the times we live in give structure to the passage of time, and how the COVID-19 moment might be "the first of many calamities that will likely unfold throughout this century.” Now, when they come, we’ll be familiar with how they feel."  

    Marcie Bianco (@MarcieBianco), editor: To be honest, my favorite thing this week was reading that a new autobiographical novel about an intimate female friendship by Simone de Beauvoir (my cat’s namesake) will be published next year. Restaurateur Gabrielle Hamilton’s story, in The New York Times Magazine, about her decision to close her award-winning East Village establishment, Prune, is a heart-wrenching, beautifully written read about the consequences of the pandemic on the industry. And, thanks to a tip from one of our contributors, Yula Rocha, I have also been perusing a new website created by Brazillian entrepreneurs that publishes only heart-warming stories about living through the pandemic. They are now funding charities to help people financially affected by COVID-19. 

    David Johnson (@contrarianp), deputy editor of print: In wading through the sea of content on COVID-19, I am most interested in reading about ways we are addressing the crisis now that have long-term ramifications for how we will live better in the future. The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics has published a 56-page Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience that goes beyond the testing and tracing regimes we need now to the systemic and organizational innovations we need to develop for a healthier country. It envisions the role of civil society in activating and expanding the social solidarity necessary for collective response. In a separate white paper “Building Solidarity: Challenges, Options, and Implications for COVID-19 Responses,” Melani Cammett and Evan Lieberman argue that technical solutions to COVID-19 problems will be ineffective without popular compliance and behavioral change that rest, in turn, on solidarity. The crisis has also forced on us the opportunity to test social innovations on a massive scale, such as cash transfers in lieu of other goods and services, and to determine how they can be best implemented. Should cash transfers be universal or targeted (means-tested)? The Stanford Basic Income Lab asked several researchers in the field, and almost all argue that universal cash transfers are the superior approach.

    M. Amedeo Tumolillo (@hellotumo), deputy editor of digital: Unemployed. Such a tidy word to describe a situation that spills into every aspect of life. This disturbing map shows tens of millions of people in the United States who, along with many others around the world, now may have to contend with falling back into poverty, failing to make mortgage payments in the future, going without the insurance that pays for their health care, and all of the rest of the small and large things that depend in a large degree (at least in America) upon having money and a fair amount of it. The federal government's response has been both massive and flawed. As more crises spring from the one triggered by the new coronavirus, more people are wondering: Should so many basic necessities be provided only if someone can pay for them and someone can profit from them? What is a human right and what is a market good? Some people are lucky enough to not have to ponder these issues. But it's a luxury that may not last. People who are fed up with bearing the burden of the crisis's housing consequences are banding together to force the question: Who should pay for a system's failures?

    Furthermore:

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